reverend

   Since the fifteenth century this word has been associated with members of the clergy. In modern times a minister to whom one was writing would expect to receive an envelope addressed to ‘The Reverend John Smith’, with a letter inside beginning Dear Mr Smith.

   ‘Reverend’ is not technically a title, on a par with ‘Doctor’, say, though it has certainly become so in the popular mind. A black American minister would now expect to be addressed as ‘Reverend’ by members of his congregation, and by others if they were being polite. A white speaker in The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones, by Jesse Hill Ford, is quoted as saying: ‘Reverend, you can ride down to City Hall in the car with me. No need for you to ride in the police cars with the others.’ A little later the same speaker says: ‘No, Mr Reverend, sir, Your Holiness,’ which indicates just how sincere his politeness is.

   ‘Reverend’ is used as a title far more often in the USA than in Britain, though James Mitchell, in When the Boat Comes In, a novel set in the north-east of England, has: ‘Glad you could come, reverend.’

   For the purists, ‘reverend’ would be more correctly used as an element in a vocative group, where it would have its true meaning of ‘worthy of reverence’. ‘Reverend sir’ might therefore be used to a minister, but one could equally well address others as ‘reverend father’, ‘reverend doctor,’ etc.

   There is an example of the latter term of address in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, when Portia says to Shylock ‘I pray you, let me look upon the bond’ and he replies, ‘Here ‘tis, most reverend doctor.’ Shylock knows full well that Portia is not an ordained minister, but uses the word in its general meaning. To do this in modern times would be misleading, so closely has the word become associated with the clergy.

   If ‘Reverend’ is falsely seen as a professional title, at least it is one which carries prestige. The laypreacher in South Riding, by Winifred Holtby, thus ruefully tells himself after giving a sermon that ‘he did it well, much better than the minister, he thought, a little bitterly, aware that he lacked the prestige of a “Reverend”.’

   An opposing point of view is put in The Mackerel Plaza, by Peter de Vries. The hero there dislikes specific terms of address for the clergy:

   It was not merely the wish to elude prototype that lay at the bottom of this, though that wish did exist in Mackerel to an exquisite degree; it was, more cardinally, a fear of quarantine, a desire to belong to his species - in which even the deferential ‘Reverend’ tended to blur one’s membership - that made him want ever so much to be known simply as Mister Mackerel.

   In Waterfront, by Budd Schulberg, a man who is described as ‘an occasional Baptist’ uses ‘Reverent’ (the variant spelling indicating substandard pronunciation) to a Catholic priest who is being addressed as ‘Father’ by the other men in his group.