Reverend is not a job title

By Brian Clegg

As a writer, I like a touch of precision in words. And in the last few hours I’ve come across two manglings of the word ‘reverend’. The problem involves confusing an honorific with a job title.

A job title tells us what you do for work. An honorific is the word (sometimes called a title) that is put before your name to establish your place in the world. The mangling I’m moaning about is the use of the honorific ‘reverend’ as a job title. This morning I was reading the (otherwise excellent) book The Random Universe and it referred to Thomas Bayes as ‘a reverend’. I was still reeling from this when I listened on my morning walk to the first episode of the BBC’s Uncanny podcast (quite entertaining) and the presenter said to a guest ‘You are a reverend…’ or words to that effect. Fuming, I hit the keyboard.

The various Christian churches have a whole range of job titles for the person who stands up the front and runs things. They can be bishops, priests, deacons, vicars, rectors, parsons, ministers and various other oddities, some just differing on the nature of the church, but many with different roles. In a number of churches, the honorific for these people is ‘the reverend’. (‘the right reverend’ for bishops.) So in writing to them, you might put ‘The Reverend Robin Cardwell’ on the envelope. The ‘the’ is strictly necessary, but often omitted and that’s not too painful.

To see why calling, say, a vicar ‘a reverend’ is just wrong, we can look at another honorific – the one applied to British Members of Parliament. They are ‘the honourable’ or ‘the right honourable’ for members of the Privy Council. So saying ‘you are a reverend’ to a vicar is like saying ‘you are an honourable’ to an MP. Leaving aside whether or not this honorific fits a politician which isn’t always the case, it is just weird to use ‘a reverend’ this way.

The same distinction applies to the most common honorifics amongst the rest of us such as Mrs or Ms for a woman. Technically these are written in full as Mistress – but it could be more than a little dangerous to say to someone ‘you are a mistress’. 

I think part of the problem arises from the baffling use of ‘doctor’ as a job title. That’s my honorific, but like many others, I am not a doctor in the medical sense: my job title is author or writer. And because most people’s first association with ‘doctor’ is now a medic, it can lead to outright confusion.

Of course this is trivial stuff really. But it does wind me up every time I hear ‘a reverend’. Stop, please, people.

Image by the author (this shows a curate and a vicar, but neither is ‘a reverend’)

These articles will always be free – but if you’d like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership: 

See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.