A Crown or a Servant’s Mark: Two Ways of Being Church

Church folks have been arguing about haircuts for a mighty long time. That may sound foolish until we remember that human beings have always used outward signs to tell the world who they are, where they belong, and who holds authority over them. A uniform, a collar, a crown, or a bit of shaved hair can say more than a whole page of titles.

I was tonsured in the Celtic tradition in the Celtic Catholic Church by Bishop Dwain Houser, of blessed memory, many, many years ago. It wasn’t done to make me important. It wasn’t the first rung on some ecclesiastical ladder leading upward toward finer vestments, grander titles, and a more impressive chair. I was tonsured as a servant. The cutting of my hair declared that I belonged to Christ and that my life was being given to the service of Christ’s people.

That distinction has stayed with me because there are two very different ways of imagining the Church. I call them the Church of the Empire and the Church of the Servant.

The Roman tonsure (Church of the Empire) is the one most people recognize from old paintings and from Friar Tuck. The hair on the top of the head was shaved while a complete ring of hair remained around it. That ring was called a corona, a crown. The Roman Church understood it as representing Christ’s crown of thorns and associated it with Saint Peter. That was its official spiritual meaning, and we ought to be honest about that.

But symbols have a way of gathering other meanings as institutions grow around them. Seen from above, the Roman tonsure looks like a crown. It rests upon the head of the cleric while the Church around him increasingly takes the shape of an empire. Bishops become princes. Dioceses become territories. Cathedrals become courts. Authority descends from the top, and obedience rises from the bottom.

The Celtic or Insular tonsure (Church of the Servant) was physically different. It didn’t leave a complete crown of hair around the head. The traditional understanding is that the front of the head was shaved back to a line running from ear to ear, while the hair behind that line remained. Some scholars now believe the shaved portion may have been triangular. Others argue that most of the head was shaved except for a tuft at the front. The exact shape has been lost in the fog of history because most surviving descriptions came from Roman churchmen who opposed it.

We should therefore be careful not to claim more than the evidence allows. We can’t say with certainty that every Celtic monk wore precisely the same haircut. Neither can we prove that the Celtic tonsure was an exact copy of one standardized haircut imposed upon every Celtic slave. History is seldom that tidy, no matter how much church folks may wish to comb it into place.

What we do know is that hair carried social meaning. Among the early Irish, long and carefully tended hair could signify freedom, dignity, and standing within the community. To crop or shear the hair of an adult was an act of humiliation. Servants, captives, and enslaved people could be marked by shorn or closely cropped hair. Cutting the hair stripped away a visible sign of independence and honor.

That is the deeper reality behind the servant’s tonsure. The monk willingly accepted what society regarded as humiliation. He surrendered the outward sign of personal status and declared himself a servant, a servus Christi, a slave of Christ. He wasn’t being crowned. He was being claimed.

And there, right there in that patch of shorn hair, we can see two different Churches taking shape.

The Church of the Empire is a pyramid. The people fill out the broad bottom and carry the weight of everything built above them. Clergy stand over the people, bishops stand over the clergy, archbishops stand over the bishops, and princes of the Church occupy the narrowing heights. Money, privilege, and power travel upward. Rules, burdens, and demands travel downward. Everybody is taught to look toward the top, because that is where the important people are supposed to be.

Like most pyramid schemes, it depends upon those at the bottom continuing to support those at the top.

The Church of the Servant turns the pyramid upside down. Christ occupies the lowest place because Christ is the one who descended, took the form of a slave, knelt with a basin and towel, and bore the weight of the world. Those called to ministry descend with him. The greater the responsibility, the farther down one goes. An abbot or bishop isn’t supposed to perch at the summit like a rooster on a barn roof. He is supposed to get underneath the community and help bear its weight.

In the Church of the Servant, authority isn’t the privilege of standing above others. It is the burden of standing beneath them. The bishop doesn’t ask, “Who must obey me?” He asks, “Whose feet have I not yet washed?” The priest doesn’t ask, “What honor belongs to my office?” He asks, “Where are the wounded, the hungry, the lonely, and the forgotten?” The abbot doesn’t build a little kingdom around himself. He tends the briarpatch, guards the vulnerable creatures hiding within it, and makes room for whatever odd assortment of saints and sinners Christ sends along.

That is what my own tonsure means to me. I wasn’t tonsured into an aristocracy. I was shorn into servanthood. The mark placed upon me said that my life no longer belonged entirely to me. It belonged to Christ, and therefore it belonged alongside the people Christ loves, especially those pushed aside by respectable religion.

I have carried several titles through the years. I have been called priest, bishop, archbishop, and abbot. Of them all, abbot remains closest to my heart because it speaks less of rank than of relationship. Yet every title becomes dangerous when it starts behaving like a crown. A title is only Christian when it names the particular way a person has promised to serve.

Jesus never established a court of ecclesiastical princes. He gathered fishermen, tax collectors, women of courage, political troublemakers, doubters, misfits, and ordinary working people. He didn’t climb the imperial pyramid. He overturned it. He took the lowest place and told his disciples that whoever wished to be greatest must become the servant of all.

That is why the difference between these two tonsures matters to me. It isn’t really an argument about ancient hairstyles. It is an argument about what kind of Church we intend to become.

Will we wear our ministry like a crown, or will we bear it as the mark of a servant? Will we climb over one another toward the summit, or will we descend with Christ beneath the burdens of the world? Will we build another empire, or will we become coworkers of the One who washed feet?

I was tonsured in the Celtic tradition. I wasn’t crowned. I was claimed. Whatever titles may stand before my name, the deeper mark remains the same: I belong to Christ. Therefore, I belong beside his people, not above them.

That may not get a fellow invited into many palaces. But it is honest work here in the briarpatch.