Ring Around the Collar

What the minister wears while performing his official duties is more important than many of us might imagine. When I came to Arizona in 2013, this congregation was used to having its pastor wear a suit, a nice suit, every Sunday. I did not own a suit like that, nor did I think that wearing one would be helpful in changing the culture. So I preached my first sermon here in a button down shirt and tie, not a bow tie, and without a jacket. Several months later, I took off the tie and simply preached in a button down. I preached one Sunday with the shirt untucked, but that made me uncomfortable. As reformation proceeded in the congregation, the changes were reflected—perhaps too subtly for many to realize—in what I wore on Sunday.

After two years we bought hymnals for the church, began using a modest but explicitly Reformed liturgy for the service, and I put back on a tie. As the worship became more consistently biblical, I put on a jacket with the tie. But I did not think then, and I certainly do not believe now, that the pastor should dress like a businessman. I am not the CEO of this organization. I am not running a company. I am a minister of Jesus Christ, a slave, representing the kingdom of heaven, called to pray, teach, and care for this flock. So after a lot of thinking, study, praying, and conversation, and with the Session’s blessing, in December of 2016, I took off the jacket and put on a preaching robe for the first time.

The Orthodox Presbyterian Church does not have a dress code for its ministers. But though there is not a formal standard, it is unlikely you will see an OPC minister wearing skinny jeans and flip-flops in the Lord’s Day service. As in many Reformed denominations, the minister will usually wear a jacket and tie on Sundays. Some might preach without a tie, but the jacket and tie are the unofficial uniform. Relatively few ministers in the OPC wear a Genevan robe on a regular basis, though they used to be very common in Presbyterian churches. Only three or four of the thirty churches in our presbytery use the robe regularly.

The Genevan robe seems strange to many of our visitors, but not long ago almost all churches had official ministerial attire. The ancient Church used a white alb which continues to be worn in Roman Catholic, Anglican, and some other high liturgical traditions. Over time many other vestments were added. Martin Luther is believed to have introduced the plain black robe in Protestant services, to distinguish ministers of the Reformation from their Roman Catholic counterparts. The Genevan gown was a scholar’s robe, worn by professors as they lectured in the university. The minister’s black robe emphasized two things. First, he is a pastor-scholar, a teacher feeding God’s people with words and signs they could understand. Second, the minister is hidden beneath the black robe. He is Christ’s representative and mouthpiece. The Word of God is the center of attention, not who is preaching or what he is wearing.

Many professions have uniforms associated with them. Doctors use white coats, police officers carry shields, and judges wear robes. The uniform symbolizes the office. A police officer does not have authority as a private person; he represents the judicial system and the magistrate. His badge points to the authority he represents and serves. Ministers used to wear uniforms too as a reminder of their office and the divine authority they obey. The minister’s attire, whether a preaching robe or clerical collar, reminds the congregation that their pastor is not functioning as a private person. He is God’s ambassador. Ministerial attire reminds us of the gravity of hearing God’s voice from the pulpit and encourages reverence during worship.

Several years ago at General Assembly a man walked up to me, remarked on the fact that I was wearing a bow tie, and said with a smile, “I bet I know where you went to seminary!” I smiled back and replied, “I bet you don’t.” When I began wearing a bow tie some years ago, one of the ladies in our church did not like it. When I greeted her each week, she would roll her eyes. One Sunday she sighed and said, “You’re going to keep doing this, aren’t you?” I  grinned, answered in the affirmative, and said, “It makes me look like a waiter, doesn’t it?” “Yes!” she replied emphatically. I wore a regular necktie to her funeral out of love and respect for her, though I’m quite certain she no longer cared. When my friend Dane was pastoring a Reformed Baptist church, he wore a clerical collar every Sunday. When he became a paedobaptist, joined our church, and came on staff as an intern, he stopped wearing the collar and put on a jacket and tie. He became a Presbyterian and started dressing like a Baptist.

Many people who accept me wearing a Genevan robe on Sundays may be uncomfortable with a clerical collar because they think it is Roman Catholic. Actually a Presbyterian minister first introduced the collar, though there appear to have been precursors. Portraits of Reformed ministers from the mid-1700s until the early 20th century show many wearing some type of clerical collar, often with a Genevan robe and preaching tabs. This includes Charles Hodge, J. H. Thornwell, Herman Bavinck, and Abraham Kuyper and Reformed Baptists like John Gill and Benjamin Keach. Until recently most ministers in the Free Church of Scotland Continuing wore a clerical collar. It’s hard to imagine these fathers in the faith failed to notice the inherent Romanism of their attire. The OPC considers wearing a collar a matter of indifference, and while I am not aware of any OPC ministers stateside who wear one on a regular basis, it is not uncommon to see pictures of our missionaries in eastern Europe and Canada doing so.

There are some who will object that the collar is confusing or associated with liberalism. I am familiar with all of these objections. But our Session has agreed (unanimously) that I will begin wearing one in the context of my official duties, and I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages which can be identified. The collar is a sign of ministerial office and appropriate for daily service. Twice a week I visit a local assisted living facility and its Alzheimer’s unit to conduct worship, offer prayer, and lead Bible study. I am on call at a local hospital and am frequently called for end of life work, visits with non-members, and an occasional psychiatric case. I visit members in their homes, pray with them at the hospital, and meet both Christians and non-Christians at local coffee shops or diners for conversation and counsel. In all of these settings, the collar is a reminder to myself and those with whom I meet of my role and purpose in our conversation. Many who wear the collar testify of frequent opportunities for evangelism, prayer, and counsel with strangers who recognize them as a minister. If some mistake me for a Roman Catholic priest, it is easy to correct them.

As western civilization further declines and open hostility to Christianity grows, I think there is an advantage in publicly identifying as a Christian minister. Many mainline, gospel-less denominations wear the collar today, and I don’t want to be mistaken for a Lesbyterian. But while much of the evangelical world is emphasizing worldliness more than evangelicalism, I am happy to embrace older Christian traditions that may seem outdated and weird. The collar is not a sign of superiority but of slavery; the minister is a slave of Jesus Christ, and he is to remember it and live accordingly wherever he goes. If the strangeness creates conversations in the community, so much the better. I have to wear something on Sundays. Should it be a bow tie, long necktie, bolo tie, or open collar? A clerical collar simplifies the decision. –JME

 

Eight Reasons for Wearing the Clerical Collar for Ministry

 

1. The minister’s attire is a circumstance, not an element, of worship, and it is, therefore, a matter of indifference and judgment to be determined by the minister and his Session.

2. The clerical collar is a widely recognized sign of ministerial office and that the wearer is a Christian minister.

3. The collar communicates simply dignity and seriousness about the ministerial office as do uniforms for other public servants.

4. The collar takes attention away from the minister’s dress and style and places emphasis on his function as a servant of God’s Word and prayer.

5. The collar is symbolic of a slave’s collar and signifies that the minister is a slave of Jesus Christ.

6. The collar may often create opportunities for evangelism and ministry when worn in the community.

7. The collar originated in Protestant and Presbyterian churches but communicates broader Christian catholicity since it was subsequently adopted by many traditions.

8. The collar standardizes ministerial garb removing personal preferences and distinctions between ministers.

Problems and Solutions in Modern Education

Many philosophers, educators, and cultural commentators have addressed the inefficiencies and deficiencies of modern education. In earlier generations education was the responsibility of each family and administered either at home by parents or tutors or else in educational societies organized by religious orders. But in modern western nations, universal education is largely viewed as a human and civil right, provided, funded, and administered by the government. The work of John Dewey, building upon the philosophy of Rousseau radically transformed the notion of education, what it is for and how it ought to be structured. Rejecting earlier models of liberal (humane) education which focused on development of the human person, critical thinking, and the formation of virtue, Dewey gave western education a more utilitarian form. Today many families assume it is the government’s job to educate their children and that the goal of that education is to make them employable.

There are many problems that may be identified in this modern approach. Russell Kirk has noted “the lowering of standards for admission and graduation, the notorious disgrace of ‘grade inflation’, and the loss of order and integration in curricula” as well as the deleterious effect of the proliferation of technology at home and in the classroom.[1] Education has “become an instrument for creating a common mind,”[2] designed to serve the best interests of the State.[3] This should be no surprise given the shift in responsibility for education from the family to the government. The State will always be interested in that which maintains peace, but over time governments also become motivated to increase revenue, cultivate complacency among citizens, and expand, consolidate, and maintain power. Even governments which do not descend into totalitarianism desire citizens who pay their taxes, comply with laws and regulations, and yield to the magistrate many of their personal freedoms.

While all of the aforementioned problems are concerning, they are merely symptoms of a larger, systemic disease. The real deficiencies in modern, western education are more fundamental. These involve issues of teleology and eschatology. What is education designed to do? Where is it seeking to take its students? What is its ultimate goal and end? When education is framed in secular and, ostensibly, neutral terms, it will no longer be able to serve the original, classical, and virtuous goals it originally pursued. Education divorced from metaphysics, teleology, and eschatology is worse than ineffective; it is ruinous to moral character, deleterious to human society, and dangerous to political institutions. If you teach generations of children that they are highly developed primates with verbal skills, that there is no objective moral standard or ultimate accountability, that authority equals oppression, that equality of outcome is more desirable than equality of opportunity, that personal happiness is the highest good, that personal identity is a fluid and self-determined reality, then soon you will have a society of morons that are more concerned to save whales than human babies, who think that drag queens are positive role models and acceptable entertainment for elementary school children, and who don't know how to define a woman. There is no neutrality, not in education, not anywhere.

What is the solution? In brief, to re-introduce humane education within an explicitly virtuous framework. The current system must be judged broken beyond repair and summarily abandoned. Government funding and oversight should be terminated, and school systems should be closed, being judged hopelessly compromised and demonstrably ineffective. In their place, families and local communities must take responsibility for the education of their children and embrace a model designed to cultivate prudence[4] and to “form a philosophical habit of mind.”[5]

Education must no longer be seen as primarily preparation for employment but rather as preparation for a virtuous, and consequently productive, life. As Kirk explains: “What humane learning used to impart was not miscellaneous information, a random accumulation of facts, but instead an integrated and ordered body of knowledge that would develop the philosophical habit of mind from which cast of mind one might find the way to wisdom of many sorts.”[6] True education seeks to form the character of a human person, equipping him to become virtuous by acquiring and applying wisdom. It seeks to do more than make him employable and controllable by statist overlords. It seeks to make him truly human: competent to discern the true, the good, and the beautiful; courageous to choose them over their alternatives; and strong and tough enough to endure opposition to them.

If a virtue-oriented model of education is to be implemented, then it must also be explicitly religious and, therefore, Christian. This is a point at which even many conservatives and classical scholars will balk, and the full argument would require more space than is possible here. But there is no neutrality. You cannot teach children that they are highly evolved beasts and expect them to act as other than beasts. You cannot assert that there is no god above, no objective truth below, and no ultimate accountability for one’s actions and expect them to live virtuous and moral lives. To say that education ought to be explicitly Christian is not to say every student must be compelled to become a Christian. Many of us were educated in a godless system and peacefully learned and then cheerfully rejected absurd notions of Darwinian evolution and moral relativism. Personal freedom is only possible in a moral and virtuous system. If Christ is Lord, then human beings have freedom to choose and moral agency. If he is not Lord, it is not a question of whether we will be dominated by fascists and totalitarians, but which and when. We will acknowledge Christ as Lord, or we will have chaos, in education as in society. –JME

[1] Russell Kirk, “Humane Learning in a Computer Age,” 1.

[2] Christopher Dawson, “Education and the State” in The Great Tradition, 629.

[3] Russell Kirk, “The Conservative Purpose of Liberal Education,” 1; cf. Dawson, 628.

[4] Kirk, “Conservative Purpose,” 2.

[5] Kirk, “Humane Learning,” 1.

[6] Ibid., 3.

Meditation on Preparing to Enjoy the Lord's Day

I write a brief meditation for our church to us on Saturday evenings as we prepare for worship. This is the one for July 10, 2022.

Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day. Are we ready for it? Do we long for it to begin? Do we view it as a day of rest and gladness for our souls? Or is it simply another Sunday? It is easy to take for granted the coming of the Lord’s Day. Many Christians spend little if any time thinking about or preparing for it. Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, by necessity, structure their lives around keeping the Sabbath once every week. We may rightly say this is because of a deficient understanding of the Sabbath law and a legalistic observance of it. We may rightly affirm that Christ has delivered us from such ceremonial strictures. But have we been set free in Christ so that we may think little or nothing of the Lord’s Day as it approaches or when it arrives? Have we not been set free from the old law so that we might serve the Lord with greater joy, freedom, and devotion?

This is not to guilt us into engaging in Lord’s Day preparation. As we’ve said many times before, the Sabbath is a day of joy and feasting, not of sadness and fasting. It is a blessing appointed for man, not a burden which man must observe and endure. The point is not guilt but encouragement. You would not enjoy a holiday with your family if you did not prepare for it. If you simply show up for vacation with all of your worries, cares, work, and distractions, you will find neither rest nor rejoicing in the consecrated time. So too, when we approach the Lord’s Day as just another day, albeit a day when we do not have to go to work first thing in the morning, when our minds are filled with worldly things and our day is filled with the distraction of this present age, then it is no wonder we find little joy or substance in the Christian Sabbath.

God has called us to rest and rejoice on the Lord’s Day. It is the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection and, therefore, our own. It is a festival that commemorates what was done and contemplates what God is still doing and will yet do. It is not true that we get from the Lord’s Day what we put into it. The grace that is communicated there is not from within us but given to us from above. But it is true that we will not get from it what God intends to give unless we first give ourselves to it and him. The blessings of the Lord’s Day are received by faith, as are all the blessings of redemption. So shake yourself free from the worries, work, and worldliness of this present age. Lift up your heads and behold your God. Delight yourself in the Son and the gift of his grace. Be filled with his Spirit, and sing like one who is intoxicated with the joy of the Lord. Christ is risen! Sin and death have been conquered! God’s children will live forevermore! --JME

2022 Reading Q2 Review

I have written occasional posts on my reading (HERE) and am posting quarterly summaries this year as last year  (2021: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4). My hope is that this will encourage some to adopt a more disciplined plan of reading or help others find books they may enjoy. I only log books that I read in their entirety (not just selections from, even if I complete most of the book). This year I set goals to read a specific number of books in six categories: theology, philosophy, history, classics, biographies, and re-reads. The last category includes books I re-read yearly, others I re-read every few years, and others that I do not re-read often but only occasionally for a specific purpose. It does not include every book I have read before and re-read for some reason this year.

I finished 31 books in the second quarter of 2022, six fewer than in the first quarter of the year. This included nine books of theology, five of philosophy, four on history, two classics, three biographies, and four re-reads. The remaining seven volumes were miscellaneous reads which did not fit into any of the six targeted categories. So far in 2022 I have read 14 works of theology, 11 of philosophy, 8 of history, 5 classics, 9 biographies, and 12 re-reads. I am ahead of the planned pace both for every category except classics—I planned to read twelve this year.

Here are three books I read in the second quarter, all short works in this case, that deserve special mention.

First, Christendom and the Nations by James B. Jordan is a work of Christian political philosophy. Jordan discusses how the Bible teaches us to think about nation, State, borders, treaties, and foreign policy. He also discusses the United Nations. The essays were written before the fall of the Soviet Union and have only been lightly edited since, but the content was still relevant, thought-provoking, and helpful in working out a Christian view of nations.

Second, Josef Pieper’s In Tune with the World is a short but dense philosophical monograph by one of my favorite modern philosophers. Pieper discusses the concept of festivity, its necessary components and context, and whether true festivals are possible apart from faith in and worship of God. Pieper is always thought-provoking, but his material requires careful reading and contemplation.

Third, Gashmu Saith It by Doug Wilson is a very brief but powerful, practical introduction to transformational ministry in a local church community and beyond. I wish every member of my congregation could read it. Wilson may be viewed as Lord Voldemort in many parts of Reformedom, but his insights on this topic are very helpful, tested, and have proven fruitful over time. There are good ideas here to learn and incorporate in local ministry and witness.

--JME