FRIENDSHIP: as a Moral Norm
and the Problem of Boundaries in Clergy Ethics

By Christopher Lind PhD
Professor of Church & Society, St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon

“The Life and Work of John Macmurray”
King’s College, Old Aberdeen, 6-9 April, 1998

A revised version of this paper was published in John Macmurray: Critical Perspectives, D. Fergusson & N. Dower (eds.), New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002
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Interview Data

This paper builds on a research project I have been carrying on with a colleague for five years.  With Dr. Maureen Muldoon[1] I have been trying to establish what clergy ethics are in practice, as opposed to what they ought to be.  Part of the research involved interviewing clergy and asking them questions like what they understand clergy ethics to be, what principles they follow, and what problems they encounter.[2]

For many, friendship is a significant moral concern.  For example, ministers[3] and students of ministry frequently debate the possibility and the propriety of making friends with members of the congregations they are serving:

I remember one discussion we had in which everybody was talking about how it was really okay to be friends with parishioners, and I said no, it just doesn't, not when you're a professional and not when people are approaching you that way.  I said, you're sitting at a kitchen table having tea and coffee. You think you're having a friendly visit and then all of a sudden they'll drop a bomb on you, and you realize you're the priest, and you're not their friend.  And you really have to be alert to when that happens.[4]

Clearly there is disagreement on this point. What is also clear is that regardless of one’s position on the issue, friendships between ministers and members of their congregations happen. Some of these friendships are very strong and last a very long time.

“I had a very excellent first charge that I think helped me . . . and I class them as personal friends even though it was 35 years ago that I got to know them.”[5]

Even people who don’t think ministers should make friends in the congregation admit they make friends in spite of themselves.

I think … as a priest in actual experience,  there's only one couple that …  were parishioners that I actually considered to be friends, close personal friends, and that friendship I believe was rather unique.  But it was always difficult when I was a parish priest because I knew . . . there were times when they said certain things at the kitchen table that I had to be the priest.  And I couldn't do that.  If I tried to do that with everybody I'd be nuts, and they would be nuts too.[6]

Some ministers complain they don’t make enough friends. Sometimes they find the job creates too much social distance in the small town where they live.

I often wonder if we would perhaps have an easier life if I were doing something other than ministry.  If I were a teacher or other professional, would we have more friends, more opportunities to socialize in the community. This is a community that largely leaves you alone.  In some ways that can be extremely isolating and there are times when you just can't wait to get out of the place to go some place where you can really have some friends.[7]

There appears to be a relationship between the model of ministry a person has and whether or not friendship poses any kind of special problem.  For example, it is more likely to emerge as a concern where a pastor has a model of ministry based on some image of pastoral counselling.  Counselling is thought to require a kind of objectivity or distance usually distinguished from the loyalties associated with friendships.  For example, one minister had previous training as a nurse and saw many similarities in the professions.

I was working in intensive care and psychiatry, so I was dealing with people at intense suffering levels and intensive identification levels, so these are people in both instances who are really keen in identifying with their care giver.  And there are all the traps of that because if you over-identify with a person, become over-sympathetic, you're no good to them and you're no good to yourself, and you don't become the practitioner they're wanting you to be.  I can remember translating that (into) theology . . . you're sitting at a kitchen table having tea and coffee.  You think you're having a friendly visit and then all of a sudden they'll drop a bomb on you, and you realize you're the priest, and you're not their friend.  And you really have to be alert to when that happens.[8]

This image of the pastoral counsellor can be contrasted to the image of priest as prophet.  If you understand yourself as being prophetic, then you’re not trying to be everyone’s friend.  You’re trying to challenge people and create change.  One respondent referred to and expressed admiration for former Ontario Premier Mike Harris.

What he's doing in Ontario, it's kind of like he's risking, he's putting his future on the line because of what he believes.  He's not making friends.  But I think he's doing what needs to be done, and so I really admire that . . . because that's kind of how I see part of the prophetic role of the church.  Often it'll get you the same results he's experiencing.  I really believe it's probably the best for the people in the long run.[9]

Friendships are clearly something people want in their life and ministers are no different in that regard.  The issue of friendship emerges as a significant moral issue because the attraction of friendships causes other kinds of conflicts.  For example, ministry can be understood as a kind of role that one steps into and out of.  Even if one has a higher view of ordination than that (e.g. as one who has been set apart to serve God), it is clear there are specific ministries that have a beginning and therefore an end.  Retirement is one kind of end and poses typical problems where the minister retires in close geographical proximity to his or her former congregation.

I'm facing retirement.  I have five years, and I've thought a lot about it. I might be retiring here, and I know I'm going to be in a difficult position myself because I have tried not to say (funerals).  I think I could probably count on my fingers, the number of times when I have (had) a funeral, and I've had an arrangement that I couldn't get out of.  And I'm going to be in a position where I'm going to have to say no, I'm your friend, I am not your minister.[10]

You know, it's going to be very difficult because I have very close friends.  I made close friends within the congregation that are maybe my closest personal friends around.  So, if one of them dies, it's going to be difficult to say to the survivor ‘No, I can't,’ because I have taken funerals of very, very close friends.[11]

Another kind of conflict is posed by the exchange of money between friends.  One of the characteristics of friends is that they do things for each other for free.  Another characteristic is that they help out each other in time of need and they often give gifts to each other.  A minister is different insofar as she has a contractual relationship with the Church and with the congregation.  She provides a variety of services and is paid for them.  Some people put the contractual relationship first and refuse all gifts (e.g. for weddings and funerals).  Others, like the next person, put the friendship first.

Someone that has an ongoing financial relationship . . . with the church that says, ‘okay, I know the financial needs of the church; I support those. I also as a friend really appreciate what you have done and would like to give you a gift for that.’  In those situations I'm free to accept.[12]

Sometimes friends don’t make gifts, but ask for certain kinds of treatment.  This also causes conflicts that some people interpret as moral dilemmas.  For example, in some denominations, it is church policy for baptisms to always happen in church.  More recently it has also become policy for baptisms always to take place during a regular worship service.

For me, baptisms always happen within a context of Sunday worship.  And the only exception for that would be in a hospital situation as opposed to a friend of the family wanting to get a grandchild done and getting together on a Saturday afternoon either at a church or at someone's place for the baptism, which I would never even consider doing, and is just very much part of the practice of my Dad and a lot of my Dad's generation.  And I have some real problems with that.[13]

Some ministers reported their concerns as having to do with certain behaviors, namely their own.  They report they can relax more with friends than they can with people who aren’t.  This behaviour includes swearing, teasing and certain kinds of speech.

I don't think it's necessarily an appropriate thing for a person in any kind of community leadership, whether it's a teacher, minister, or whoever, to be swearing every other word . . . but which I do with my friends.[14]

If I'm talking to a trusted friend I'll just shit them about their politics or whatever, you know?  I'll just really give it to them, if I'm talking to a friend that I can trust (that friend) will take that in the spirit that it's offered, which is usually fun.[15]

The friends I had made up there, still and all were (part of) the congregation.  Some of them I got closer to than others, and that's just a matter of personal chemistry, or the match was just there.  But all of them were still the congregation, and so you can't just go and say what you might like to say, and in a little community particularly.[16]

For others, their behaviour is always hedged when they are with members of their congregation.  They can never be fully themselves like they can with true friends.  The former nurse, referred to earlier, described the difference like this:

When I'm a friend to somebody, I'm spilling my guts with them, and I'm saying things from my own personal perspective.  When somebody's raising an issue for me, an issue perhaps of suffering, perhaps an issue of trouble in their lives, or whatever, and they're asking the priest, they're asking for more than just a personal opinion.  They're asking me to bring to bear what I know . They may not see that or know that, but I know that's what I'm to bring to bear.  The whole integration of scripture and theology and tradition, our history as a church, everything ­­– our spirituality that integrates us . . . all of those things come to bear at that moment which is more than me as a person.  It's integrated with me as a person, thank God, but it's no longer a personal reflection of who I am.[17]

Some people might think this is just a matter of intimacy or love.  Either you are close to people or you are not, and perhaps this is merely a function of personality.  The speaker above would disagree.

It doesn't mean I'm not close to people or I'm not open and vulnerable with people.  I am, but it's very clear that it's very different from the kind of intimacy I have with who I would consider my close friends.  I'm very honest with people in the parish, and I would say that people at (my parish) would even say they love me, and I could easily say that I love them.  But it's not like the love that's shared between intimates who are friends.  It just isn't the same.  It's still valuable and close and good and honorable, but it's not the same thing.[18]

Perhaps the most well known or sensational conflicts over friendships in ministry involve those friendships that become physically intimate.  If friendships in ministry are permitted, or encouraged, why should this be a problem?  One woman put it like this.

Attractions are there.  Because we all are human, I can see relationships developing and easily going beyond where they should. It's like a good friendship and you've shared too many intimate things.  It wouldn't take much.  Both parties are responsible for saying ‘enough, this is not right.’  A clergy's like a doctor, like a teacher.  Anybody in a position of authority and power, you're responsible.  My husband would lose his job in an instant, union or no union, if there was any impropriety.  That's after I killed him, of course!  Like any of us, I think it can happen easily once.  When it becomes a pattern, then it needs work.[19]

For her, as for so many contemporary commentators, the problem with friendships that become physically intimate (sexual) is the problem of an imbalance of power and authority.  Ministers have specific kinds of authority granted to them (differing in detail depending on denominational polity) and people give them all kinds of power because of their spiritual role.[20]

The Carter Heyward Case

Before moving on to consider how John Macmurray might handle these issues, I want to introduce another related discourse.  Some years ago, at a Macmurray conference held in Marquette, I presented a paper on the relationship between the ideas of John Macmurray and the theological development known as contextual theology.  Though I focussed then on theological discourse in the Third World, these themes are also present in feminist theology (another example of contextual theology).  Perhaps the first feminist theologian to develop models of friendship as exemplary of the divine human encounter and mutuality as a norm for human behaviour was the American Episcopalian priest, Carter Heyward.[21]

In 1993, Heyward published a much more controversial book, When Boundaries Betray Us: Beyond Illusions of What is Ethical in Therapy and Life.[22]  Though I think Heyward is wrong in her analysis of professional boundaries, I think she is wrong in interesting ways that will help to clarify the issue of friendship as a moral issue among clergy and other professionals.

Heyward’s book tells the story of her relationship with her lesbian psychotherapist, whom she names Elisabeth Farro.  (Farro refused to participate in the writing of the book.)  The therapy began in 1987 and Heyward began to desire an erotic friendship with her.  Farro interpreted this as therapeutic data and refused the repeated invitations.  Heyward interpreted the refusal as a kind of deficiency. She claimed Farro was trapped in the “patriarchal logic” of professionalism while Heyward was desiring the “erotic power of mutual relation.”  Within the year, Heyward decided she would terminate the therapy and insisted Farro participate in some closing rituals with her.  Heyward then changed her mind about ending the therapy.  The relationship resumed and Heyward began remembering instances of physical and sexual abuse from her childhood at the hands of her father and a hired hand.  The therapy focussed on these memories. Heyward continued insisting on an intimate relationship with Farro and the therapist kept refusing.

In 1990, at the end of the therapy, Heyward began to doubt the reliability of her own memories and eventually concluded that they were an unconscious attempt to please her therapist.  Heyward continued trying to establish a different kind of relationship with Farro, through almost continuous letter writing, but Farro refused. This refusal continued even after Heyward began sending her drafts of this book.

So, Heyward is like Macmurray in her emphasis on friendship as a model of human behaviour and in her emphasis on mutuality as a moral norm, even though she did not rely on Macmurray in developing her position.  Her conclusion is that the distancing typical of professional therapeutic relationships is wrong insofar as it closes off the possibility of more fully human relations, of a relation between persons as persons, of friendship characterized by mutuality.

Heyward does not stand alone in developing this approach.  Another example would be the American Catholic theologian Mary Hunt.  Like Heyward, Hunt seeks the models for true friendship in the lives and friendships of women.  This research yields the norms of community, honesty, non-exclusivity, flexibility, other-directedness, and mutuality.  Such friendships do exist but they are also hard to find.

That is because in a heterosexist, patriarchal world women and men can not be equal.  This is the nature of patriarchy.  Thus a friendship which is characterized by mutuality is possible only when a man and a woman live in contradiction with the prevailing culture.  Living in this state of contradiction, conscious of all its pressures, is usually more than most friendships can take.[23]

This is what Heyward was trying to find in her relationship with Farro.  She had deliberately sought out a lesbian psychotherapist who, she thought, would understand her desire to live in a state of contradiction with the prevailing ethos of society.  So, a question naturally arises.  Are the boundaries characteristic of a professional relationship, something that we need to, or should, overcome?

Some people think not.  For example, Joretta Marshall, writing in the Journal of Pastoral Theology, rejects the expectation for mutuality in every relationship.

She suggests that what was ultimately destructive to herself and to the therapist was the denial of the opportunity to claim their sisterhood and mutual relatedness.  I would contend that what was ultimately destructive was the lack of recognition that mutuality cannot be idealized in every relationship.[24]

Others are more direct about it.  Marie Fortune argues that “Farro’s refusal to join in this public discussion is a fulfillment of her professional responsibility.”  For Fortune, clear boundaries are a precondition of the safety which is required for real healing to take place.

Boundaries used appropriately create a safe place where an individual can reflect on her own experiences and learn from them without having to deal with the personal needs of the professional . . . Living without relational boundaries is like driving on the freeway in a snowstorm: very dangerous to all concerned.[25]

Heyward interpreted Farro’s refusal to move to mutuality as a form of abuse of her personhood.  Fortune also rejects this claim.  “In any case, the therapist was not cruel and abusive.  She appears to have been trying to do her job.”[26]

Kathleen Roberts Skerrett, in an impressively wide-ranging critique, goes so far as to reject the whole discourse of mutual relation as a kind of literary sleight of hand.  She writes, “Under the guise of a feminist apologetic of mutual relation, Heyward has written an erotic complaint, in which the beloved’s ‘no’ can only incite redoubled assertiveness on the part of the lover.”[27]

The Response from John Macmurray

So, while Heyward supports the development of what she calls “good – safe, empowering – boundaries,” she has presented rigid professional boundaries as a concept that needs to be overcome if we are to achieve real mutuality. 

One of the reasons for wanting to overcome them is that they tend to protect the inequality inherent in the professional/client relationship.  Would Macmurray say that inequality is an insurmountable barrier to mutuality, to friendship?  Not according to Walter Jeffko.  In his introduction to the reprint of Macmurray’s Conditions of Freedom, Jeffko describes equality as being a central, constituent value in Macmurray’s view of friendship.  “Equality means that friends treat or intend each other as equals despite whatever social, natural, or other de facto inequalities may exist between them . . .”[28]

Perhaps a better distinction to be used here is Macmurray’s distinction between a personal and an impersonal relationship.  A friendship is an obvious example of a direct personal relationship. In a friendship, persons experience each other as persons.  They are motivated not by self-interest but by mutual love.  Friends share a common life.  They form community together.  In their experience of each other as persons, they experience communion.

An impersonal relationship is one in which persons are absent.  That is, we treat individuals as if they were not persons.  In a contract, when we stick to the letter of the contract, we exclude the personal.  To the extent that the relationship between Carter Heyward and Elisabeth Farro is a contractual relationship, it is an impersonal one.  This is clearly one of the important aspects to which Heyward was objecting.  Ministers and congregations also exist in a contractual relationship.  Would we be prepared to say their relationship is then primarily impersonal?  I think not.  It would be hard to imagine how anyone could encourage faith in a Gospel of love while operating only out of an impersonal relationship.

Perhaps we need one more Macmurrayan concept – the concept of the positive and the negative relation.  For Macmurray, a negative relation was not morally negative in the sense of being wrong; it was negative in the sense of being subordinate to the positive.  In this sense, society was negative and community was positive because community implied society but society did not necessarily imply community. 

In this sense, friendship is a positive personal relationship which implies impersonal relationships as negative.  The meaning of this is that a friendship always carries with it some impersonal dimensions, but the reverse is not the case.  An impersonal relationship may entail a friendship but not necessarily so.  I have an impersonal relationship with the mechanic who fixes my car.  The mechanic promises to fix what’s wrong and I promise to pay.  After many years of visiting my mechanic, we may develop a friendship, if we are both open to the possibility, but we don’t have to.  Stanley Harrison calls this “…Macmurray’s preferred formula for recognizing the essential unity of persons and at the same time doing justice to the complexity of their being.”[29]

If we understand friendship as a positive personal relationship that always implies the impersonal dimension, then we have established the possibility for saying that yes, it is possible for ministers to be friends with members of their congregations because the impersonal dimension will always be there.  By constructing it this way, we have avoided a dualistic separation between personal and impersonal relationships.  But we haven’t answered the question about how we manage the contradictions between the personal and impersonal dimension. 

We are all involved in various roles that  shape our interactions.  Dorothy Emmett was clear about this.[30]  More recently, David Ferguson has reminded us that Macmurray’s distinction between personal and impersonal relationships is weakly developed.[31]  We need to know when it is appropriate to switch between a personal and an impersonal attitude.  The clergy interview subject with an earlier career as a nurse raised these precise concerns in both a medical and a pastoral context.

It seems to me that one criterion we could use is the criterion of “intending the personal well-being of self and other.”  When friendship is elaborated as a norm, this idea is expressed in the term mutual love.  The criterion Thomas Aquinas used was to “do good and avoid evil.”  In the mixed role relationships such as the priest who is also a friend with the parishioner, the nurse who is a friend of the patient, and the oft-quoted teacher who is friends with the student, the decision of the person with more power (authority or expertise) to switch roles could be governed by the criterion of “intending the personal well-being of self and other.”  The priest adopts and switches into the professional role when the friend “drops a (metaphorical) bomb” on the kitchen table.  She does so because she intends the well-being of her friend.

The therapist may resist attempts to form an intimate relationship with a client either because she intends the well-being of the client or because she sincerely doesn’t desire such an outcome and so intends the personal well-being of self.  The teacher may jeopardize a potential friendship with a student by giving the student difficult feedback, but does so because he intends the student’s eventual academic success, and also the student’s personal well-being.

What about sexual misconduct and other boundary violations of this sort?  Is this criterion useful in this case?  I think it can be.  Sexual misconduct typically occurs either where the violation is forced or coerced – obviously not an example of intending the personal well-being of the other – or where one party assumes the intention is personal well-being when it is not.  These are cases where we say “I’ve been taken advantage of.”  What we mean is, ‘I thought you were intending my well-being but I was deceived. I wasn’t being treated as a person at all.’

Roles carry with them authority and power but these dimensions of the roles are sometimes more easily discerned from the outside than the inside.  (The poor are never in doubt about who the rich are. Those who are rich could debate it without end.)  For this reason, one more concept we need to consider is accountability.  How can people in roles of authority and power, like ministers, tell when they are deceiving themselves about intending the personal well-being of the other?  Macmurray talked about our capacity for objectivity in this way.  Can we make out behaviour like an object so we can study it as if from outside?  This is possible but also very difficult.  It is a very high standard to meet.  One of the strategies to assist us in this is the use of public or third party sources of accountability.  For example, some ministers deal with the contradictions around money (wedding fees, for example) by insisting that the appropriate Church body develop a policy on how to treat such matters.  This makes it a public matter and, by making it a matter of policy, provides a mechanism of accountability.

Conclusion

We have seen, in this paper, that the question of friendship is a matter of serious moral concern for some people serving in ordained Christian ministry.  We have also encountered one theologian (Carter Heyward) who argues that the moral norm of mutual relation means no professional boundaries should be so rigid as to preclude the possibility of friendship.  Finally we have seen that the thought of John Macmurray remains a fruitful resource for helping to resolve some of these dilemmas.  His insistence on the freedom of mutual relation means a person doesn’t have to be your friend.  On the other hand, his analysis of the difference between positive personal relations and negative impersonal relations elucidates some of the tensions people experience in mixed role relationships.  An extension of his thought, using the criteria of “intending the personal well-being of self and other,” may provide us some of the guidance we need in order to put the moral norm of friendship into practice.

Saskatoon, May 8, 1998

[1] Professor of Religious Ethics, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario.

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