Priesthood of all believers
The exclusionary version, elaborated in the theology of Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, became prominent as a tenet of Protestant Christian doctrine, though the exact meaning of the belief and its implications vary widely among denominations.
[3] Irenaeus has been argued to have held to a view of universal priesthood because he stated "for all the righteous possess the sacerdotal rank".
[note 3] In the millennium from the 6th to 16th centuries, this common priesthood was sometimes overshadowed, to some extent, by the influence of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's book Celestial Hierarchy, which was widely believed then to be a second-century and near-apostolic teaching, that appropriated a pagan multi-level schema to make a hierarchical description of Christianity with a succession of intermediaries (energies, names, angels, priests, etc.)
[12] The Catholic Church holds that the consecration of the eucharist and absolution from sin may only be validly performed by ministerial priests with true apostolic succession.
"[14]Two months later Luther would write in his On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520): How then if they are forced to admit that we are all equally priests, as many of us as are baptized, and by this way we truly are; while to them is committed only the Ministry (ministerium) and consented to by us (nostro consensu)?
If they recognize this they would know that they have no right to exercise power over us (ius imperii, in what has not been committed to them) except insofar as we may have granted it to them, for thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom."
The Augsburg Confession states: [From Article 5:] To obtain such (saving) faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments.
Within Methodism it can plausibly be linked to the strong emphasis on social action and political involvement within that denomination, and can be seen in the role of local preachers and lay speakers in Methodist churches.
The Laestadian pietist movement has a specific interpretation of the doctrine as underlying its solemn rite concerning the declaration of the forgiveness of sins.
Pastors and ordained ministers are usually regarded as congregational leaders and theologians who are well versed with Christian liturgy, scripture, and church teachings, and are qualified to lead worship and preach sermons.
Although many religions use priests, most Protestant denominations reject the idea of a priesthood as a group that is spiritually distinct from lay people.
Luther's doctrine of the universal priesthood of all believers gave laypersons and the clergy equal rights and responsibilities.
It had strong, far-reaching consequences both within the Protestant churches and outside of them with respect to the development of distinct political and societal structures.
Luther had the intention to organize the church in such a way as to give the members of a congregation the right to elect a pastor by majority-decision and, if necessary, to dismiss him again.
[27]: 532 The Separatist Congregationalists (Pilgrim Fathers) who founded Plymouth Colony in North America in 1620 took the next step in evolving the consequences of Luther's universal priesthood doctrine by combining it with the federal theology that had been developed by Calvinist theologians, especially Robert Browne, Henry Barrowe, and John Greenwood.
On the basis of the Mayflower Compact, a social contract, the Pilgrims applied the principles that guided their congregational democracy also to the administration of the worldly affairs of their community.
The General Court functioned as the legislative and the judiciary, the annually elected governor and his assistants were the executive branch of government.
[29][30][31] In so doing, they followed Calvin who had, in order to safeguard the rights and liberties of ordinary people, praised the advantages of democracy and recommended that political power should be distributed among several institutions to minimise its misuse.
[32] In Rhode Island (1636), Connecticut (1636), and Pennsylvania (1682), Baptist Roger Williams, Congregationalist Thomas Hooker, and Quaker William Penn, respectively, gave the democratic concept another turn by linking it with religious freedom, a basic human right that had its origin also in Luther's theology.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) was mainly based on the draft of Marquis de Lafayette, an ardent supporter of the American constitutional principles.
Commentators sometimes use the phrase "Priesthood of no believers" for example for democratized Protestant groups where there are no clergy,[43] or in churches which have purely symbolic, or no, sacraments,[44]: 71 or which do not make a distinction between religions.
The Protestant and pietistic appropriation of these terms turns everything on its head and replaces service with power-grabbing and the unity of Christ's body with the disunity of individualistic spirituality.
