A popular bumper sticker displays the phrase "Question Authority." From 1776 until the present time, it has been an assumed "right" of American culture to maintain an attitude of suspicion toward authority. Yet, Christians are nurtured spiritually on doctrines of submission, humility and obedience. So, we see the bumper sticker and, after we disguise our "Amen!" with a chuckle, we piously think, "Well, that's just typical of the rebellious, carnal attitude of our secular age."

When Protestant pastors read the same bumper sticker, their reaction is closer to "I wonder if that's my head deacon's car?" The various denominations of Protestantism are riddled with schisms and rebellion because a byproduct of the Protestant Reformation is a native suspicion of all in authority.

The first word in Protestant is "protest." And this protest from the beginning was aimed at Church authority. In its purest sense, the term "protest" means "to witness forth." And in that sense the defenders of Luther and Calvin define their historic protest. But, all that aside, it does not answer the problem of trickle-down rebellion that has plagued the Protestant movement since the beginning. When I was a supervisor in a sewer plant in Jacksonville, Fla., I had a conversation with one of my workers that illustrates how this theological thorn in Protestant flesh touches the man in the street.

Bucky, at that time, was an unchurched hedonist. He was so distant from the church that when his father died, his family asked me to preach the funeral. No one in the family knew a preacher, and I was the most religious guy he knew. After this accidental chance of bonding with him spiritually, I tried to share my faith and draw him to church.

"Bucky, why not come to church with me, Sunday?" I asked him. "Nah ", he replied. "I don't need no man to tell me what God says." Expelling a black stream of tobacco juice, he continued: "Me'n the 'Man Upstairs' got an understanding."

What was it Bucky understood? Possibly, it was that a true Protestant needs no religious authority figure. Bucky stood in the Protestant tradition. Culturally, he is a WASP: a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.

As a child in my Baptist church, I remember hearing one of our influential deacons complaining about one of the pastor's sermons. "Who does that man think he is? He puts his pants on the same way I do." The deacon did not chew tobacco or stash pornography behind the front seat of his truck as Bucky did, but he still spoke of the minister in the same spirit. But they did more than question authority. They despised and rejected it. The pastor, a dear friend and father figure of mine, was sent packing.

The way many in the Church react to authority you might wonder if they consider the sentiment of the bumper sticker to be divinely inspired. Protestants, by and large, consider it a divine right not only to question but to defy authority. It is accepted by many students of history that the great Protestant reformer John Calvin gave implicit credence to the "right of revolution."

I suppose that if we were to interview the hundreds and thousands of dissenting leaders who preside over church splits, splinter groups within denominations and various schisms, we would discover that each possesses proof texts from Scripture and clear, sincere definitions of moral purpose. All would regard their questioning of authority as a divine mission.

Regardless of the Scriptures used and the goals or motivations of the dissenters, the fact is that protest and dissent are integral and accepted norms within the Protestant community. The first word in Protestant is "protest." Sometimes it means to witness forth - and sometimes it means rebellion.

Anne Roche Muggeridge, in her book "The Desolate City," notes, "The Protestant Reformation, in its insistence on the supremacy of private judgment over external authority, raised opposition to authority to the level of a theological principle." It may be that she not only isolated a historical nuance in Protestant theology but hit on a basic flaw that has been passed down through the ages and is still affecting contemporary church relationships.

Luther and Calvin, who questioned the Roman system of authority, nonetheless hastened to reestablish religious Government, with demands that its authority be obeyed. But Pandora's box had been opened, and as the next generations of dissenters splintered off, in turn, from Luther and Calvin (with each dissident having his own claim of sola scriptura that is, holding to the authority of Scripture alone and each individual's right to interpret it for himself), Protestant orthodoxy could not long remain unfractured. Luther's revolt began with a zealous evangel of reform that his elder contemporary Erasmus had previously articulated, more eloquently and gingerly. But Luther had the raw power of a primitive evangelist and was no diplomat. His 95 theses against the sale of indulgences, with his subsequent tracts and books, were duly viewed as an open attack on all authority. Paul Johnson, in "A History of Christianity," writes that "the explosion detonated by Lutheran protest became inextricably mingled with economic discontent and took the form of a peasant's revolt. This, of course, is what tended to happen in total society. It was hard to separate a successful attack on one aspect of authority from a challenge to another." Luther came out against the peasants who had followed his lead. His rebellion against Rome played well in Germany. However, the peasants protested against the oppression of their German lords, who formed Luther's support base.

It would seem that those who rebel, even though they are possessed by a noble moral cause, are often themselves proud, self-important and desirous of power. John Calvin, who had given up on Catholicism by age 24, believed himself to have "received from God more ample enlightenment than others."

After throwing off the Roman yoke, he devised his own. His rules and codes for religion and society were applied in Geneva, where elected councils, elders and pastors enforced the moral code "to take care of the life of everyone ... to apply brotherly correction."

Paul Johnson tells us that Calvin tried but failed to secure civil jurisdiction for his pastors in Geneva, but "he succeeded in getting his opponents dismissed as the 'libertines,' expelled and in some cases tortured and executed ... the pastors paid annual visits to everyone's house to detect faults."

Once Luther's teaching became established as a state religion, all other forms of Christianity (eventually extending to other forms of Protestantism) had to be eliminated. Johnson says that in 1531 Calvin "agreed that Anabaptists and other Protestant extremists 'should be done to the death by civil authority."' Calvin obviously considered it rebellion when the Anabaptists "witnessed forth." It bothered him that others wanted to start their own fires, just like the one he built and warmed himself by.

This is not to discount the rich legacies of Luther and Calvin and other Reformers. It is simply to say that rebellion, even when committed by saints, yields bitter fruit.

Certainly, the grace of God flowed through the various streams of the developing Protestant movement. But the bitter root that caused the Reformers to cast off Roman authority only to set up their own has proved more lasting than the grace, in the case of some of the declining old-line Protestant denominations.

To quote Muggeridge again: "From the Reformation's central idea about the direction in which authority flows, there developed the distinctive movements and institutions of the modern world - the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, Romanticism (and its glorification of the lonely rebel), popular sovereignty, liberalism, capitalism, egalitarianism, feminism, Marxism."

How strange that within the framework of the Protestant Reformation the seeds of our modern secular culture were sown!

Our secular society has little regard for the Church or its ministers, and this society, with abandon, questions the authority of the Church and her Bible on all points. Sadly, the actions and attitudes of Protestantism often echo society's sentiments.

For example, the Southern Baptist Convention reported that during an 18 month period ending in 1989, some 2,100 pastors were fired. There is evidence of a new consumer mentality among churchgoers. Pastors are seen as commodities or vendors of religious products and programs as often as they are regarded as oracles of God. The churchgoer has learned to discriminate, or should we say, protest.

In a 1991 Parade magazine article by Hank Whittemore, a minister complained of the typical church attender: "Instead of sticking to a church, people are shopping around for religious services. Rather than working to resolve issues when they don't get what they want, they go somewhere else. Or, they get rid of the pastor ... you get power struggles on how money is spent, what programs are offered, even the sermons that are preached. All that adds up to a lot of insecurity and stress for clergy. Hebrews 13:17 demands a reading at this point: 'Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.'"

We are presented with a difficult question. Is it possible for one, in the fear of God, to obey Scripture and still question authority? Perhaps, but a delicate balance must be maintained. We must acknowledge that God has chosen to act through particular human agencies to bring men to the knowledge of Himself. God works through human personality and particularly, if not exclusively, through the agency of His Church. Within His Church He maintains a government: "overseers [bishops] and ministers [deacons]" (Phil 1:2) and "apostles ... prophets ... evangelists ... pastors and teachers" (Eph 4:11).

David, known to be a man after God's own heart, displayed an unusual humility, as recorded in 1 Samuel 20:29. Even though the story was a ruse to thwart King Saul's attempts to kill him, David sent word to the king that he had to go home to Bethlehem in obedience to his older brothers' command. Who would consider such obedience in our modern age? We rarely honor our father, let alone "obey" our brothers.

At this point in David's life he was an adult, had been anointed future king by Samuel, was renowned on the battlefield and served as an aide to Saul; yet, obedience to authority was of greater importance than his social or political standing.

The apostle John's third letter was written in response to Diotrephes who was rebelling against the apostle's authority. The Scripture does not reveal Diotrephes' doctrine. All we know is that the dissenter wanted to displace John as the authority in that particular Christian community. Here was an early Protestant with unknown motives!

No doubt, Jesus considered the average elder and Pharisee of His day to be poor role models, but He did not advise rebellion. Of them He said, "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses's seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you" (Mt 23:2-3). He did not advise them to rebel, although He did say, "Do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach" (Mt 23:3).

Paul spoke of his "authority (which) the Lord gave me for building you up, not for tearing you down" (2 Cor 13:10). The ministers of God must be respected and even obeyed (a sickening thought for the modern Protestant), if they are "to prepare God's people for works of service" (Eph 4:12).

For, if Muggeridge is correct in saying we Protestants have "raised opposition to authority to the level of theological principle," then we will never embrace under one banner in our pilgrimage to obey the apostolic command to "reach unity in the faith." For as soon as a banner is raised, a protest will be registered.

Certainly, most Protestants speak warmly and sincerely of the unity of the faith, but our works reveal more splitting and dissenting than building up. Something holy is missing. I submit that it is the fear of God, which, if possessed by us, would cause us to exhibit a tangible respect for authority and a reverence for the Church and her ministers. Sadly, that is largely lacking. It is the theology that can be reduced to a bumper sticker that should be questioned.

In Luke 10:16, Jesus said: "He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects Him who sent me." We who can read such words and not tremble have taken the admonition to "question authority" one step too far.

By: Louis Templeman
A licensed minister of the Foursquare Gospel Church
Published in the May/June '94 issue of The Catholic Answer
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