Explanatory essays - The Power of Knowle: Essays That Explain the Important Things in Life - Sykalo Eugene 2025

Comparative Analysis of Religious Leadership and Hierarchies
World religions and religious studies

There’s this memory I can’t shake:
A small chapel, barely more than a room, crammed between two overgrown alleyways in the back end of a city that pretends it doesn’t believe in anything. A priest—not the kind with incense or silk, but the threadbare, thrift-store type—bent over a pair of battered shoes. Washing. The feet belonged to a man who smelled like old rain and loneliness. And the priest? He didn’t flinch.

That moment has lived with me longer than most of my beliefs have.

I’ve been thinking a lot about religious leadership lately—who we let hold the microphone, who we ask to hold our grief. I don’t mean televangelists or prosperity gospel charlatans in white suits with teeth too bright. I mean the real ones. The weary ones. The ones who cry after everyone’s left the room. The imams with cracked voices. The rabbis who still hum lullabies to themselves. The monks with broken fingernails from working the monastery gardens.

But also—the ones who hurt. Who get drunk on power. Who wear robes like armor. Who build pyramids out of people’s faith and sit smugly at the top.

Because every religion, every single one, dances with hierarchy. Sometimes it’s a soft waltz. Sometimes it’s a knife fight.

And the question gnaws at me: Is hierarchy inevitable when the divine is involved? Or is it a betrayal of the whole point?

The Architecture of the Sacred: Why Hierarchies Form Like Mold in Faith Spaces

Let’s start here: when something feels holy, people circle it.

They form lines. They make rules. They build temples, write chants, assign roles. And before long, someone’s got the keys.

It makes sense, really. The transcendent is wild and enormous, and we—soft, skin-wrapped beings—need something, someone, to help us approach it without burning our retinas.

So we invented priests. Gurus. Bodhisattvas. Shamans. Rabbis. Popes. Ayatollahs. Elders. Grandmothers with humming voices and hands that can still summon the sacred.

Religious leadership isn’t just a title—it’s a function. A human buffer between ordinary and divine. A translator of mystery.

But here’s the kicker: the more power we give someone to speak for God, the more dangerous they become when they forget they’re still just human.

Religious hierarchies, in theory, are about stewardship. Guidance. Ritual expertise. In practice? They can be altars built from other people’s backs.

Let me be clear: I don’t think hierarchy is inherently evil. I think it’s like fire. Or money. Or trust. A tool that can warm, or destroy.

But there’s a kind of heartbreak particular to spiritual betrayal. Because when the one who was supposed to guide you to the light starts using that light to blind you—well. That kind of darkness sings.

The Catholic Collars and the Buddhist Beads: Comparing the Towers We Build

Let’s do a little globe-spinning.

In Catholicism, the hierarchy is... how do I put this? Gothic. Enormous. Breathtaking. Intimidating. From Pope to parish priest, it’s a rigid line of authority draped in centuries of incense and canon law. There’s beauty in the order, sure—but also a terrifying efficiency in how abuse and silence can travel down that chain.

Flip the script. Tibetan Buddhism has its own layers: lineage, tulkus, reincarnated lamas. A sort of divine nepotism, where spiritual authority can be passed down through lives. Is that better? More mystical? Or just differently exclusionary?

Then you’ve got Islam. Sunni Islam, with its ulama and scholarly chains, built less on charisma and more on textual mastery. Shia Islam with its maraji—living sources of emulation—who can wield immense theological and political power. There’s reverence, yes. But also deep internal critiques of who gets to interpret the Qur’an, and how.

And in Judaism—particularly the Orthodox traditions—you’ve got rabbis and sages, hierarchies that emerge not through divine appointment, but through years of study, argument, wisdom. And yet, it’s still a gate. One often closed to women, the queer, the unruly.

Even religions that claim no hierarchy can’t quite avoid it. Evangelical Christianity shuns the Vatican but replaces it with celebrity pastors. Instagram prophets with book deals. Charisma becomes the new clergy.

And then there’s the irony of anarchic religions like some neo-pagan traditions, where the “high priestess” title still carries a glint of precious metal. Even in chaos, we crown people.

We want someone to show us where to stand. How to speak. What to believe. Even as we rebel against it.

I don’t know if that’s comforting or damning.

Pause. Breathe. Let Me Tell You a Story.

There’s a Sikh man I met in London, running a langar kitchen under a freeway overpass. He wore a turban like a flag and handed out lentils like communion. I asked him if he was a leader, and he just laughed. Said, “I’m just the one who showed up first.”

That stuck with me.

Because maybe that’s the kind of leadership I trust now. The reluctant kind. The kind that shows up with a mop, not a microphone.

Sacred Authority vs. Spiritual Authenticity

This might be the crux of it: leadership versus authority.

One is earned. The other is granted—or seized.

And in too many religious systems, we’ve mistaken the symbols of authority (robes, titles, degrees, reincarnation status) for the substance of leadership (compassion, courage, humility).

I’m not immune. I once thought the man who quoted Rumi with perfect cadence must’ve known God better than I did. Turns out he just practiced in front of a mirror.

But real spiritual leadership? It’s quieter. Grittier. Less sexy.

It’s the imam who remembers your mother’s surgery date. The Zen teacher who sweeps the floor after everyone’s gone. The rabbi who admits when she doesn’t know the answer.

And yes, it can be found in hierarchy—but it often leaks through the cracks.

Interlude: The Sacred and the Stained

There’s a church down the block where no one sings on key, but everyone still shows up.

I trust that more than I trust most cathedrals.

Just thought you should know.

The Wound of Representation: Who Gets to Be the Voice of God?

Let’s talk about power for a second. Real power. Not the gold-trimmed stuff, but the kind that shapes lives.

In many traditions, women still can’t lead. LGBTQ+ people are told they can be devout, but never divine. The poor are welcome—but rarely promoted.

And when people say “that’s just doctrine,” I want to scream. Doctrine isn’t floating in space. It was written by people. Often men. Often centuries ago. Often afraid.

So we inherit these hierarchies like family heirlooms no one remembers asking for.

And those left outside the circle? They build their own altars. Their own rituals. Their own forms of sacred leadership.

Because here’s the secret: the sacred doesn’t care about your credentials. It shows up in prison chaplains and trans rabbis and Wiccan teens lighting candles for their dead pets.

And if that sounds irreverent—it’s not. It’s holy in a way robes sometimes forget how to be.

So What Now?

I don’t know. Seriously—I don’t.

Some days I want to tear down every hierarchy. Dismantle every pulpit. Scatter every crown into dust.

Other days, I remember that people need guidance. That authority, when held gently, can save lives.

Maybe what we need isn’t to burn the structures down, but to let them crack open. To let more light in. More voices. More contradictions. More truth.

Let the priest confess. Let the nun doubt. Let the guru laugh too loud. Let the prophet be a woman who cusses.

Maybe leadership is less about standing above and more about kneeling beside.

Maybe spiritual hierarchy should always come with a warning label: Handle with awe. And care. And a lot of goddamn humility.

One Last Image Before I Go

Picture this:

A long table. Mismatched chairs. Candle wax melting into cheap wood. A rabbi and a monk are arguing softly. A trans priest pours the wine. An atheist friend says grace out of respect. No one leads. Or maybe everyone does.

That’s the vision I’m chasing.

Not a ladder.
A circle.

Not a robe.
A basin of water and tired hands, ready to wash feet.

Let that be holy, too.