Vesture and Tradition - Letter in the Church Times, 15 January 2016

Sir, -

The customary dress of Anglican bishops may well derive from 19^th Century Rome, as Bishop Colin Buchanan notes (Letters, 8 January). Doubtless he will recall that the stately “Anglican” rochet is, also, Roman Catholic episcopal couture, albeit of a different century. That clerical vesture is derived and not invented is the point: it shows that the Church belongs to more than just the times and places of its particular instantiations.

At the heart of the debate over vesture is the question explored by Dr Edward Dowler in his article (Comment, 18/25 December): is the liturgy something we devise for ourselves, a human construct in response to what God has done for us; or is it something we receive, serve and participate in?

The New Testament itself presents liturgy as tradition in the proper sense, something handed on: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you” (1 Corinthians 11.23). The same applies to the faith of the Church (1 Corinthians 15.3), its mission (John 20.21) and its ministry (2 Timothy 1.6). From these beginnings there developed the rich liturgical streams that continue to nourish both east and west, all of which give a sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves: when we do this, we are doing what the Lord instituted, what the Church does in every time and place, what nourishes its faith and sustains its mission.

Of course the Apostles did not wear mitres, and no doctrinal significance is to be attached to any particular choice of canonical vesture (Canon B8). Nevertheless, distinctive vesture has a sign value. How we inhabit liturgical time and space reflects what we believe the liturgy to be. The vesture of ministers is part of that: it proclaims their role, subordinates their personalities, and is a visible sign that the local assembly is doing what the Church does. Similarly, authorized liturgies may be adapted, but are not devised, by the congregation that uses them. Our heritage of sacred architecture, art and music speaks of centuries of conversion of culture by the leaven of the Gospel, and, because it belongs to all, invites all to discover an alternative to a pervasive and pressurized secular worldview.

Increasingly, however, these things are not appreciated, and this is to our loss. If churches discard these outward signs, what is left begins to resemble a human group like any other, concerned with its own interests. Missional imperatives might be argued for such departures, but this begs the question whose mission we are serving if the way we worship locally has dispensed with the signs of belonging to the whole.

I find it perplexing that a Private Member’s Motion on vesture has somehow been subsumed by the Simplification Task Group*, the original brief of which, it is worth remembering, was to produce “credible options… for reducing the time spent by clergy and church members on the management of structures and processes” (GS Misc 955). What has that to do with vesture? It hardly takes an inordinate amount of time to manage a surplice.

This is about more than just vesture, of course. But the proposals on vesture being considered under the heading of “simplification” seem to me to be part of a wider trend which is not really about freeing churches to be missional, but is rather more about reshaping our understanding of how mission, worship and church belong together.

Yours,

The Rev’d Matthew Duckett

*The Bishop of Willesden kindly contacted me after publication of this letter to explain that the PMM on Canon B8 is not now being taken forward as part of the Simplification Agenda, as originally reported to General Synod in July, but is being handled by a separate process. This change was made by the House of Bishops and Archbishop's Council after the July meeting, but had not seemingly been reported to General Synod at the time of writing.