Dress-down Sundays: Church considers making clerical dress optional
By John Bingham, Telegraph:
Vicars could be free to conduct services in track suits and hoodies under new proposals by the Church of England to be seen as “relevant” in the modern world.
The Church’s House of Bishops has launched an official consultation about the possibility of relaxing canon law, which currently requires priests to wear traditional clerical robes when leading communion or special services such as weddings, baptisms or funerals.
It is the first formal step by the Church towards easing clerical vesture regulations which maintain a tradition dating back to late Roman times.
The move follows a debate in the Church’s decision-making General Synod in 2014 in which members called for the idea to be considered.
But opponents of a relaxation warned at the time that abandoning the legal requirement could leave the Church looking “slovenly”.
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