The Danger in Being “Ministerial”

When I saw a headline on The Wild Hunt, “Wiccan Minister Kathryn Jones to Run for Office in Pennsylvania,” it stopped me in my tracks. Not because Ms. Jones is running for office, but the use of the term “minister.”

Immediately I thought of John Michael Greer’s recent column in Witches & Pagans 28, “A Bad Case of Methodist Envy: Copying Christian Models of Clergy is a Pagan Dead End.” Geer rightly points out that today’s concept of “clergy” is quite different from the Pagan past:

There were no seminaries or divinity schools for [ancient] Greek priests and priestesses, and the thought of asking a priest of priestess for moral of spiritual counseling would have seemed absurd to the ancient Greeks — you went to a philosopher for that, for Apollo’s sake! Nor, for that matter, did they perform wedding ceremonies. . . . [in Egypt] being a priest or priestess was a career, one of the professions open to the literate . . . . this kind of priesthood included few or no “pastoral” functions as we know them.

The essence of priest/esshood is the relationship with the deity. You maintain a shrine, hold ceremonies, and otherwise put people into their own relationships with the deity. You may serve as a conduit of power — even today at some Japanese Shinto shrines (perhaps the nearest thing to Classical Paganism in a functional way), you can pay a small fee to have your new Toyota blessed by a priest.
http://blog.chasclifton.com/?p=6580