In the beginning there were no distinctive garments for the clergy or for the celebration of the liturgy. Some leaders of the early Christian community even spoke out against the use of any distinctive clerical or liturgical garb. But human nature seeks structure and reinforcing symbols, and leaders may educate that impulse, but they cannot eradicate it.
The impulse toward symbol and ritual, toward marks of distinction in act, word, and dress works to communicate, underscore and celebrate the distinctiveness of an experience, accomplishment, role, or mission. This impulse reveals the language of the subconscious, expresses what words cannot express, presents in pictures what mere words cannot begin to discuss.
Our lives are filled with unspoken structure and reinforcing ritual that denote who we are, what role we play in society, what position we hold in an event, what others are to expect when they enter our homes, our work places, our public spaces—the rituals of walking on the right; the setting of a table; entry halls, family rooms, master suites; formats for letters and introductions; set procedures for opening and closing a business deal, a debate, or a meeting; titles; business suits, cocktail dresses, the “tribal” costumes of torn jeans and shaved heads. We live in a world filled with ritual in architecture, act and dress as much as any ancient or so-called primitive society. Our rituals are simply those we know and are familiar with to the point of seemingly never taking notice of them. We do not pay attention to them because they do well that which they are meant to do: function as subliminal signs and re-enforcers of an order of society and a system of values.
When our early Christian ancestors gathered to hear God’s word in scripture and remember the saving acts done in Christ Jesus, they were already engaged in ritual: a format of readings taken from the synagogues, a format of a community meal with its prayers of thanksgiving and blessing. When they gathered they instinctively wore their best, but these clothes were still the ordinary dress of ordinary people, the “sunday best” of the first century.
By the third century the leaders and officers of the community began to appear with their little badges of authority: a scarf draped over the shoulder in a special way, shoes embroidered with crosses. The apostles who had seen Jesus were now gone and their successors were making a simple statement by dressing in a teacher’s scarf and walking, as it were, in Christ’s shoes.
By the sixth century Roman dress attire was the custom for liturgical worship. As this style began to be challenged and displaced by the styles of invading peoples, a conservative impulse asserted itself and clung to the civilized, the dignified, the established, the ancient. Within a century the presiding ministers at the liturgy were no longer in secular dress. The secular of yesterday had become the priestly. By the eighth century, directives and rules began to appear as to whom could wear what and when.
This process has taken place over and over again in the history of vestments. The Reformation put aside the old Roman robes for the robes of the university, another reformation abandoned these for the dress of the day. Today the preacher’s coat has given way to the three-piece suit and wing tips of the tele-evangelist, and one day that civilized, dignified, established, and ancient three-piece suit may well appear in someone’s list of vestments and robes, and that someone will need to discuss how and why the suit and tie befit tradition and the celebration of faith.
Ritual in dress, and in every other aspect of being human, is simply our subliminal language, our collection of unspoken words, a type of short-hand to convey a great deal of information most succinctly.