Friends,

This coming Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and this Sunday we will be singing hymns and commissioning ministries that are meant to live into his ministry. I have every expectation that this will be a powerful service, and for some reason I cannot shake William Laud from my mind. William Laud, of course, was an Archbishop of Canterbury in the 17th century and was in office during a number of big controversies… well some of them were big, and others were big to him and his community, but just seem downright silly to us.

Before we get into the story, let me explain a bit about those fancy robes we wear on Sunday. In the Episcopal Church you will see priests wearing one of two things. The first is a cassock alb (white robe), cincture (robe belt thingy), stole (Jesus-scarf), and maybe a chasuble (fancy poncho). We are in Virginia, and for whatever reason we are more low-church (more protestant), so I recently had us switch to wearing a cassock (black button-up robe), surplice (white smock thingy) and a stole (same Jesus-scarf as before), because apparently this is the norm here. It’s not what I grew up with, but I like how the acolytes, choir and Eucharistic ministers are all wearing variations of the same thing. It’s a subtle reminder that we are all called to be ministers by right of our baptism, though our job descriptions may differ.

Ok, so that white smock thingy we wear that’s called a surplice, well that was a BIG deal during William Laud’s time as Archbishop of Canterbury. At that time, it was reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church, even though it has nothing innately to do with the Church in Rome, and people wanted to be certain the Roman Catholics did not come back into power in England. The surplice became the symbolic focal point for a tremendous amount of anti-Catholic/pro-Puritan sentiment, and people were mad, like storming into Church, stealing the surplices and throwing them into the privy mad. Like throwing pitch on clergy wearing them mad. Of course, William Laud did the most Anglican thing possible, and took a very calm and reasonable position. He refused to pander to the Puritan extremist movement, though it would have increased his lifespan, and he refused to appeal to the Roman Catholics either. He kept course in the middle-way. Eventually, he made a statement that surplices were not particularly Catholic, and that they help support modest clothing for clergy people while they are saying their prayers. I don’t want to make it seem like that he was executed for this belief in particular, but it certainly did not help.

Reading accounts of the uproar over surplices mystifies me, makes me giggle a bit, and also humbles me. In our place and time, almost no one knows what a surplice is, let alone has an opinion about them. It is impossible for me to imagine a circumstance where that became the issue that everyone talked about. Could you imagine hearing, “Did you hear about Bob? Well apparently, he’s pro-surplice! He’s off of our Christmas card list, and I’m going to throw a brick through his window.” The absurdity of this could lead us to think that we’ve grown as a society, but I doubt this is the case.

The whole surplice thing is bizarre because we are so far removed from its context, but it was very much real at the time. I wish I could time travel back and explain to people that they should give this particular thing up. It could have saved lives. When you are in the thick of things it is impossible to differentiate between the dumb controversies that people won’t understand centuries from now, and those things that are marking a turning point for society.

The Episcopal Church is trying (not always succeeding, but trying) to be honest with our history with slavery and racism, to make amends, and find productive ways of talking about race. In Churches that I love dearly, I have seen documents and public accounts that make it clear that when the Church was in the midst of the civil rights movement, those in authority were convinced that history would consigned the Civil Right Movement to the same category as people getting uppity about surplices. They were so confident in their position that friendships were ruined, controversies arose everywhere, church camps closed, people left Churches, and the Gospel was muffled. People killed to defend this sin, and they undoubtedly thought of themselves as righteous.

When we read scripture, we can see these dynamics play out time and time again. People were afraid of what Jesus represented, and they thought killing him in a gruesome manner would stop him. When his disciples began their ministries, they faced heaps of resistance on multiple fronts. We also see people like William Laud earn the ire of extremists for calling surplice exactly what it is, a modest piece of clothing. The saints who have come before us, whether they were disciples, clergy in remarkably weird and dangerous times, or civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. they are united in their ability to tell the truth. If I were in William Laud’s position, I probably would have taken an anti-surplice position purely for the reason that it would get some of the heat off of me. I hope that I would have marched with Martin Luther King Jr., but I will never know if that were the case.

Just because we can see more of the past than the generations before us, doesn’t mean we are any less blind than they were. There are heaps of stupid controversies around us, and there are mountains of controversies that are beckoning the world to be a bit more like God’s Kingdom, and we cannot tell the difference between the two. I urge you to speak the truth, but more importantly try to listen to it. If you find that person you want to strike from your Christmas card list, then invite them to Church, or to dinner, or on a walk, because they are just as blind as you, but may have a piece of the truth you cannot see.

-Nick