“BRIGHTER PARSONS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 680, 4 June 1929, Page 9

“BRIGHTER PARSONS”

NEW MOVEMENT NOTED IN BRITAIN NO BAGGY KNEES LONDON, May 25. A “Brighter Clergymen” movement, according to “The Tailor and Cutter,” has sprung into being. “Their baggy knees, dilapidated hats and lack-lustre garb, making their presence like a charity sermon,” the paper says, “no longer” exist.” “Now, by an unexpected awakening, they take an interest in their clothes, and the unrelieved, dull funereal black has become dark-grey, sil-ver-grey and also pin-striped, chalkstriped, and they wear even doublebreasted coats. Yet they are w'ithin the bounds of sobriety.” The paper makes these comments in an article dealing with the sartorial aspect of the famous Chelsea flower shop. It laments the shabby Londoners, in hard-bitten lounge suits and morning coats, green with time, whereas, it says, the clergy are much sprucer than they used to be, conveying the impression that they have disobeyed the prophet’s injunction to rend their hearts and not their garments. Weird Garb On the contrary, the Rev. Basil G. Bourehier, M.A., vicar of St. Jude-on-the Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, in an article in the Hampstead parish magazine, declares that few of the clegry have the courage to dress like reasonable human beings. They have, he says, a passion for wearing funeral black, like undertakers, dog-collars, and the weirdest headgear, which set up a barrier between the clergy and the laity. “Gaiters and aprons in 1929 are not as comely as the antique crinoline, and make the clergyman’s job harder, putting people off him,” he adds.