Roger Williams’s Anti-Hireling Theology and Its Implications for Bi-vocational Ministry in the Korean Church

Abstract

This essay reads Roger Williams’s The Hireling Ministry None of Christ’s (1652) as a pastoral-theological program with a concrete historical edge. In the seventeenth-century quarrels over church and state, Williams insists that when the ministry is funded by compulsory tithes, taxes, or fixed stipends, the gospel is distorted, conscience is put in chains, and ministry turns into a mere occupation. He develops the case through four recurring themes: gifts, calling, work, wages. “Gifts” orient authority to the Spirit rather than academic credentials; calling is recognized by the gathered church, not conferred by magistrates; preaching is a service, not a commodity; financial support is voluntary, never enforced. Placed within Separatist ecclesiology, a typological distinction between Old and New, and a strict civil-spiritual divide, the program becomes legible. Rhode Island’s “lively experiment” gave it institutional form by protecting liberty of conscience and restricting civil power to temporal matters. Theologically, this paper distinguishes Williams’s self-support from today’s bivocational models yet argues that his voluntarism works best as a normative lens for testing ministerial integrity rather than as a policy manual. This paper’s conclusion registers limits, including his denial of apostolic continuity, while maintaining that voluntary support still exposes how professionalization and commodification can deform ministry. For the Korean Church, this study recommends transparent, non-compulsory giving. Also, Churches should create safeguards that preserve the freedom of gospel proclamation and ensure financial governance that treats wages as secondary to public witness.