Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World: Essays in Honour of Roger C. Hutchinson

11. Are Clergy Ethics a Matter of Common Sense?

ARE CLERGY ETHICS A MATTER OF COMMON SENSE?1 Preface When I began my life as a graduate student, it was my privilege to serve for five years as teaching assistant to Roger Hutchinson. The class, at the University of Toronto, was “Introduction to Religious Ethics,” and it was there that I was schooled in what we all came to call “The Method.” The genealogy of the method is elaborated elsewhere in this festschrift, in particular Hutchinson’s own debt to Gibson Winter. However, there are certain sensibilities associated with his manner of clarifying the roots of moral conflict that may not be apparent to the casual reader. Like many contemporary ethicists, Hutchinson thinks of Christian social ethics as an inherently interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Every social question requires dialogue with other social sciences in order for all aspects of the problem to be understood. Hutchinson’s own training was first in engineering and then in sociology, and it has been that latter discipline with which he has been more frequently in conversation. However, the sensibility characteristic of his use of “The Method” is one I associate with the discipline of cultural anthropology. His analysis of opposing moral arguments requires an understanding from the inside. Sometimes, Hutchinson would invite a controversial speaker to Notes to chapter 11 are on pp. 236-37. 223 11 CHRISTOPHER LIND class, knowing that many students would be outraged by the position being articulated. After the speaker’s presentation, the assignment would be to analyze and reconstruct the argument so that the speaker could recognize the argument as his or her own. The speaker was treated as if from another culture. We were asked to suspend our judgment of the position until we could understand the world view within which this argument made sense. The anthropologist whom Hutchinson was most fond of quoting was Clifford Geertz. It was Hutchinson who introduced me to Geertz’s work, and my use of Geertz in the essay that follows is a kind of homage to Hutchinson. In addition , while I do not use Hutchinson’s method in a formal way in what follows, my attempt to clarify the assumptions within which debates are framed, rather than advocate for a position within the debate proper, is a direct result of being instructed in this style of ethical analysis. In this essay, I pursue the question of whether ministerial ethics2 can be thought of as a matter of common sense. I use Geertz to explore the concept of common sense and test my database against his criteria. When it becomes clear that my data meet all of his criteria, I conclude that the widespread assumption that clergy ethics are a matter of common sense neatly summarizes the problem. Common sense is a matter of form, not of content. What is missing is a common culture to supply the content held in common. In a globalized world where cultural content is increasingly fragmented into a pattern we call postmodern, the creation of a common culture within institutions (like denominations) will have to be an intentional act. This deliberate exposure of differences that are either new or kept hidden will be a painful but necessary exercise for the churches. The database for this essay is drawn from a larger qualitative research study on ethics in ministry that I undertook with Maureen Muldoon, an associate professor at the University of Windsor. The study involved approximately eighty interviews with lay people and members of the order of ministry, in both the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada, in the provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan. The purpose of the study was to determine what the actual ethics of ministers are. This study contrasts with most prior research, which has attempted to determine what the ethics of ministers ought to be. Doing Ethics in a Pluralistic World 224 Clergy Ethics and Common Sense It is something of a truism in qualitative research to say that all conversations about one’s topic become part of the research data. So, when the mother of one of the researchers responded to a discussion about clergy codes of conduct with the comment “What do they need a code of conduct for? They’ve got the Bible, don’t they?” this began a serious , though unexpected, line of inquiry. The response seemed so obvious as to be a matter of common sense. This led, in...