One of my favorite linguistic concepts is the idea of the retronym: a name that we give to something retroactively because of a change in our understanding of that idea.

For instance, it used to be that this item was just called a wristwatch:

Then this little upstart had to come along:

(Well, they didn’t look like quite like that at first, but you get the point.)

As a result, we had to shift our usage to talking not just about wristwatches but about analog and digital wristwatches. The same thing happened when some evil geniuses decided to make a guitar that could be amplified by way of magnetic pickups, and so we had to coin the retronym acoustic guitar to refer to what we’d been plucking and strumming away at until that point. And again with the advent of “electronic mail,” forcing us to start talking about snail mail. And so on.

This isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, our ability to adjust our language to our evolving understanding of the world is quite beneficial.

And as a former Christian, I have found myself in a similar situation regarding the idea of “secular ministry.”

I should note first that “secular ministry” is not a term I would generally use to describe most of the work I do, but that term was thrown at me (behind my back in a forum I typically avoid) as an accusation, as though calling me a “secular minister” was a way of diminishing the work I do. So I feel compelled to respond.

Unlike many of my secular fellow travelers, I don’t have much of a negative view of clergy. Part of that, I think, comes from the fact that I got to see what it’s like to be clergy up close and personal from my own father’s work as a pastor. There’s a stereotype of pastors as layabouts who do a few hours of work a week and bilk their congregations for a full-time salary to do virtually nothing, but that frankly isn’t what I observed in the ministers I’ve known.

My own father was what is referred to as a bivocational minister, meaning that he had a full-time job as a correctional counselor in addition to his duties in the various churches he pastored during my childhood. I saw the time that he put in not just in his preparations for worship services, the time spent planning sermons in church offices, but in the time he spent going to hospitals to visit ailing congregants, the wedding and funerals he performed, the help he would offer to those who needed it in trying times, and the tiring work of trying to manage the social dynamics of small, rural Baptist churches. It wasn’t just preaching or evangelism that consumed his time.

Not all ministers are like this, of course. I worked under a pastor at one point who openly talked about how he didn’t care much for the visitation part of the job, and I should note that a large number of congregants found this admission quite shocking, like hearing a teacher say that they like to lecture but don’t really care to talk to students. But in my experience, even among ministers of moderate or large congregations, there is a clear expectation that ministry is about service, not just authority.

But this surreptitious accuser isn’t the first person I’ve heard use the term. My friend Ryan Bell and I have sometimes discussed the idea that what we’ve done post-deconversion constitutes a sort of secular ministry (we touch on it at about 41:00 in our conversation on his podcast), and I think there’s something to that. When I decided to pursue certification as a secular celebrant, I did it in part because I wanted to provide a service for couples who want a secular ceremony to mark their nuptials or for those who wish to commemorate the life of a recently departed loved one. When I got involved with the Hotline Project, I did it because I wanted to be a sympathetic, non-judgmental voice for people who desperately needed an outlet for their own doubts or ostracization or struggles.

Here’s something that post-religious people have not done exceptionally well: We continue to see “ministry” more as the position of “minister,” thoroughly entangled with the task of defending religion and often evangelizing for it, rather than the actual work of ministering, of serving others. That is after all where the term originated, not as a position of authority but of servitude.

While I don’t think that all service needs to be called “ministry” and (as I noted on the podcast) fully understand the reservations that people have about the term or about co-opting religious language for secular purposes, I do think there’s plenty of space to apply it to secular work. And I think that there’s very little reason to think that using the term “secular minister” will inevitably lead to the sorts of problems that come from ministers exerting their power, authority, and trust in more insidious ways (and it’s not like that doesn’t already happen in the secular movement without the auspices of such a title).

I do the work I do as a blogger and secular celebrant because it’s rewarding, not because I have gained any real notoriety or fame from it (I really haven’t) or because I’ve profited financially (I definitely haven’t). I do it because I want to help others, which is the same reason I did religious ministry.

So if someone wants to call me a “secular minister,” fine. I’ll accept that epithet.

But if you want to do so to tear me down for wanting to serve others, I think maybe you’re the one who needs to check your usage.

Image created from public domain works via Pixabay and Wikimedia Commons