WUH-OH!! We have a bona fide fashion crisis in the Unitarian Universalist Association!!
I got home from a day off to find my inbox flooded with e-mails from outraged, concerned and/or snarky Unitarian Universalist colleagues regarding this latest option in clergy garb:
Here is a sort of stream-of-consciousness set of quotes from the off-line letters I got:
This is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen. It looks like a camp counselor shirt for a bizarre cult….Why did they have to choose that eyeball searing color? As if we don’t have bad enough taste…I am so glad I have the excuse of __________ so I can skip Phoenix this year. These are so embarrassing I don’t want to be associated with them. … It makes me so sick that UUs don’t wear collars any other time in their ministry except at rallies. This shirt is nothing more than a team jersey. It’s appalling. … I can just imagine how humiliated my church would be if they saw me in this hideous thing… I weep for my denomination….Sometimes we just make me sick. … usurpation of Christian symbols … It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in years…. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
Serious condemnation. My Facebook page has generated over 80 comments on the subject.
Here are some of them, and some with my additional comments in brackets.
“I’m having trouble with the logo. It’s a brand. Clerical shirts aren’t about brand.”
“I should own that I liked the idea initially, and voted for it seeing the actual shirt, however, it finally hit me that adding ANY symbol to a clergy shirt, even something as general as a plain cross, trivialized it.”
“…don’t you clergy have more than one shirt? Why can’t one wear a social justice-oriented clerical shirt when appropriate and if one chooses to, and wear a more traditional clerical shirt at other times?” [I think this an idea with some potential. However, I don’t think that the “other” shirt should be in team colors with a slogan on the sleeve. – PB]
“Non clergy myself, but I dislike the SOTSOL slogan. “We’re taking sides. Dibs on feel-good LOVE, so you get the big platter of leftover shameful HATE.” It’s our spin, reducing their argument to racist hatred, rather than what people who want an organized and fairly implemented immigration policy would consider their legitimate concern, and thus fans flames of intolerance, self-righteousness, and closed-mindedness. But at least we get to be on the side of love.”
“It’s tacky. It’s NASCAR tacky. Your response to cringe just proves you’re paying attention, V. [This made me LOL, but not happily. Several off-line commenters said that they were cautious to offer public chastisement because of class issues. One Southern writer said that the shirts reminded him of the uniforms worn by employees at Southern fried chicken chain, Church’s. Yes, Church’s. – PB]”
Donald “O’Bloggin” Wilson wrote,
“Wait a sec… since when are clerical vestments NOT used for dramatic effect, and to put out front and center statements steeped in an understanding of faith?
If that’s not what clerical garb is for, shouldn’t Beauty Tips for Ministers have closed at blog post?
As for not putting brands or slogans on shared symbols… I cry foul. The Church itself (whatever faith you claim the Church to be is) is a brand, and has been for hundreds of years (if not longer), and the same/similar symbols have taken different and additional meanings by different people for just as long.
If I understand your position, after this many years of following you, you would say that a member of the clergy SHOULD wear a standard clerical shirt and collar at a Side of Love event (in fact, if I took the time to look, I’m sure I could quote you). I would much rather you wear THIS shirt than put a Side of Love t-shirt on TOP of a standard one. [I do not agree with wearing clericals at rallies unless one usually wears them, but I do not feel strongly enough about this that I have been consistent with that message. I think I have flip-flopped on it, actually. – PB]
In heraldry, putting another symbol atop a flag or arms is called defacing, and it’s done specifically and intentionally to clarify meaning, and can be found on all sorts of historic and current church imagery. If I were a confused, questioning, demoralised gay youth watching my local Thanksgiving Day parade and I saw someone wearing the yellow shirt, that’s a symbol I KNOW, but it’s also different and when joined with the banners and the other symbols I see around such a group, that would drive me to ask “who are these people? Who is this faith leader, who wears this shirt and seems to accept me for who I am?” whereas in the same shirt and collar as the church my parents force me to every week, I’d avoid that minister like the plague, and in just a t-shirt, they’d just be another member of the mob.” [This is one of the more interesting comments in favor of the shirts that I got. – PB]
“How would people like it if Catholic priests started wearing garments that said “standing on the side of life” on them? Wouldn’t the general public start to get the impression that the Catholic faith was becoming excessively focused on the anti-abortion cause? (Indeed most people already feel this way about the present-day Catholic Church, even though they don’t literally wear their cultural/political beliefs on their clerical sleeves. But imagine how much *more* people would get that impression if they did wear clerical garments with such a slogan.) Now apply the same logic to UUs putting a slogan in favor of gay marriage on their clerical garments, and imagine how the general public is going to perceive UUism: “oh yeah, that’s the religion that all they talk about is how pro-gay they are.” There’s a place for promoting these kind of values, and it is not on clerical garments, IMO.” [I don’t consider the Standing on the Side of Love Campaign a pro-gay marriage campaign — it has broader aims than that, but this is an interesting point- PB]
The comments go on and on. One colleague provided half a dozen examples of clergy shirts with denominational logos on them, but all were small, all were crosses, and none were designed with the specific and exclusive purpose of being warn to rallies and protests in order to announce a sectarian group presence.
It doesn’t bother me that these shirts are ugly — the color is really garish but that’s just a funny problem to me (as in, “Oh my GOSH, WHO looks good in THIS color!” kind of vanity issue). What bothers me is that the clergy collar is an ecumenical garment that announces the Church’s pastoral presence. That Unitarian Universalists identify as non-Christian makes the adoption of the collar problematic in terms of identity integrity. Are you Christian or not? If you say “not,” then why wear clericals? Why not a tallis? Would that offend rabbis, to have a Unitarian Universalist effectively “impersonate” them? Why do our (sometimes emphatically) non-Christian colleagues want to don the collar so badly? I think the answer is obvious: out of a desire to broadcast spiritual and moral authority.
Fine. Then wear clericals. But please, let’s not use them as a team uniform. Because what the clergy who wear these shirts are doing is announcing not general spiritual and moral authority conferred upon them by virtue of their ordination by one of our congregations, they are communicating a non-verbal message that their spiritual and moral authority comes by virtue of their affiliation with a particular, historically-bound sectarian cause with an explicit political agenda. A major goal of the SOSL campaign is to influence American legislative policy. It is a faith-based political initiative. As a devoted ecumenist I find it the most disturbing yet expression of UU “terminal uniqueness” for us to re-interpret the shared ecumenical sartorial symbol of the clerical collar and brand it with our team colors and our cause.
I’m very, very gratified that we are having a serious debate about this, as it causes us to think deeply about who we are, the power of our visual statements, and (hopefully) our accountability to the broader community. True confessions: I think the design of the shirt is well done. The logo “heart on the sleeve” thing is not my cup of tea but I don’t find it “retch-worthy,” as several readers did.
You can see the bright yellow Standing On the Side of Love campaign t-shirts worn by many of our delegates to the General Assembly this summer in Charlotte, NC. They really do make a wonderful statement when worn by a large group. My personal recommendation for ministers wishing to identify as chaplains when joining SOSL acts of witness is to wear clericals and a SOSL pin or hat.
Passionate conversation is a creative expression. The minute it stops, we become a community of glass-eyed automatons. Thanks to all those who weighed in and are still talking about this. As one commenter wrote, “This is an education in itself.”
