Undefended Ministry: Emotional Intelligence, Kenotic Formation and the Shape of Relational Priesthood

Abstract What empirical research with Church of England Archdeacons identifies as undefendedness – the calibrated, non-anxious relational openness through which the ordained minister engages people, criticism and conflict without self-protective retreat – is what the Anglican theological tradition has long understood as the fruit of kenotic formation. This article develops the theological significance of that empirical finding, arguing that the construct’s distinctive character in the ordained context is illuminated by three bodies of theological reflection: von Balthasar’s account of kenotic priestly selfhood; Green’s constructive Anglican account of sacramental relations, held together with the ontological ground of baptismal identity; and Walker’s undefended leadership framework, from which three points of critical distance are proposed. The psychology of religious coping (Pargament) and attachment to God (Hall et al.) provide convergent evidence from the psychology of religion. Three formational implications follow: the integration of sustained, honest prayer as constitutive of theological education and formation; pastoral supervision reconceived as ministerial formation; and peer communities of honest mutual engagement across the lifecycle of ordained ministry. The article argues for mutual illumination between empirical evidence and theological tradition as the appropriate epistemological relationship between the two disciplines.