I have often seethed at the pigheadedness of bureaucrats. Their roles in the ecclesial and academic worlds are particularly galling. Knowing little (or choosing to ignore what they know) about pastoring or preaching or teaching—or, it seems, the very purposes of those institutions they serve—they often issue draconian statements about how to conduct one’s work, draining the passion for one’s true vocation. Ah, but they are trained to make the system more efficient! Best practices! Resistance, we are told, is selfish.
Most of us bristle at the so-called experts, who seem to run our lives with neither the knowledge nor sensitivities they claim to wield while thinking they deserve our deference. Our unhappiness, justifiable as it may be, unfortunately has led us to adopt the term “elite” to describe the object of our resentments. It’s an unfortunate development, since “elite” is not a bad word. It usefully describes virtues we ought to encourage. Not only does the social apparatus of our common life depend upon the existence of elites; our churches’ very communion is nourished by their recognized ministry.
The decline of “elites” into popular opprobrium has been ongoing since the early nineteenth century, when the term was taken up by political and economic theorists. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Italian social philosopher and scientist Vilfredo Pareto had developed an admirably realistic sociology of power. He identified the dynamics by which various “elite” groups circulate in their control of the social system. Pareto saw elite control as inevitable. He did, however, have critical things to say about their characteristic vices and ways to mitigate them. In his time, power elites cultivated a sense of élan,and they soon sought to build a fascist utopia, which celebrated (and aimed to erect) nations led by the vigorous and masculine few.
The season of heroic elites ended in ashes. By the mid-twentieth century, the concept was being deployed to describe the less glamorous feats of business managers, and the burgeoning class of official (and often officious) bureaucrats that seemed to control the sprawling network of financial and governmental agencies that order our expansive economies. James Burnham’s classic, The Managerial Revolution (1941), defined the phenomenon. In Christopher Lasch’s Revolt of the Elites (1995), the class of managerial elites was extended to the wide group of monied professionals (including professors), whose habits and values are disconnected from a nation’s working class.
The suspicion of “power” held without accountability seems to inform today’s more general dyspepsia with “experts.” Whether medical researchers, climate investigators, energy technicians, computer billionaires, wealthy entertainers, or university professors who write self-serving books and articles taken up by policymakers eager to apply the latest schemes and solutions, “the elites” have become the enemy of the people. What do they know? Who voted for them?
So, we seethe. But we should also pause. “Elites” simply possess some capacity that puts them in a class apart from the rest of us, or even from their peers. An elite baseball player; an elite military unit; an elite musician or inventor. There is always a tension built into this simple fact, which we cannot help but recognize. It is the tension between the many and the one, between our egalitarian cravings and the parsimonious “merit” that only a few attain. We often resent the very act of distinguishing. Should we? We will often chafe at the higher position of another: “What makes you so special?” Reality replies: more home runs, a more beautiful voice, the rare ability to calculate and theorize physical forces, remarkable bravery, uncommon prudence, exemplary temperance, inspiring faith. We chafe, but the answers are often well-founded.
We cannot do without elites of one kind or another, for our entertainment, our encouragement, or even our survival as a modern society. (Where would we be without the elite planners and technicians of our electric grid?) Yet we also need to harness elites to the common good (Pareto’s own intuition), rather than let them run wild and thereby run into the quicksand of their own and popular passions. We dare not give our lives over to those who, in the end and for all their skills, are but fallible men and women like the rest of us, only too susceptible to pride in high office and indifference to those below.
One Christian way of moderating the vices of the high and mighty has been to define the elite in terms of divine calling or “election.” The word “elite” itself derives from this root. It was originally used as a verb meaning “to choose,” akin to “elect.” St. Paul speaks of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12). They are visible, and they include vocations that involve the exercise of social power: apostles, prophets, and so on. The test of election and calling—often contradicted by the hubris of the elect—is the health of the Church herself. In the late Middle Ages, the “elite” were, literally and procedurally, bishops. While there have been good and bad bishops, as we know, their status as “chosen” binds them to standards given by God. They are also judged according to those standards. So, too, should elites be judged today.
To take the Church’s health as a standard by which to measure a calling to high office means that divine “elitism” does not write a blank check. Intelligence and expertise are not self-validating. The great seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, an ordained Anglican, wrote a small pastoral manual, A Priest to the Temple, or The Country Parson. One chapter is devoted to “The Parson’s Completeness.” By this term, he means the way the parish pastor’s concern encompasses all things, all needs.
Completeness in this sense means eschewing reliance on the narrow (and thus incomplete) expertise of others as far as possible. Herbert concentrates on legal and medical matters especially. Today’s enveloping and distorting fears of liability make it almost impossible for us to accept Herbert’s clear judgment: There should be no everyday appeal to the lawyer or the doctor when it comes to the needs of parishioners. Rather, the parson (who has a duty to read some basic legal handbooks) acts as judge in disputes, so as to help his parishioners avoid civil court (1 Cor. 6:1–8) and to provide disputants with the tools of Christian charity to resolve their conflicts. Likewise, the parson is to provide medical care as far as possible. (Herbert offers some practical advice about medicinal herbs.) Only when things get tough, or generational wealth is at stake, might one seek the advice of the expert, and then only in a cooperative and friendly fashion—the neighboring physician or nearby legal scholar.
The parson does all this because he is himself “elect” or elite, though in a very special way: He is called to hold things together in the parish’s local community. His “completeness” aims at guarding against the “vanity of life” wrapped up in seeking medical care and “envy” in human relations (lawsuits and the rest). Both destroy the bonds of neighbor and fellow members of Christ’s body. The complete parson seeks to inculcate completeness in his flock, an integrated human life—the Christian life—that is itself “elite” when compared to fragmented and often fractious social existence. Like those whom Paul identifies as called to be apostles and prophets, nurturing a unity of life, in oneself in relation to Christ and with others in Christ, is what the priest is called to further.
Critiques of today’s elites amount to claims that they lack completeness. They have no out-reaching interest in the commonperson or in the way people live “in common.” All too often, they live entirely apart, with no connection to those they oversee, command, and control. They disdain the common desires and common needs of the uneducated, uncultured, or unwealthy—the “non-elite.” We suspect that their mentality is remote and haughty. The great unwashed masses need to be organized (and mostly ignored) by those who know better.
Herbert did not reject leadership. The sheep require a shepherd. But he was adamant that the leader of the flock, the (elite) parson, must take care to follow Christ. And Christ, in Herbert’s words, “chiefly considered . . . laboring persons” more than anyone. Everything Jesus did was for them. The sheep are, in this view, the whole point of the expert’s elite calling. They are to be tended, strengthened, and transformed, not just by the expert’s expertise, but through the full self-offering of the expert’s own life.
Herbert recognized that charity is the virtue of an elite worthy of the name. It’s a central Christian virtue, as we all know, but hard to find in leaders of any kind, chosen or unchosen. Those honored by high office have a difficult time resisting the tendency to magnify the self. Herbert ends his chapter on completeness by noting the limits of a Christian elite’s role within the “commonwealth.” The country parson is broad in import, but he sticks to his parish. The expert keeps to his territory, never claiming too much and resisting the temptation to pose as all-knowing on behalf of all people. Humility demands as much. All the more so does the acknowledgement of the broad sovereignty of the only True Expert. In the face of our know-it-all posturings, only the God-Man can claim the breadth of such a title.
