How can you tell a service of Sunday morning worship from a music festival? It’s a question that’s been bugging me.
I turned to Humpty. ‘What’s the answer?’
‘Haughty,’ is the only word I can think that describes his reaction. It was as though I had asked him whether he wore socks with his sandals or whether he wore brown brogues with a bowler hat. As far as he was concerned, these things were unthinkable.
But how important is propriety? A Sunday morning religious service may well be more like a music festival – albeit a small one – than a display of Sunday best. Instead of the well-dressed congregation accompanied by an organ (pipe or digital) may come a sequence of instrumental or vocal performances. They are often followed by hand-clapping.
But there was a time (round about the period of the Crimean war) when the squire, gentry and riff-raff put on their best clothes to go to church. The vicar was not exempt. Depending on his debt to the Oxford Movement or his loyalty to the latitudinarian days that had preceded it, he wore either chasuble, cotta and amice, or on the other hand a surplice, academic hood and black scarf. If the weather was inclement and funds would run to it, he might have walked up the garden-path to the vestry in a voluminous cloak with a square on his head. There are fashions in these things and nobody would begrudge vicars the right along with everybody else to choose how to dress for worship. We all like/dislike trainers, jeans, three-piece suits, jump suits, mini-skirts, cuirasses and modern body-armour. Some of us think the choice is important.
Some proclaim that it is off-putting for the clergy to have their special dress. They say that this fosters the notion of a separate, almost biologically distinct, class of person who is not party to ordinary human nature. On this view clergy robes promote hierarchical status above common humanity, concealing the fact that the Gospel is for all.
Countering this is the view of those who point out that dressing-up in special ways is part of the human scene. Where would the New Year’s Day concert be without its near 100 per cent instrumentalists in suits? And when it comes to worship is there not every reason why the personality of the preacher should be subordinated to the office he holds?
These are deep and compelling issues – deep and compelling that is for that small element in society that sets store by such matters. Most people are preoccupied with major concerns such as birth, sickness, death, taxes, paying their way and getting a good night's sleep at the end of it. We’re a long way from William Booth’s ‘Come drunk or sober.’
I Corinthians 14 ends with the injunction: 'Let all be done decently and in order.' That makes room for common sense and an awareness of priorities.
‘Wake up, Humpty. These are important matters… or are they?’
No use. He was snoring.
‘Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.’ – Samuel Johnson
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