Robed Anglican mission? (1)

Cricketers are not quite cricketers in my view when they dress in clothes not coloured white (with cream sweater permissible). However the T20 and 50 over games are still cricket so I tolerate the coloured "pyjamas" worn for such occasions.

Of course fine games of cricket are played with no uniform at all - beach cricket, backyard cricket, church picnic cricket, street cricket, school playground cricket. And all cricket is good! (I don't understand why Genesis did not tell us about its creation on the eighth day.)

The question of appropriate robes and proper "to robe or not to robe" church has been batted around a bit recently. Ian Paul urged mitres tossed overboard, Catholicity and Covenanted responded, as did Liturgy, then the CofE GS changed rules re robing, to which Liturgy responded (and related previous posts are here and here).

Here I do not want to engage directly with any of those posts/news and thus I may risk repeating fine points already made. But before going further I am delighted to share the following, apposite quote and wonder if you can guess about what period in modern Anglican life it was written [answer at bottom of post]:

""...Anglican clergy were spending more time and energy debating what robes they should wear than addressing the great issues of the day and their effect upon the church's ability to fulfill the Great Commission. This was largely due to the disturbing effects of the Oxford Movement, and the increasing defensiveness among evangelicals of all denominations, in the face of the new thinking that was threatening traditional interpretations of the Bible and the inerrancy of Scripture. Evangelicals generally retreated into an obdurate and non-academic literalism that was plainly indefensible and was a set-back to evangelism among the more educated classes.""

That is, any post about robes and Anglican life should not be about robes alone but about how we fulfill the Great Commission (and what role robes might play in that fulfillment).

A first observation then is that the Anglican church may involve robes but it is not constituted by them. We are constituted by the Great Commission - by Jesus gathering the disciples together who worshipped him and received instruction to convey his teaching into the world, baptising those who responded and wished to become disciples.

Of course this commission constitutes 'the church' and all churches which are part of the one church of Christ. Our specific distinction or charism as Anglicans is that we are a church of Word and Sacrament, expressed through liturgies which themselves are faithful words expressing the gospel of gracious salvation. Our liturgies, we implicitly if not explicitly claim, protect and safeguard the gospel which we preach. In particular they safeguard the gospel from the vagaries of individual interpretation.

When our liturgies are unfaithful to the gospel of grace, or, indeed, we ditch liturgies, we are less than Anglican. The role of Synods in setting liturgies is not to maintain some "fine Anglican liturgical" tradition (beautiful and wonderful though that may be) but to ensure that our liturgies express the good news of Jesus Christ. In the spirit of the Great Commission this includes liturgies which are accessible to as many people as possible.

In sum, from this first observation: as Anglicans we are committed to liturgical worship as part of our constitution in respect of the Great Commission.

The question of robes, then, is a question of whether robes are necessitated by our liturgical worship or not. (Here I raise the question in a general way. The rubrics of the agreed, common liturgy of ACANZP are clear: priests at eucharists are to be robed. In this canonical sense, a particular answer is given: robes are necessitated in some instances by our liturgical worship).

First, we can give a descriptive answer to the question - descriptive of actual Anglican practice. In my personal experience of Anglican liturgical worship, including eucharistic worship, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Church of England, robes are not necessary to liturgical worship. Across such churches we have robed leadership of worship accessed by many, including young people and we have unrobed leadership of worship accessed by many, including young people. (Though in the church I know best, here in these islands, my observation is that more under 40s attend non-robed led services than robed led services). Put another way, faithful, proper Anglican church life does not require robes when viewed from the most primary foundation for church life, more primary than the 39A, the Great Commission. They are bene esse not esse of the church (beneficial but not essential).

Secondly, we can give a theological answer to the question: robes are not required by any instruction of our Lord, or by his apostles, or by any implicit requirement from the essence of great liturgy (which is to offer words for worship which are faithful to the gospel).

I want to underline the point above by noting carefully that some aspects of robing seem to draw scriptural motivation from (say) Leviticus and the wonderful robing worn by priests and attendants in the ancient tabernacle and temple. But this has nothing to do with scriptural requirement. Read Hebrews, please, and recall the once and for all, final and complete sacrifice of Christ our Great High Priest. Nothing about our worship as people of the New Covenant requires any continuation of requirements of the Old Covenant.

What we can usefully ask is whether robing is beneficial and the answer to that is a resounding Yes.
But I am out of time and I shall try to find a moment of time to elaborate that answer.

The citation above is taken from the book by Clifford Hill - The Wilberforce Connection. It was emailed to me by a friend and I do not know which page number it is taken from.