{"id":6757,"date":"2014-10-07T18:46:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T00:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6757"},"modified":"2014-10-08T09:01:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T15:01:59","slug":"clerical-dress-for-respect-christian-and-pagan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6757","title":{"rendered":"Clerical Dress for Respect, Christian and Pagan"},"content":{"rendered":"

It happened this afternoon that I had tabs open to two different articles about clothing and social respect for (Protestant Christian) clergy as well as a Wild Hunt<\/em> post about some kind of Pagan trying to prank the county commissioners in Escambia County, Florida, into abandoning their custom of religious invocations before meetings<\/a>. (I am glad that around here we just pledge allegiance to the flag and then get down to business.)<\/p>\n

I am not sure of the process here: apparently the guy in question just asked to be included in the list of religious invokers. But let’s move on.<\/p>\n

One Wild Hunt <\/em>mentioned his clothing \u2014 ” I would have worn something more like business casual dress”\u2014 and that dovetailed nicely with two pieces that I had been reading just moments earlier.<\/p>\n

In one, Paul Walters, a Lutheran minister from Troy, Michigan, writes, “Pastors complain about the lack of respect they encounter in the world around them, and yet for some reason faded blue jeans and t-shirts are equated with work clothing . . . People will judge you based on your clothing every single time<\/strong>” <\/a>(emphasis in the original).<\/p>\n

Whereupon the commenters crucify him. One even says, “Being a pastor is not a profession.” (Huh?)<\/p>\n

That post was linked by the doyenne of Protestant clergy fashion<\/a>, the Rev. Victoria Weinstein, a\/k\/a PeaceBang, at her blog Beauty Tips for Ministers<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Protestant ministers are in a time warp, and in a reality warp. What they know of the new reality they have decided doesn\u2019t apply to them because they don\u2019t approve of it<\/em>. Maybe the world has become more visual. Clergy don\u2019t care, because they\u2019re certain that words will solve social issues and save the world. Why should they wear heels and professional attire when a well-meaning slogan on a T-shirt or a big cross around the neck should communicate what they\u2019re about to the public?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weinstein is a Unitarian, in an old, rather churchy (for UUs) congregation on Massachusetts’ South Shore<\/a> (no CUUPS Pagans <\/a>at First Parish of Norwell, as far as I can tell).<\/p>\n

She makes another point as well:<\/p>\n

Today, in 2014, the mainstream Protestant and Jewish and Muslim and progressive Catholic movements are all in a big pot together in the public imagination. We\u2019re just \u201cthose religious people\u201d in our houses of worship doing our Saturday or Sunday thing, and carrying on with our quaint ways while the world increasingly fails to notice us or care about us. We\u2019re nice to have in the neighborhood, maybe, but mostly for when you want a nice wedding or a kind person to say some words when Uncle Milt dies. If we step beyond those roles, we are regarded as dangerous, and in the United States, accused of violating the sacred separation of church and state enshrined in our Constitution.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read her post on “Subverting and Interrupting Unconscious Scripts [of power]<\/a>“\u2014 it is more honest than you usually see.<\/p>\n

So, if you are any sort of Pagan moving into the public sphere, how do you deal with this perception that religion is “dangerous” and at the same time irrelevant? And how do you dress up for the job?<\/p>\n

Back in the late 1970s, Raymond Buckland <\/a>tried to start a vogue for wearing clerical collars with pentagrams embroidered on them. That went nowhere.<\/p>\n

Some people like the stole<\/a>. Patrick McCollum’s<\/a> ubiquitous saffron scarf is similar, but it was given him by a Hindu holy man, as I recall. It may come from a “scarf of office” worn by imperial Roman officials<\/a>, and it may also been worn by high-ranking professors, such as Hypatia of Alexandria<\/a>. (I welcome clarification, if there is any historical record of this)<\/p>\n

But the Catholics took it over<\/a> as they did so much else of imperial organization, so what then? And the loose scarves are really more like the Anglican tippet<\/a>, a\/k\/a preaching scarf.<\/p>\n

Such a dilemma \u2014 especially in a culture where sloppiness = sincerity in some people’s minds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It happened this afternoon that I had tabs open to two different articles about clothing and social respect for (Protestant Christian) clergy as well as a Wild Hunt post about some kind of Pagan trying to prank the county commissioners in Escambia County, Florida, into abandoning their custom of religious invocations before meetings. (I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,24,5],"class_list":["post-6757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-christianity","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1KZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1314,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1314","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":0},"title":"A Christian Minister Says the Right Things (Mostly)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The US Air Force Academy's official site for Pagan ritual has received a lot of attention. I first mentioned it on January 27 when I saw the Air Force news release.In faraway Virginia*, Eugence C. Buie, a retired Disciples of Christ minister, wrote an op-ed piece criticizing his local newspaper's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5070,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5070","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":1},"title":"Should Pagans Show “Solidarity”?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Wild Hunt, you can read a second group of excerpts from various Pagan writers and bloggers on topics of community and solidarity, but this post is different. If you scroll to the bottom, there are links to everyone's full remarks in PDF form. Yes, one of them is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3178,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3178","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":2},"title":"The Wild Hunt Gets Some Respect","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is nice to see that Jason Pitzl-Waters' The Wild Hunt blog has gotten a major shout-out at Get Religion, the site for people who wonder why the mainstream media handles religion so ignorantly. I predict that as Pagan traditions become more visible, our activities will be covered by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10111,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10111","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":3},"title":"Which “Paganism” Did the New York Times Mean?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"When New York Times (mostly) political columnist Ross Douthat wrote a December 12 column titled \"The Return of Paganism: Maybe There Actually is a Genuinely Post-Christian Future for America,\" some Pagans got a little too excited \u2014 look, the NYT is writing about us! Remember, there are at least three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5016,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5016","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":4},"title":"The P-word","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Since the early 1990s, I have been working in my small way to get the word Pagan capitalized in books and articles \u2014 of course, I was not the only one doing that. Ironically, the most resistance seems to come from certain British academics. Neither of the two conflicting editing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8434,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8434","url_meta":{"origin":6757,"position":5},"title":"CFP: 2017 AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"All the calls for the 2017 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion are now online. The meeting itself will be held 18\u201321 November in Boston. The Pagan studies theme is \"Witch Hunts: Rhetorical, Historical and Contemporary.\" The term \u201cwitch hunt\u201d is used as a rhetorical strategy in contemporary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6757"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6768,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions\/6768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}