"Take thou authority to preach the Word of God": the preaching gown and the High Church tradition

The clergymen of the city and neighbourhood, though very well inclined to promote High Church principles, privileges, and prerogatives, had never committed themselves to tendencies which are somewhat too loosely called Puseyite practices. They all preached in their black gowns, as their fathers had done before them.

Such was the description given by Anthony Trollope in Barchester Towers of the High Church clergy of Barsetshire.  That reference to preaching in black gowns captures a feature of Anglican life and the High Church tradition almost entirely lost during the late 19th century.  Dr. Sacheverell's famous 1709 sermon 'The Perils of False Brethren, Both in Church, and State' was delivered in a black preaching gown, as were the sermons of Parson Jonathan Boucher in the parish of Queen Anne, Maryland, and Keble's Assize Sermon and Newman's Plain and Parochial Sermons.  And it was, of course, the established custom of numerous High Church parsons in their ordinary parishes, not unlike those of the fictional Barsetshire, from Restoration until well into the 19th century.

Two years before Keble preached his Assize Sermon, James Bassnett Mills wrote a traditional High Church apologia, An Apology for the Church of England: In Reply to the Cavils and Objections of Those Who Dissent From Her Communion.  In it, he defended the "plain and simple" vestments of Anglican clergy, "the Surplice is a plain white robe, the preaching gown is a plain black one".  Noting the patristic origins of the surplice, and how appropriate it is for the liturgy, he then reflected on the use of the black gown:

With respect to the Black gown, (worn only in the pulpit), we cannot but that it has been very appropriately chosen, because it not only represents a deadness to the world, as well as a sorrowful humiliation in the presence of God, but is also expressive of that grief and mourning which the Preacher's Office in the pulpit requires him to display for the wicked and sinful lives of men, whom in that place (i.e. the pulpit) he calls to conversion and repentance.

The "Preacher's Office".  The use of the term speaks of the seriousness with which the High Church tradition took the duty of preaching, a seriousness manifested in the preaching gown.  A century later, Percy Dearmer would look back and lament its loss:

The innovation of preaching in a surplice, once the cause of bitter party antagonism, has been for two generations pretty generally established ... That was a pity, I think; for, though the surplice is as lawful as the gown, the use of the surplice gives less variety and ‘point’; and it has helped in the deterioration of our preaching; for it is much easier to preach in a gown, and the face and hands (important aids to a good preacher) are freer and better seen. But then we must confess that for oratory, cassock, gown, and tippet only—without hood or bands—are best, though the hood is mentioned in the Prayer Book of 1549, and thus comes under the Ornaments Rubric - Robes and the Choir Habit (1933).

Dearmer echoes the statement from a century earlier: the gown embodies a "point", that preaching is an 'office' to be approached with seriousness in the Church's life and ministry.

Is this post, then, arguing for a restoration of the preaching gown?  Not necessarily (although it is worth noting that the Canons of the Church of Ireland state, "any member of the clergy shall be at liberty to wear a plain black gown while preaching").  Custom and uniformity - solid High Church virtues - might suggest that an attempt to restore this practice would be lacking in prudence.  What the practice of the black preaching gown does, however, suggest in contemporary circumstances is the need to restore a vibrant preaching culture, recognising that this is an integral part of the High Church tradition, a defining duty of the priest, and central to the life of the parish. As Christopher Wordsworth, a bearer of the High Church tradition, declared, preaching is a normative expression of the "ministerial work of remission":

Thus, then, the Ministers of Christ are rightly said to remit sins, because they awaken men from the sleep of sin, and dispose them to repentance by setting before them the terrors of the Lord for the guilty, and the promises of life eternal to the faithful, and by proclaiming in God's Name free pardon to all who repent and believe, through "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son which deanseth from all sin," (1 John i. 7,) and by preaching that Word which God, Who alone can remit sins by His own power, has appointed and commanded to be preached for the remission of sins.

Restoring the preaching gown might be impractical but this classical Anglican practice, rather than being condescendingly dismissed, does call us to restore the seriousness of the preaching office in the life of the parish and the ministry of the priest.

(The first illustration is from a deck of cards illustrating the Sacheverell affair: here Dr. Sacheverell - in black gown - prepares to enter the pulpit to preach his famous sermon.  The second is the pulpit in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, from which Keble preached the Assize Sermon on 14th July 1833.)