Christian Social Mobility

Many of the latest posts on JM (that’s what the cool kids are calling it now a days) have instinctively moved towards discussions on race, class, privilege, guilt, and repentance (See here, here, and here). Regardless of our anxiety levels when these topics are brought to light, we cannot hide from them. We must admit through communal and personal reflection where we are parked on the “mountain,” and go from there. We may even be led by the Holy Spirit to conclude that our task as kings of the inherited mountain is to work our way down off the summit as much as possible. To guard the crest of the peak with the double artillery of white flight and gentrification is in effect to dribble Jesus further down the hill.

But where do we even start? Passionate Christians who are eager to combine their religious principles with their social values eventually find their way over to groups like Jim Wallis’ Sojourners. With their emphasis on global action and social justice, it can be hard to find a blemish. Combine this faith-based outlook with their massive network, growing book deals, and burgeoning grassroots culture, and you potentially have a colossal mountain bulldozer on your hands. This demolishing usually takes place through the avenues of political lobbying and the promotion of awareness on a mass scale. With enough signatures, change can happen…hope can arrive on the scene…and those at the bottom of the mountain can be brought to the top.

The efforts of activist groups like Sojourners is to be much-admired, but the typical avenues employed may need to be reconsidered by disciples of a guy who never turned to the machine of the Empire to initiate change. Many fall into Wallis’ camp simply by being disgusted at the Religious Right and turned off by the Liberal Left. With nowhere else to turn, they become a Sojourner (that is my personal story). But where are all the other models of social empowering that Christians can latch onto that do not revolve around politicking and legislation? How about back in the medieval period? (And if you are picturing a quirky dinner scene where you eat roasted chicken with your hands and watch actors joust it out in front of you…it’s ok…me too…but I call dibs on the blue knight).

The Middle Ages saw sweeping reform in the Church, and for good reason. Both the monastic life and the papacy, once the ideals of Christian livelihood, had become corrupt with greed, simony, and cheap grace. Monks like Bernard of Clairvaux renewed their orders with a return to the rigorous vows of obedience, poverty, and celibacy while popes like Leo IX did the same in their high office. Simony (the act of buying and selling of ecclesiastical posts) was one of the worst enemies to the Church, but not just for the obvious reasons of greed and power hording. As it stood, kings and influential nobles could directly appoint bishops and abbots to their positions. Those people could in turn birth a son and have him appointed much in the same way. Therefore, the program of reformation had to include both outlawing simony and promoting clerical celibacy if it was to protect the social mobility capable within the Church. As Christian historian Justo Gonzalez writes:

“There was a connection between these two [celibacy and simony], for in the feudal society, the church was one of the few institutions in which there still existed a measure of social mobility…but this social mobility was threatened by the practice of simony, which would guarantee that only the rich would occupy high offices…If to this was added clerical marriage, those who held high office would seek to pass it on to their children, and thus the church would come to reflect exclusively the interests of the rich and the powerful.” (The Story of Christianity, 283)

In the feudal network, you were born into what you would always be. If your father was a serf, you were born into working that same plot of land and protecting that same noble. Serfs bound not only themselves but all of their future heirs, assuring their family’s place in the lowest class of society for generations to come. But it was in the Church where this makeshift caste-system didn’t always play out. There was an elasticity of the power grid of the Church that didn’t exist anywhere else in medieval culture. Simple peasants could become monks. Stay at it long enough, and you’d become an abbot. If your reputation for holiness grew, you could find yourself climbing the ranks towards the Papacy. Many Popes started as simple monks (and in fact, had to be dragged into ecclesiastical office kicking and screaming).

But even more astounding, there was a downward mobility offered in the Christian life as seen in the biographies of men like Francis of Assisi and Antony of the Desert. When these men encountered the Gospel, radical devotion pressed them to give up all they had, join in solidarity with the poor, and live a life of absolute obedience to God. Neither of these great saints started that way. Francis was born into the merchant class. Anthony had enough of an inheritance to permit a comfortable life. Both were compelled to climb down the “mountain.” The Empire offered a system that condemned you to your culturally authorized spot, be it one of enormous privilege or never-ending serfdom. It was the Church that had a fluid structure that allowed for upward and downward social mobility.

The Hard Questions:

1. Is social mobility even a worthy goal of Christian reform in the first place?

2. Should working for mobility extend outside the confines of the Church into the public sphere?

3. Does the Church make room in its own structure for mobility? Is there a subtle feudalism in our own garden?

4. Are there certain “zoning laws” on the mountain that prevent upward and downward social mobility even within the Church?

5. Should these laws be taken off the books? Could we remove them even if we wanted to?

for further reading . . .

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