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EDITORIAL
Local Power

Jim Coggins

“In the Middle Ages, the ‘whip hand’ belonged to the local lord. Discuss.”

I still remember this exam question from my first-year university history course. The professor, Dr. John Trueman, was an excellent lecturer and historian and a fine Christian man, later active in the United Church renewal movement. (Dr. Trueman also collected humorous misunderstandings from students’ exam papers, my favourite being, “In the Middle Ages, the church was rife with morality, and priests and nuns openly committed celibacy in the streets.”)

Dr. Trueman’s point in the exam question was that the greatest power in medieval European society rested with the local lord or nobleman. The local lord could rule his estate almost any way he liked because he had legal authority and the military power to enforce his will. On the other hand, if anyone ranking higher (such as a king or emperor) raised objections, he could simply withdraw into his stone castle and wait until the king went away. The king had little power of his own. In theory, the king could call on other lords within his jurisdiction to lend him troops to besiege the offending lord’s castle. However, the lords were reluctant to lend him troops to besiege one of their own. Besides, legally, they were obligated only to lend troops for a specified period (often 90 days). These troops were reluctant to launch a frontal assault on impregnable stone walls, and they could not starve out the castle because their period of service usually ran out long before the besieged lord ran out of food and water. Kings claimed to rule, but they had little real power.

Of course, the invention of cannon changed all this later on, and kings became powerful for a time.

Without an oppressive central government, one might expect Europe to have done well, but Europe did not prosper in the Middle Ages. European society was poor both economically and intellectually. Economically, trade was limited (each lord levied customs duties on goods passing through his estates, and there was no central government to build roads), and people often starved to death when there was a local famine and food could not readily be brought in from other areas. Intellectually, perspectives were narrow, and culture was weak because there was no cross-fertilization of ideas and little intellectual stimulation. Judicially, the common people often looked to kings to provide an objective justice system, but most courts were presided over by the local lord; thus, the local lord could oppress his subjects with little interference from the legal system.

What brought all this to mind recently was the observation that believers’ churches in North America currently have a political system similar to that of Europe in the Middle Ages. The real power rests with the leaders of local churches. Several MB congregations each have budgets that are considerably larger than the entire Canadian MB Conference budget, for instance, and, regardless of the suggested “norms”, the Canadian Conference basically operates on whatever money the local churches choose to send it. If they don’t choose to send any, there is little the Canadian Conference can do about it.

Two trends are occurring at the same time. On the one hand, denominations are becoming weaker. This does not mean that power is going to “congregations”. The second trend is that power is moving from “congregations” to “congregational leaders”. It is largely congregational leaders, not congregations, who decide how much money flows from the congregation to the Conference and how much information flows from the Conference to the congregation.

Let me make clear that I am making an observation about the power system in operation in churches, not necessarily condemning it. I am a congregationalist. I believe that power should belong to local congregations more than to denominational hierarchies. Denominations which have been organized with power concentrated at the top (the Roman Catholic Church and state Protestant churches, for instance) have been susceptible to corruption, theological error and spiritual laxness partly because such power structures inevitably attract the power-hungry.

I believe in congregationalism, but I am also convinced that congregational power should be accompanied by a willingness to work together with other congregations for the good of the Kingdom of God. (In our system, the denomination has no power of its own but merely consists of the congregations acting together.) Denominations are only one aspect of cooperation for the good of the Kingdom, but they are significant because they are currently the only wider cooperation which includes a significant element of mutual accountability. Unlimited power can corrupt local church leaders and congregations as well as denominational hierarchies.

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Last modified September 18, 2000.

© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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