The staff of Lambeth Palace put great effort into doing many, many important and good things. I know this because I know people who either work, or have worked, there, and so I appreciate they operate under huge pressure, often in the public eye. And of course, the things they get right go largely unnoticed, while the things they get even slightly wrong get trumpeted across social media at the very least. So I feel a little churlish blogging about this, and can only hope my colleagues will forgive me. However, this incident is a helpful example of a bigger issue which we need to examine as a Church.

So, lounge suits. For anyone who hasn’t heard, the first women ordained priest in 1994 have been invited to Garden Parties at Lambeth Palace to celebrate the 25th anniversary of this important milestone for the Church of England. It is a lovely thing to do. Beautiful invitations were posted. Dress code: lounge suits.

It is more than a little ironic that, for an event celebrating the anniversary of a huge step forward for gender equality, women are advised on what to wear in terms of male dress. At least, we assume that is the case – if you Google “lounge suit women” the results are a series of women wearing pyjamas! I don’t think that was the intention…

Of course, it is just following etiquette. For the uninitiated, the gradations of attire go:

• White tie with decorations (e.g. wear your medals)
• White tie (also known as “full evening dress”, “tails” or “dress suit” – there are complicated rules about waistcoats)
• Black tie (also known as “evening dress”)
• Morning dress (also known as “formal day dress” or “what you would wear as a guest to a wedding”)
• Lounge Suits (sort of formal but not as formal as the above)
• Smart Casual (relaxed but don’t come as a scruff)

There are also Highland Dress (where a woman wears a skirt long enough to remain decent while dancing a reel) and Country Clothing (think Penelope Keith in “To the Manor Born”)

Thanks Debretts.com.

You see, until this week, I was the uninitiated. I had never heard the dress code “lounge suits” before. With a mildly cultured Scottish accent, a university education and all the experience that goes with a medical training and almost a decade of parish ministry, I can blag it in most of the social situations life throws at me. But my maternal grandfather was a painter and decorator and my paternal grandfather was a store man. I don’t come from the upper class, public school Oxbridge milieu where “how to put on a complicated formal waistcoat and when to wear one” is part of the education alongside English Literature and Organic Chemistry…

Lounge suits therefore isn’t just exclusionary in terms of gender – it excludes in terms of class.

Bless them, Lambeth couldn’t do right for doing wrong. If they hadn’t said “lounge suits” and said something more sensible like “clericals optional, suggest smart dress and jacket or similar”, undoubtedly someone somewhere would be chuntering about the dumbing down of the Church of England. There would be complaints that to use intelligible English in place of elitist jargon is an insult to both the guest and the institution. As if dignity and beauty are offended by making space for the gift of the other.

I am reminded of a Susan Howatch novel, Glamorous Powers, where the imperious Father Darcy, Abbot General of the fictional Fordite Order, selects between two protégées who are candidates to be his successor. He decided on the one who has breeding. The other, the hero of the tale, is the son of a parlourmaid, and would serve cheap port and young claret to distinguished guests and that would not do at all. To lead this Anglican institution, one had to know How Things Were Done!

However, there is a kinder interpretation of any resistance to change. With the jargon comes rules and clear expectations. (Well, almost – as Debretts devote a webpage to describing each gradation, it becomes clear that things may not always be quite so clear-cut, and judgement and experience will come into play. Notably, the expectations for women are much less defined than for the men.) The caring argument for retaining the jargon goes that my lately-of-the-middle-class self will not experience the ignominy of turning up to an event in the wrong sort of frock. However, such thinking assumes that wearing the right sort of frock matters and that I will feel crushed if I get it wrong.

(Can I gently reassure any so concerned that if I am going anywhere where I am unsure of what the expectations around dress might be, I am perfectly capable of asking. And if I am wearing something where I feel like the bee’s knees and where I have made an effort to honour my host, is it really good breeding to disdain my efforts? Lastly, getting many things wrong would crush me. Wearing the wrong frock is not one of them.)

At times, in the Church of England, whilst proclaiming the Gospel of Christ who taught that the first shall be last and the last first, whilst making all the right noises about diversity of life experience, there seems to be an entrenched belief that inclusion is about helping others to be “as good as the old boys” rather than recognising other sorts of good. There is a benign paternalism that is willing to introduce others to the game. They just don’t realise that all this tells women and those from the working class and people from other cultures and backgrounds is “This is not your game.”

Creating a round table in the Church of England is going to be about more than inviting a few women, people from estates and people of colour to join in the game. It might be about reviewing the game itself. For a game in which the “right” thing to do is to tell a group of brave, faithful, tenacious, pioneering women that they should wear “lounge suits” is very wrong indeed.

Of course, I do understand that inviting others to share the rules is more comfortable than abandoning them. For if we do not retain these etiquettes, well nobody will be quite sure what is the right thing to do. Maybe those who have been raised from the cradle to know when to wear country wear and when to wear medals will be left asking the same questions that face the rest of us e.g. What exactly should I wear to an Archbishop’s Garden Party? Without the rules, it may be a bit more chaotic, a bit more mutual, a bit more creative and we may discover that wearing the “right” thing is a bit less important than we imagine. What matters in the end is that we are clothed in Christ. Which brings me nicely to my final point…

Christianity is a faith in which death precedes transformation and life beyond our imagining. In that spirit, can I suggest that those vestiges of elitist culture which can inhabit particularly the higher echelons of our Church are allowed to die that the Church might truly live. But I am no iconoclast. I also suggest that we can do this in the sure and certain hope that this death will lead to the resurrection of all that is good in this tradition as it makes space for the experience of others. There is nothing to be lost but isolation. There is a better game to be played on the other side.

And people can wear their lounge suits if they want.