I saw a web page just now which referred to Lewis Carroll as ‘the Reverent Charles Dodgson’.

I rather like that typo: ‘Reverent’ instead of ‘Reverend’. It suggests that what distinguishes a clergyman is not that people revere him, but that he reveres God more than most people. It carries connotations of humility and religious devotion; it suggests almost subliminally that the clergy are a means for exalting God, rather than vice versa. It's almost monk-like, somehow.

Of course, as an atheist I have no personal interest in whether or not God gets exalted. But even to someone who doesn't subscribe to the belief system in question, it seems to me to strike a more constructive note: ‘Reverend’ suggests ‘I know the Truth and therefore I'm great’, whereas ‘Reverent’ is more like ‘I know the Truth and therefore I'm going to get on with doing stuff about it’, which seems like a more generally well-adjusted attitude to me. And it's less intrusive to non-believers, who might interpret ‘Reverend’ as an unwanted command to revere someone they don't feel like revering, but who can't argue with ‘Reverent’ as a purely factual description of what someone does for a living.

In the unlikely event that I ever get round to doing something about one of my SF novel ideas, I might stick a religious order in the book and use ‘Reverent’ as the official honorific for its priesthood. The more I think about it from any angle, the more I like it.

(Hmm. If a religious order couldn't decide which of the two honorifics to use and wanted to avoid a schism, would they hold a reverendum?)