As someone who
didn’t grow up in the Anglican Church, I can’t tell an alb from a surplice from
a chasuble from a stole.
After attending
an Anglican church for a few years now, I am more familiar with those clerical
vestments. But I still couldn’t pass a test on what each one was—or what they
represent.
For people like
me in England, it soon may not matter.
The Anglican
Church in that country recently decided to let priests wear “lay
garments”—normal clothes—rather than traditional vestments while conducting
services.
One reason
given for the change is how British society as a whole is more casual in its
dress.
But another reason
was because of how non-churchgoers—young people in particular—might be put off
by the ornate robes; seeing people wearing them may make them look alien and
disconnected from modern day life.
Whether or not
that’s true, there’s no doubt that most Canadians today wouldn’t be familiar
with Anglican clergy vestments.
Vestments have their origin in the ordinary street clothes from Roman
times. In the Anglican Church, they are worn by bishops, priests, lay readers and others
involved in the worship services.
While they make the
wearers stand out to people unfamiliar with vestments, their role is actually
to obscure them—to put the focus on the ministry they are providing, and on to Christ.
How do Anglican clergy in Canada
feel about vestments? I posed that question to a few of them.
“I’m not aware
of any national directives of what [clergy] should wear or not wear,” says Donald
Phillips, the Bishop of Rupert’s Land.
“There is no written
code in the diocese. It is assumed that priests know what to wear [the standard
priestly wear],” although “nobody says they have to wear it. But it’s
understood.”
For Phillips, vestments
provide an appropriate sense of “mystique or solemnity,” although he
acknowledges there might be “some wisdom” in what is happening in England.
“People have
drifted away from church,” he says, adding that churches need to be more
welcoming of newcomers. “But I’m not sure dispensing with the vestments will
change that.”
Paul Johnson, Rector
and Dean at St. John’s Cathedral—the mother church for the diocese—prefers to
always wear them: the alb, stole, cassock, surplice and chasuble.
“I like to wear
vestments for the symbolism,” he says. “It’s a visible reminder of what we
believe, similar to the stained glass windows.”
He does
dispense with the chasuble, a heavy poncho-like garment, in July and August,
however. “It’s just too hot, and the cathedral isn’t air conditioned,” he says.
For him,
staying with the traditional “is a good place for me, and it’s what the
congregation expects.”
Jamie Howison is the priest at St. Benedict’s
Table. St. Ben’s, as it is known, offers a looser and less formal style of
Anglican worship. What’s his take on vestments?
“Not
only would I go without vestments, I do soon a semi-regular basis,” he says of
what he wears for presiding over communion at house services, family camps, retreats
or for the church’s child friendly service.
For
him, it’s “all about context.” Vestments in a house communion or at camp “simply
feel overdone and really rather overly-earnest,” he says. But for the regular
Sunday evening worship service, “they fit.”
For
him, an apt analogy is mealtime. Some days “it’s grilled cheese sandwiches and
soup at the kitchen table, and some days it is a more formal celebratory meal,”
he says.
For
the former, “paper napkins and ragged placemats are fine, but for the latter
you set the dining room table with linens and use your best serving dishes, and
you quite probably dress differently as well.”
At a
practical (and tongue-in-cheek) level, vestments means he “never has to think
about what I will wear to church”—unlike ministers in other traditions, who
have to worry about their clothing choice each Sunday.
On a more
serious note, “every time I put that stole across my shoulders I am aware that
it symbolizes the ‘yoke’ of my work and vocation,” he says.
“What a privilege,
and what a marvelous burden.”
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