My father was the first person in my life to show me what moral authority could look like. I didn’t analyse it at the time, but his words and his behaviours were generally in alignment, so as to give me confidence in his role as the primary authority figure in my world. I didn’t realize that I was listening to him while watching his actions. I didn’t understand that every leader is a combination of positional authority and moral authority.
No leader can just “get the job done” without also being evaluated for moral integrity and for admirable virtues. A society demands some level of moral goodness in the person given responsibility.
I was in Grade One, or possibly Two, when I had a classmate who was not able to function as did the rest of the students. I regret that one day I mimicked him in order to get a laugh from other kids.
When the class was over, my teacher asked me to stay. She said, “Merle, what you did was not right.” She was certainly correct. And her kindly talk to me about the nature of my actions and the special place in her heart for kids with disabilities changed my outlook entirely.
“What you did was not right.” This teacher had the moral authority to confront me about my actions. Combined with her position of authority, this message was very effective.
A leader with both positional authority and moral authority can also say with confidence, “This is the way things ought to be.”
I was just a few years older when my friends told me about a local church leader who had an extramarital affair. We were outraged, in a childish way. We began to understand that morality and virtue are not easily separated from a leader’s responsibilities. How would such a person be able to say to us, “This is the way things ought to be”?
It seems there is a steady stream of disappointments coming from the leaders of organized church and from the leaders in our governments. This often is from leaders who can effectively get certain jobs done, but have used their power in a way that doesn’t fit our ethical or moral expectations.
In most cases, it has taken a great deal of courage for someone to say to such a leader (especially in the church), “What you did was not right.” Sometimes the person making the statement pays dearly for daring to challenge a leader who was effectively filling the role they were hired for.
We, as a society, seem confused when we appreciate what a leader can accomplish, but are repulsed by the character traits or personal morals that that person displays.
Christians, especially, have claimed that certain virtues and morals give a leader genuine credibility and authority. Consciously or unconsciously everyone assigns moral authority to those who seem deserving of it.
Highest on the list of qualifying morals and virtues are things like empathy, generosity, truthfulness, integrity, and service. Sadly, some of these virtues are considered signs of weakness by many political voices, and by too many Christian nationalists. Many seem ready to trade almost anything for the end result of victory over the “enemy.”
We’re coming up to the elections of federal leaders in Canada. It’s quite entertaining, if not pathetic, to watch the moral-superiority charades that are the leaders’ debates and the sponsored TV ads. Proposed governing policies don’t always reach the first level of debate. Instead, personal behavior, personal beliefs, and compliance with some version of moral authority in topics like racism, climate change, women’s rights, or immigration set the tone for everything.
Our political culture has tried to distance personal moral choices from the ability to govern or lead. Yet, those choices are the first thing that different parties or voters seem to point out in the other. It is that kind of reaction that produces a language of contempt. It stirs emotions at the deepest levels.
Accusations of “broken promises, racism, or ethics violations” are all evidences that everyone expects a leader to prove moral authority in order to speak to how things ought to be. At the same time, our society seems to make some highly-contradictory distinctions between what constitutes moral or immoral sexual behaviour.
It seems so very confusing when influential Christian leaders affirm that we can safely divide matters of morality and virtue into “those characteristics that matter and those that don’t.” The basis of the message is that leaders just need to do the job we want done, regardless of the absence of virtues we expected to see in those who claim moral authority.
It is even more confusing when the standards of moral authority change—depending on which political party or church is violating the moral standard. That’s one thing that is destroying the credibility of the church and the Evangelical Christian image in the most alarming way.
I intentionally listen to political critiques that all parties passionately make about their opponents. I try to determine if that critique has some valid basis in policy plan or long-term outcome. It helps to consider what the weaknesses and strengths are in any platform. But it’s very hard to sort that out, because most political rhetoric is packaged in a gaudy wrapper of moral superiority. And it never seems to end.
Moral superiority is usually self-proclaimed. And it is assumed that self-proclaimed moral superiority will morph into moral authority. However, we instinctively know that moral authority, like respect, is assigned to leaders by the watching and listening community.
How does our collective moral hypocrisy affect the next generation?
It’s no surprise to me that anger and cynicism are typical responses of the younger set to the established church and political systems. Young children have always responded to hypocrisy with anger. Children have always been able to see right through a parental moral authority that lives a double standard. It produces anger even in a toddler, and often grows into a life of resentment and fury aimed at all authority figures. That’s the Merle Nisly version of child psychology.
If the church’s most influential Christian leaders wish the next generation to make any sense of this confusion, we will all have to be very clear about the essential differences between thanking a leader for the ability to accomplish a desirable goal, and our moral responsibility for clearly denouncing immoral and unvirtuous attitudes and actions in that same leader.
King David was the heroic king of the ancient nation of Israel, and his amazing accomplishments were the inspiration of many generations of leaders to come. However, what gives that historical hero enduring moral authority for Jews and Christians alike is that his moral failures were not minimized and ignored in favour of his many superhuman accomplishments. People of real moral fiber, subjects, called David’s sins what they actually were, and the hero repented. Otherwise, he would not still be an heroic icon.
In contrast to that, even a Christian moral majority ends up scoring a zero in terms of moral authority. That’s because we seem willing to applaud and affirm church leaders and political leaders simply for doing our collective will.
What causes Christians and solid citizens to shift the baseline for assigning moral authority to a church leader or politician? I think it includes these values:
- Measuring effectiveness in simple terms of a beneficial result
- An uncritical loyalty to a person or group
- An uneasy awareness of our own personal inconsistencies
- Uncertainty about which categories of virtue and morality really matter
What if we stopped using moral inconsistencies as weapons against those in other political parties or other church denominations or other religions—when we don’t apply the same standards to our own tribal members?
Living in openness and integrity is not easy, but certainly brings life and joy into any part of life. That is unquestionably essential in the church. Expecting the same in political leaders is sometimes an unrealistic ideal. So let’s be honest about that. Let’s call it what it is. It will help reduce general confusion about what our own standards of morality and virtue are.
1 John 1:7: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.