And can it be… a (New) Pharisee?

Photo by Hossein Nasr on Unsplash

A guest essay by Russell Gallaway¹

In 2013, Anthony Bradley wrote about a ‘new legalism’ sprouting up within Reformed church culture. He traced the development of a certain narcissistic and performative spirituality that yawned at St. Paul’s admonition to live small, quiet, humble lives (1 Thessalonians 4:11). “If we really want to serve God and neighbor…then shouldn’t our occupational, geographical, and financial choices be (and appear!) ‘radical’, extreme, and out-of-the-ordinary?” Bradley’s critique was not opposed to religious effort, but to the unbiblical evaluation of certain cities, careers, and callings as ‘more important’ than others.

I would like to describe another trend that I think has been popping up here and there in the laity and leadership of Reformed Christianity, a quirk that I’ll call “New Pharisaism.”

Biblically speaking, a Pharisee is one who initially aims to follow the law of God but later creates a seemingly safe thicket of lesser laws as he goes along that eventually choke the life out of himself and others. In the Gospels, Jesus disciplines his hearers who have added to the Mosaic law in this way. When we add to the law of God, we might as well subtract from it, because either way, we distort God’s word and ultimately miss His heart! The ‘Pharisaic posture’ hurts us just as it does others.

Believe it or not, Christians on the right and the left (theologically, politically, socially) can develop a Pharisaic posture as they seek God. The Pharisee is one who takes the judgment that belongs to the Lord into his own human hands, and with haste. Making ever-so-slight alterations to God’s definition of holiness, we err like the Pharisees when we act as though our system of human reason is God’s very law of Love.

This “New Pharisee,” then, responds with a salty and snide snarkiness when he observes the pastoral profile that Bradley more recently dubbed the “winsome wolf.” Winsome wolves, as Bradley describes them, are embedded within some of the organizational structures of Reformed evangelicalism, displaying unhelpful, unhealthy, and even toxic traits that he dubs the “Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and subclinical psychopathy.” These “winsome wolves” are seemingly holy, charming, and persuasive pastors whose professional and/or personal lives nevertheless betray defects of character that hurt their flock and harm their Christian witness. For example, this could be the well beloved pastor who tends to the needs of his flock yet neglects the care of his own soul, eventually leading to a career ending fall caused by the steady corrosion of his Christian character.

The “New Pharisee,” though, perhaps legitimately hurt by what “winsome wolves” have done and left undone, is at risk of becoming what I’ll call a snarling sheep. Circumventing divine vindication (‘Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me”--Psalm 87) and forgetting the Apostle’s Creed (‘He will come again in glory to judge the quick in the dead’), the “New Pharisee” snarls from the temple:

“I am so grateful to not be one of THOSE stodgy old racist Reformed guys my father's age who taught me at seminary. THEY were neither trauma informed, nor wisdom based, nor empathetic, and had zero social ethic in their philosophy of ministry! THEY are obviously the reason why non-Christians stay away from church today… If only they had the cultural and emotional intelligence of OUR philosophy-of-ministry…!”

If you presume that the Pharisee in the room must necessarily be the aged pastor in the pulpit preaching in a dark gray business suit, you could be right, but you could also be dead wrong.

I once spoke with a pastor who had left the Presbyterian Church in America (P.C.A.) feeling fairly hurt from what sounded like the growls of “winsome wolves.” He expressed great relief upon exiting the P.C.A. for an adjacent denomination, one slightly less traditional. When speaking to me, however, I saw his ‘church hurt’ turn into a snarl: “Ugh! I am so glad to be out of the P.C.A., and away from all the arguing. It feels great to have stepped away from the ‘Presbyterian Church of Asperger’s’!,” being more than a little unkind to those whom God did not mistake to make neurodivergent.

I have also seen those who felt warmed by counseling resources, Christian spirituality, and wisdom based approaches subsequently swap the ‘Doctrines of Christ’ for the ‘Way of Jesus’, supposing the vocabulary of the latter to be better tailored for practical theology. Having entered the big castle of Christian spirituality through Franciscan instinct, Teresian idiom, and a pastiche of popular theology, these warmed Reformed disciples might subsequently snarl at the supposedly stuffy soundscapes that don’t rely on the same spiritual resources: Why would we care to read the prudish Puritans when we now have sacramental imaginations and theologically mediated psychology data?

Wounded sheep are not immune from developing unforgiving and judgmental spirits. Snarling sheep, then, can become essentially identical to the winsome wolves who hurt them in the first place: persuasive on the outside, spiritually askew on the inside. In reality, the “snarling sheep” is no “New Pharisee,” but just a fresh portrait of the age-old same. Because his ‘philosophy of ministry’ misses the law of Love, a snarling sheep likewise strains out a gnat and swallows a camel (Mt. 23:24).

If you’ve been bitten by a winsome wolf, or a pack of them, then you know that it’s hard to put away bitterness and behold your wolvish foes as they truly are: spiritually shrunken and chaotic souls who miss out on the beauty of emotionally healthy spirituality. Though they preach that others “need Christ,” they prove themselves to be strangers to our Lord’s sacred heart of divine mercy.

Grumbling or gossipping within a clandestine communication network of your cozy denominational coalition is easy, but talking directly to a “winsome wolf” is hard. In my estimation, ‘New Pharisaism’ would rather give a loud, empathetic gaze in the public square to a person or group emblematic of the downtrodden than quietly engage in table fellowship with a “winsome wolf” who––deep down, despite the fangs––is probably a very wounded, insecure, hurting man. (Granted, for wolves who truly are false prophets, relational distance and church discipline might be better than dining).

But, as a note of encouragement to leaders who have spotted a “winsome wolf” and feel frustration: Rather than leaving pastoral ministry, impatiently exiting your particular Reformed denomination for another, or ‘stepping away’ to start a parachurch ministry that serves your favorite and easy-to-love sociocultural substrata at the margins…stay put, and don’t snarl. When the lamb of God looked out and beheld the spiritual sickness of the orderly religious establishment in Jerusalem, he neither snarled nor started a new branch of Judaism. Rather, he wept, took up his cross, and rose again to give you the same Spirit––empowering you to tread on serpents and scorpions (Lk. 10:19), and even face a “winsome wolf.”

1. Russell is a PhD student studying Spanish literature at the University of Alabama. After graduating from Birmingham-Southern College (BA Spanish, Phi Beta Kappa), he moved to Washington, D.C., where he taught K-12 Spanish at private schools. While there, he also studied at George Mason University (MA Spanish), focusing primarily on the possibilities and challenges of multicultural and heritage language education in U.S. public schools. A few of his favorite learning and research areas include the Catholic imagination in early modern Spain, Spanish Protestantism, and Spain's Western Tradition. His dissertation is aimed toward understanding the impact of the Council of Trent on select works of early modern Spanish literature.