Supreme Court nominee Barrett appears to be part of the religious ‘shepherding’ movement
I’ve been reading with fascination recent news coverage of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s membership in a primarily Roman Catholic parachurch organization called People of Praise.
Most of what I know about People of Praise I’ve gleaned from recent lengthy—and in my judgment, quite balanced—profiles of Barrett and the group in national publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Until Barrett was nominated for the nation’s highest court, I’d never heard of People of Praise.
But I immediately recognized its orientation. It’s clearly part of a lesser-known Christian subculture called “shepherding” or, sometimes, “discipleship.”
In basic terms, shepherding involves Christians who commit themselves to a tightknit, committed group of fellow Christians. They become intricately involved in each others’ lives and sometimes share housing or buy homes in the same neighborhoods.
Younger members agree to submit themselves to the guidance of older, more experienced and presumably wiser “shepherds” within the group, who advise them on all sorts of matters, such as faith, marriage, finances, childrearing and careers. The perceived good of the group typically is placed before a member’s individual desires.
The shepherding movement is a relatively obscure offshoot of the larger charismatic revival that swept through and transformed mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches worldwide. There have been a number of shepherding groups that varied in size, some primarily Protestant and some primarily Catholic.
The larger charismatic revival, which owed much to its spiritual parent, Pentecostalism, placed a renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit, on spiritual gifts including prophecy and speaking in tongues, and on a livelier form of worship music that eschewed hymnals and pipe organs in favor of guitars and drums.
I was part of that charismatic renewal in the late 1970s and beyond. Although never involved in shepherding — which struck me as way too overbearing for my independent disposition — I have known people who were involved, and I know the movement’s mixed reputation within church circles.
Again, let me emphasize I have no experience with People of Praise, which was established in 1971 at the University of Notre Dame. I have no strong feelings, really, about whether Barrett is a qualified Supreme Court candidate.
But shepherding is something I do know about. It’s always seemed to me it was begun with good intentions, but as is so often the case with religious endeavors, it usually failed to live up to those intentions. Its adherents tended to become disillusioned over time and fall away. Shepherding groups tended to implode.
The original idea was to provide serious Christians with a deeper experience of the faith than they could get from simply going to church on Sundays and tacking onto that a home Bible study or service project.
The goal was to create a long-term, in-depth community of disciples who would share their possessions, their prayers and, indeed, their whole lives as followers of Jesus.
The problem was that many “shepherds” crossed the line from advising and helping less-experienced Christians into controlling and spiritually abusing them. For some shepherds, their position seemed little more than an ego-propelled power trip. In extreme cases, shepherding groups became almost cult-like: secretive and suspicious of outsiders.
Barrett’s lifelong involvement with People of Praise, which currently has 1,650 members in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, has raised eyebrows.
As the New York Times explained, “Along with the attention (from Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination) has come scrutiny of the group’s conservative beliefs and practices; it has been falsely credited with inspiring Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”
Women in People of Praise who serve as advisers to younger women—Barrett apparently was such an adviser—until recently were called “handmaids,” just as in Atwood’s novel. They’re now called “women leaders.” Handmaid was a reference to Mary the mother of Jesus, who in the New Testament describes herself as the handmaid of the Lord.
According to the Times, the group’s conservative tenets include “a strict view of human sexuality that embraces traditional gender norms and rejects openly gay men and women.” Wives are expected to submit to the leadership of their husbands, and women generally submit to men.
But little of that is outside the norm of a lot of conservative Protestant and Catholic Christianity. You or I might disagree with some of those tenets, but they’re not shocking. Besides, nominees for public offices aren’t supposed to be subjected to religious tests.
I take some comfort from the fact that People of Praise has survived and seemingly thrived for nearly 50 years. In news accounts, its members appear to be reasonably well-adjusted, content and productive. Former members who’ve left tend to describe the group not as dystopian but rather as sometimes claustrophobic in its closeness.
Taken together, all this suggests People of Praise was better-conceived and better-run than some shepherding groups. And it can’t be brow-beating and subjugating women members too badly if one of them is now a nominee for the nation’s highest court.
If nothing else, Barrett’s involvement with People of Praise offers many Americans a glimpse into an arcane and controversial religious subculture they didn’t know existed.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.
This story was originally published October 16, 2020 at 10:06 AM with the headline "Supreme Court nominee Barrett appears to be part of the religious ‘shepherding’ movement."