A Theology of Leadership – Br. Lucas Hall

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Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles

There is a common trope, that the people most worthy of leadership and authority are those who do not want it. I disagree. I believe, generally speaking, that if a person tells you they don’t want a job, you should believe them. To do otherwise creates a perverse incentive: I want power, but people only want to give power to people who don’t want power, so I have to pretend like I don’t want power. This can become almost codified as a cultural expectation. The current Ayatollah of Iran, when he was first nominated for the position, vociferously objected and debated, insisting that “my nomination should make us all cry tears of blood.” He, of course, eventually accepted.

We see this cropping up in the history of the Church as well. One of my favorite saints was a man named Ephrem. He was a deacon, and a sort of proto-monk known in his culture as a “son of the covenant,” and he composed a great deal of theological hymns. The Church, especially in the East, but now increasingly in the West, has viewed him as an extraordinarily gifted theologian. The Church has also wondered, “How can such a man of extraordinary talents, recognized in his own lifetime, have been just a deacon? Surely, surely, such a man should have been made a bishop!” And so a story soon developed that he had been repeatedly offered that role of leadership, that role of authority, and Ephrem in his great piety and humility, refused the office. Wow, what a great guy. Of course, we have no evidence this happened. In all likelihood, Ephrem, and those around him, collectively discerned that he was called to the diaconate.

Some may say that’s a less interesting story, but again, I disagree. Maybe I’m weird, but stories of people doing the difficult work of discerning around leadership and authority, of doing what is necessary to make a functional community, however big or small, of doing that difficult work, and continually taking up the charge of doing so, are exciting to me. They’re not exciting like a roller coaster. But they’re exciting because they offer a path forward in real life. Not a pious performance of humility, but the real humility of taking a question, an issue, a problem seriously and doing the real, honest work of trying to contribute to making things better.

Stepping outside the realm of Church for a moment, I read a book a few years ago, by Tufts political science professor Eitan Hersh, provocatively titled Politics is for Power. It was essentially an argument by a white progressive person that white progressive people in the United States in their political participation have often avoided the moral obligation to be effective in favor of symbolic posturing and gratifying self-expression. It’s a lot more thrilling to go to a big rally than it is to join your local advisory board on bicycle lane implementation, but the latter is significantly more likely to accomplish something tangible and good.

Why am I talking about all of this? Well, it’s because I think it’s important. It’s because I think it’s relevant to our current lives and the national and world political moment we currently inhabit. But also, crucially, it’s the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. And we cannot speak about either of them without speaking of their leadership of the Church. They were called to positions of leadership among those earliest Christians. And I think we have a lot to learn from how that happened.

Unlike the trope of not wanting power, Peter and Paul, on some level, both did want to lead. Both insisted on their unworthiness, but this did not preclude them from seeking authority. Peter regularly spoke on behalf of his fellow disciples, often suggesting a course of action when the rest seemed confused. It is Peter who gives the correct answer to who Jesus is, and therefore gains the name Peter. It is Peter who suggests building a tabernacle at the Transfiguration. It is Peter who says that he must wash Jesus’s feet at the last supper, and when rebuffed, insists that Jesus should wash all of his body, not just his feet. It is Peter who insists that Jesus as the Christ cannot possibly be killed. He’s not shy about proclaiming, deciding, and acting. He sometimes gets it right and sometimes gets it wrong, but he wants to lead.

And Paul, I mean, come on: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. A Pharisee, son of Pharisees. Brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to the ancestral law, being zealous for God. This is a middle class, educated, upwardly mobile young man, quick to repeatedly break out his resume to all who would listen or question him. He’d do very well in Cambridge, actually.

My point is, these men were not engaged in the pious practice of performative humility. Even Peter’s insistence that Jesus must wash all of him, and not just his feet, is not performative; he’s just learned he’s wrong about him needing to wash Jesus’s feet, and he’s adapting and correcting, if a bit overzealously. And that’s the point. He learned that he was wrong, so he changed.

What I believe unites Peter and Paul’s leadership is that they are fundamentally marked by error, by enduring the pain and humiliation of learning that they were wrong, and growing from that. Both men discerned, with the help of those around them, including God, that they were called to some leadership. And both men learned, often from those same people around them, including God, that in their leadership they would screw up, sometimes quite badly. And this is important, because it answers the concerns expressed in that trope, that the best leaders are those who don’t want power. Because the people who say that are coming from a place of correct skepticism of those who are power-hungry, who fantasize about being in charge. It’s a bad thing, almost the definition of that biblical phrase, being “puffed up.”

From this, we might discern a Christian theology of leadership. Not the pious performance of self-deprecation, nor the puffed-up power-seeking of the prideful, but humble honesty. Honesty about whether one feels called to a position of power in the first place. Honesty about what that might look like. Honesty about why one leads in a particular way, why a leader is doing what they’re doing. Honesty publicly, and honesty with oneself, the capacity to actually examine one’s reasons and motives. And finally, perhaps most importantly, the humble honesty of accepting criticism, or as the Psalms say, “being smitten by friendly rebuke.” Maybe it comes from on high, and maybe it comes from those who one leading. But to lead in the Christian sense is to recognize that one’s actions, and motives, and plans, are and will be laid openly, nakedly before God. Pride and deceit won’t work there. And to embrace the sort of leadership offered by Peter and by Paul, one must give no quarter to that pride or to that deceit. They won’t last, and they won’t suffice. All will be revealed. And the honesty to which we all have been called will do the Church and the world a lot of good.