BBC Radio 4 2016-02-01

BBC Radio 4 2016-02-01

The Church of England is currently considering proposals for its clergy to swap their traditional robes for more everyday clothes when taking services. Apparently, this would make us more “relevant” – a word, I have to admit, that makes me want to boil my head in oil. For either the basic proclamation of the Christian church is intrinsically relevant to human life, or it’s not. It seems to me that fiddling around with the haberdashery is hardly going to make any difference to that, one way or another.

OK, clothes matter - take the recent row about parents dropping off their children at school in pajamas. And as it happens, my own preference is to retain traditional ecclesiastical robes in services – mostly because, being extremely scruffy, robes allow me to hide my jeans and t-shirts, and so not distract a more sartorially conservative congregation. As long as I occasionally give my shoes a bit of a polish, what I wear under my cassock is nobody else’s business.

But this is basically a practical argument. Theologically, on the other hand, I do have a certain amount of sympathy with the call for a dress-down priesthood. It’s interesting that, until about the 6th century, priests of the early church didn’t go in for distinctive clothing. Indeed, the clerical dress of the middle ages was actually no more than a fashion hangover from what wealthy people would wear in imperial Rome.

But there is a much wider and more serious problem with our fancy clobber: let’s call it the over-clericalisation of the clergy. The idea that priests are some sort of separate caste, with their own particular style of dress and distinctive sub-culture can easily make the priesthood something cliquey and inward looking; it can lead to a sort of us-against-the-rest mentality, and, worst of all, even contribute to a culture in which clergy misdeeds are dealt with privately, in the club so to speak. So no - as I heard a priest once say, referencing Harry Potter – priests are not wizards and lay people are not muggles.

Perhaps this why I also dislike wearing clerical collars. Yes, I understand that wearing a clerical collar in public often leads to important pastoral conversations. Out of the blue someone will ask you to pray for their mother or to explain the doctrine of the Trinity. And yes, they can also be a useful access-all-areas pass. But something’s gone seriously wrong when – as once happened to me once in Spain – a pregnant women stands up to give me her seat on the bus. Most people don’t realise it, but the clerical collar as we know it today was first used in 1894. And in the Roman church, it was a twentieth century thing. In other words, it’s a very recent innovation.

My issue with distinctive clerical dress is that it is a symbol of the wrong sort of separation. Perhaps we should take the advice of Pope Celestine 1st, rebuking the church in France: “We bishops must be distinguished by our learning and not by our dress, by our life not by our robes, by purity of heart not by elegance.” In fact, this seems to me to be pretty sage advice for the rest of us too - whether priests or not.