Beyond the aesthetic or cultural

I can well appreciate the concern that Edward Dowler articulates in his article on 18 December (subscription link though may become available after a few weeks). I think, however, that the ideas to reform canon law which he fears are not to individualise to a particular incumbent but rather to give churches the possibility of determining what might be suitable, including not to use traditional surplice, alb, stole or scarf. I suspect a reformed canon would have caveats about accountability to the wider church through the bishop. Let's have some realism -unimpeded licence is very unlikely to be granted. Concern for denim jackets is almost certainly to be dismissed as unworthy rhetoric. On the other hand, it seems to me that an appropriate sort of denim garment (jacket or otherwise) could be very appropriate for a presider at a biker Eucharist, perhaps.

It is worth looking at what actually goes on before forgetting that the straw men aren't real. We could look at practices in other than Anglican churches like the Methodists or Lutherans. We could also look at those CofE churches where traditional liturgical garb is not used for services where it is currently canonically specified. These, in actual fact, tend to have a dress code replacing late Roman gentleman's wear with late modernity's equivalent. I further note that quite often clergy who do this may wear a dog collar when in everyday mode they might not. Clearly, they are trying to be 'loving and faithful servants' of the rites in context. While the title of the piece suggested that we might get beyond the cultural, the reality is that we can't do so; we live in and through culture and retaining artefacts of previous cultures doesn't retain their original meanings.

The concern for maintaining traditional symbolic attire doesn't address the difficulty of the historical contingency of the adoption of these items of clothing and thus their symbolism. And it slides over the disconnectedness of the symbolism for 21st century Westerners. Cranmer wanted liturgy 'understanded of the people' and we got as far as changing words from Latin to Tudor and then to contemporary English. We didn't really get round to properly sorting out what ceremonial and vesturely language would be truly understanded of the people. Mr Dowler, if I read aright, would have us remain symbolically in the medieval period speaking a visual-ceremonial 'Latin' to symbolically late moderns.

The argument about standing in a line of continuity and history leaves out the many modifications and changes that have already gone on. It also gives too much importance to post-hoc rationalisations of accidents of history. Let's get past spats about tat and denim jackets and try to have a conversation about what contemporary gestural, ceremonial and visual cultures could offer to the renewal of our 'corporate body language' as we worship together.