I wonder… Clergy Collars

Hi, I am Pastor Jean-Daniel, the Anglican-United Christian Chaplain at McGill University and the youth and young adult coördinator for the United Church of Canada’s Montréal and Ottawa Conference, and I’m here to answer
questions about faith, religious people, or religious
practices, and today’s question comes from Kathryn in New York who wonders, “what’s going on with those white collars?
Why do some priests and pastors wear them and others do not? I know that most Catholic priests wear
them and you’re not Catholic. Excellent Question! What I’m wearing right now is called a
Roman collar or a clerical collar or a clergy collar and it is simply a white collar that goes with my black shirt and in many parts of the world
makes people realised that I am a pastor or priest, which is exactly when I hoped it
would do! And why I wear it. An important question of course is, “What does the Bible say about this?” And the answer, for better or worse, is
the Bible does not say anything about it at all. When the Bible doesn’t require or forbid something have a special word for that: Adiapohora, which is loosely
the Greek meaning, “Hmm?” Yet the tradition for most Christian
history has been that those who are full-time dedicated to the Church such as priests, pastors, monks, and nuns
have always looked distinct and different from everybody
else in the same way that the any other line work often has its own distinctive dress so that people can identify you and know what you’re doing and who you are. like all fashion clergy passion has
changed over time Like all fashion, clergy fashion
has changed over time. But unlike other fashion, clergy fashion has changed very slowly. This look more or less goes back to the mid-1800s, for example. Before that, in most Protestant traditions, clergy dressed like this: And in the Catholic tradition, often like this: The distinctive white-collar-with-black-shirt look first developed in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and eventually spread to the Church of England then to other Protestant traditions, and
after Vatican II in the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church. There are a few kinds collars just on logistical or fashion level. What I am wearing right now is called a neckband and collarette. The collarette is this black part that makes it look like there is a white notch, and I can actually take it off just
like that. And now how I have a solid white neck band which sometimes called a dog collar because it looks like a flee collar. And this style is
very popular in the United States with Episcopal clergy, although the style
collar doesn’t actually necessarily match somebody’s denomination. This comes off simply by undoing a pin on the back of my shirt and on the front of my shirt. So you see there is a pin right there that goes in a hole right here in my black shirt and the pin on the back. That’s one style. Another style is called a tab collar, which is just a black shirt where you slip in a white plastic tab over the top button. There also garments called Janies or
Dickies. These create the look wearing a shirt
under sweater or dress without having to wear the whole shirt. As far as what kind of traditions
or denominations Christian clergy come from who wear clergy collars and what kinds and ministries we do, the answer in fact is really diverse! While collars are very common for Roman Catholic priests, they don’t always wear them in their ministries. And they’re also very common in the Episcopal or Anglican traditions. There are other traditions like Lutherans,
Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congregationalists who very by region, by church, or by personal preference as to whether or not to wear them, and other traditions like Baptist,
Pentecostal, or the Disciples of Christ, where it’s rarer but still allowed. I for one choose to wear my collar because
it’s an opportunity to be a visible presence in the ministry Jesus Christ in the communities I serve. As I walk around the McGill campus and in downtown Montréal, people see me and they actually walk up to me with their prayer requests, with their needs, with their questions, and it’s a wonderful opportunity in my
life to do my ministry, to be visibly present for the community.
I have seen clergy collars at dances, at marches, at protests, at soup kitchens, where ever those of us who work in ministry want to make the presence of God known
and visible in lives of those around us we find that it is a helpful reminder of
what we’re doing. It’s not as important as what we’re
doing, but it helps us remember what we’re doing helps others
know why we’re there. If you have any questions big or small about religious people, religious practices
or religion, feel free to email me at [email protected]