Refusing Recusing

I’m working on a book that promotes the idea that we should lead with “wonder and wherewithal,” rather than “answers and abdication.” When will it be finished? I don’t have an “answer” for that quite yet. But because ideas have been rolling around in my head since I proposed the book, there are certain patterns I’ve been noticing more than I might otherwise. One such pattern relates to societal confusion over when a leader should recuse themselves from a decision where they have extra skin in the game.

In our holy scriptures, Christians read story after story about reluctant prophets, teachers, and even a Savior. God doesn’t seem terribly interested, when calling people to serve, in the question of whether or not that person wants to lead. I sometimes fear that “want” is playing too significant a role in leadership as a vocation today. Seminary students at Andover Newton at Yale Divinity School, where I serve as dean, get awfully hung up on what they want to do after they graduate. I sometimes must remind them that God’s call requires of them to be ready for anything. It’s not like they don’t have free will; it’s just that when we sense a calling, we can’t not go where we’ve been called and stay whole.

Saturday, Great Britain will crown a new King. Some think out-loud about how it might have been better for King Charles to step aside and let William and his family ascend to leadership, even though — who are we kidding? — we know the royals aren’t in charge of very much anyhow. Two generations back, a King abdicated the throne to marry whom he wished to marry. While also enabling Nazis, if you believe what you watch on “The Crown” (and oh how I do!).

Charles is unpopular with some because he let down Princess Di, whom everyone loved. Others think him too old, too boring, and too clueless about the rapidly diversifying country for whom he’ll serve as figurehead-in-chief. He is not stepping back, and some call that selfish, when I honestly believe he has been preparing to serve his whole life and now feels like he has to… because he has to.

Calls for recusals, or abdication of solemn duty, are hitting the Supreme Court of the US in these same days. Many are calling the highest court in the land to create and honor a code of ethics that requires them to recuse themselves when conflicts of interest arise. Such a code would have affected many on the court in the past, including the Notorious RBG, so accusations of partisanship seem flimsy to me. As far as I’m concerned, having an agreed-upon ethical code is essential in an increasingly complicated culture where we can’t assume we all think the same way.

Ministers abide by a code of ethics, usually ones curated by the bodies that authorize them for ministry: denominations. My denomination’s Minister’s Code is clear and helpful. I teach it to students preparing for ministry, not just because they will be held accountable to it, but because underneath every sentence in the code are important lessons about what ministers are, whom they serve, and what church and society need from them. Supreme Court: coming up with a code might be good for you; super-bonding. Think about it!

In matters of crown and court, the public is quick to tell leaders that taking the high road requires them to step aside and recuse themselves when the going gets tough. I am hesitant, however, to endorse any answers that seem easy, and instantaneous recusals are easy. In many cases, sticking with a task, and demonstrating wherewithal, is what leadership requires of us. Here are some reasons why:

1. If a leader recuses themself, someone else has to do the work. It’s not like their taking the high road causes a tough job or big decision to go away.
2. Leaders who recuse themselves in an effort to keep their hands clean send a terrible message that leadership isn’t messy, when it is.
3. Once a leader recuses themself, they have to shut up, which means that those with less training, information, and experience can talk nonsense with no checks on their insufficient grounding. Dialogue suffers.
4. Once one leader recuses themself, others with anything resembling a reason to have strong feelings or an opinion feel like they are supposed to do the same.

Recusals aren’t fundamentally ethical in and of themselves. In fact, they’re sometimes the least ethical thing a leader can do. When a person promises to lead a community, and then they opt out because the public senses they are too close to a situation, the community might be momentarily satisfied but it is ultimately under-served.

I have lived through ministry crises where key leaders recused themselves because they were close to the parties involved in a conflict or scandal. But the professional field in which I serve is so small, and communities so interwoven, that those recusals simply dumped responsibility onto people who also knew the parties but weren’t far enough up the food chain to opt out.

I have lived through ministry crises where colleagues have thought they were noble, idealistically opting out of processes to which they objected, only for their colleagues catch the garbage they threw out the window straight in their faces. When those garbage-faced colleagues named aloud how much that sucked for them, the high-road-takers cried foul. And everyone was mad at everyone, Amen.

There are no easy answers to the question of who should be the King of England, or even if there should be one. My mentor Peter Gomes knew Prince/King Charles and thought he was among the most brilliant people he’d ever met, and he met a lot of brilliant people. Who am I to judge King Charles, just because he was a bad husband to one person in the past, and is evidently a terrific husband to another person now? Who am I to judge; period?

As for the Supreme Court, I hope they take up the work of creating a code of ethics for themselves. That hope is grounded in a conviction that they should opt out of tough decisions only very rarely, and at this rate US constituents are going to start expecting them to remain mute at the very hint of life connection to a case. Once the public grabs hold of an easy answer, they will cling to it for dear life. Judges on the highest court must only recuse themselves once in every fifth blue moon. For that to be so, we need to narrow the framework for when that should happen. With only nine on the bench, if two declare conflicts of interest, one gets the flu, and one’s car breaks down? Hey, it could happen.

We live in an age where data is all too readily available, so pat answers, or snap-judgment abdications, are as tempting as they are almost always unhelpful. We need to slow our roll and ask, “What does the Lord require of them?” Namely, our leaders. We live in a season where a good response to overwhelm is careful discernment, not an ejector seat. If we have an eject button, we’ll of course be tempted to press it sometimes, but that’s not the calling unto which we’ve been called.