Tag Archives: church

My Christian Brothers: Having No Beard Make You Weird

“The beard is a masculine ornament, given to us by God not for any practical purpose, but for our dignity.” – St. Augustine

(Roman Catholic brothers, consider skipping this post. I pick on you in it. And if you do not skip it, bear with me in love.)

This past Sunday I experienced something that made me realize, or at least form a theory for, why so few Roman Catholics have beards.

Think about it. This doesn’t prove anything, of course, but think about the Roman Catholics you know. Do any of them have beards? I can think of one or two of my own acquaintance, but overwhelmingly, they are clean-shaven.

Some of this, I believe, is connected with the roman-ness of the Roman Catholic church. Scipio Africanus, the man who defeated Hannibal, and scion of the mid-Republic, is said to have been the first Roman to shave. After him, the Roman fashion was always to be clean shaven, except for brief periods when imitating the Greeks might have been seen to have been fashionable. Shaving was a symbol of being Roman, usually over against being Greek, but also in comparison to the barbarian races.

Shaving was a rite of passage of religious significance for the pagan Romans, and a sign of manhood. Having a long beard meant slovenliness and squalor. The propensity of early Christians to grow a beard signaled two things: the eastern origins of their faith, and their willingness to be seen as other than Roman.

As Europe moved further into the Christian era, the barbarian Christians brought the beard back in. Men had beards. Warriors had beards. Knights had beards. Beardlessness was a sign of extreme youth, or of femininity.

Priests of the Western church began to shave. It became a symbol of celibacy. It became a symbol of control over the flesh and sin. Men have their appetites to kill and rut and grow beards, but the Roman priests overcame that through shavery.

According to a very interesting post at the Catholic Encyclopedia (the complexity of which will allow you to poke holes in this wee little post if you care to, although it will still hold water after you’re done):

The legislation requiring the beard to be shaved seems to have remained in force throughout the Middle Ages. Thus an ordinance of the Council of Toulouse, in 1119, threatened with excommunication the clerics who “like a layman allowed hair and beard to grow”, and Pope Alexander III ordained that clerics who nourished their hair and beard were to be shorn by their archdeacon, by force if necessary. This last decree was incorporated in the text of the canon law (Decretals of Gregory IX, III, tit. i, cap. vii). Durandus, finding mystical reasons for everything, according to his wont, tells us that “length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins. Hence clerics are directed to shave their beards; for the cutting of the hair of the beard, which is said to be nourished by the superfluous humours of the stomach, denotes that we ought to cut away the vices and sins which are a superfluous growth in us. Hence we shave our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the angels who remain always in the bloom of youth.” (Rationale, II, lib. XXXII.)

This body is a body of sin; the beard is an unleashing of the body. Therefore mortify the beard.

Thus the scholars of the West, inspired to shave by their connection to a cultural Rome that Frankish kings and Saxon peasants knew nothing of, and driven to shave by their desire to overcome concupiscence, became the clean-cheeked representatives of our faith.

But none of this, I propose, is the reason Roman Catholics today are still shaven.

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You may have heard that I have an awesome beard. A beard perhaps worthy even of El Cid, defender of Christians before the Moorish hordes, que en buenhora nació. His wife called him “the perfect beard”. His beard has a facebook page. Of his beard El Mio Cid himself hath said, “Thanks be to almighty God, it is long because it has had much loving care lavished on it. What reproach can you cast on my beard? All my life it has been my chief delight. No woman’s son has ever plucked it and no one… ever tore it.” Truly here, and not in the tonsured scriptoriums, was a paragon of Christian manliness in the Middle Ages.

But could El Mio Cid de Bivar, champion of Christendom, have taken the Lord’s Supper?

“Only if we practice intinction. That will permit the host to pass my mustache unmolested.”

My mustache runs over my lip, as I’m sure the mustache of El Cid Campeador did. This past Sunday, as one of the elders at my church handed me the chalice and I dragged deep and full of the wine, I got to enjoy a second sip courtesy of all the wine still caught in my mustache.

Think that’s gross? It’s just being human. Any dude with a mustache runs his lower lip over his mustache after taking a quaff of any drink, be it beer or water. But you couldn’t do that with transubstantiated wine.

So this is not a theological argument. Well, it is, but barely. It’s an anthropological one. My point is this: only dudes who shaved could have come up with a doctrine like the Roman Catholic one of transubstantiation. It is a doctrine that tries to drag earth, kicking and screaming, all the way up to heaven. But isn’t it our belief that the Kingdom of Heaven comes down to earth? This very real wine very really is Christ’s blood right here and right now. It has come down to you, and you may drink it and feast with it. Also, this very real man very really is God right here and right now. He has come down to you, and you may drink and feast with him. And while you’re at it, grow a beard with him, as he surely did.

Hence we shave our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the angels who remain always in the bloom of youth. Here’s a question of sacramental theology for you. Do you want to be like the angels, or do you want to be like our Lord Jesus?

We are meant to be glorified humans. If we begin to reject our humanity, we will twist our glory and come up with all sorts of weird ideas.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

When we mortify the flesh, we are to mortify our members, our arms and legs. These arms and legs are things like fornication and covetousness. We pluck those eyes out. This is very physical.

The new man is also very physical. Your new man may or may not be circumcised, but he certainly has bowels. And these are bowels of mercy.

We are not to cast aside all that is physical. We are to save it. We are to save men and their beards and their appetites. And if our priests tell us that it is best to not mate, we’ll be all weird when it comes to sex. If our priests tell us that this bread and wine is not so base as real bread and wine, we will become either aesthetes or drunkards.

And if our priests act like it’s best no to have a beard, we’ll go beardless.

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“I’m going there to see my Father. And finally get a decent shave.”

It is perilous to despise that which Jesus glorified. And we all do it. This has been a history of one weird scorn that developed in one corner of Christendom, and how it becomes part of a complex of ridicule for that which God has chosen to glorify. Ridiculing and despising that which God has glorified is what the world does. In this way the church is like the world.

If we despise wine, we will hate fellowship. If we despise sex, we will hate women. If we despise beards, we will hate brotherhood and masculinity. If we despise feasting, we will hate weddings and life together.

Don’t be like the angels. Figure out what sort of human Christians are supposed to be, and do that. Do I write you a new commandment, that all men must have beards? I do not write a new commandment, but an old commandment I write you. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

So I urge you, but do not command you: Grow out your beard, you son of a King! When he appears, we shall be like him! And if there’s beer at the right hand of God, my brother, I’ll buy the first hundred rounds if Jesus is clean-cheeked.

So Many Ways To Make Bread

A picture of my preacher with the one loaf in hand.

Our church does some things with the Lord’s Supper that I really like. For one, we use real wine (obviously! that’s the only option, right? I mean, right?). For another, we all share from one loaf. We’re still small enough to eat from one loaf, even at eighty strong. The loaf is torn in half, then each person tears of a piece for himself. To tell the truth, with an only sightly bigger loaf we could continue to tear off the healthy pieces that we do and still give bread to two hundred; it’s suprising how far the loaf stretches.

Another cool thing we do is the provision each Sunday by different families of the loaf. There’s a sign-up sheet, then an elder or a deacon makes a list and sends it out to the wives.

The bread tastes different every time. I never know which family brings what bread and what recipes, unless it’s our week to bring it. I think I know which family puts honey in their loaves, but I still have no idea who the crazy person who’s always putting herbs in the bread is.

And this is awesome, and only serves to bring us closer together as one body. For what is eating and drinking unworthily but despising brothers over issues of food and table? How easy and sanitary it is for churches to go out and buy bread made in a factory somewhere. Every Sunday I take the Lord’s body and blood, and it comes to me not only through the hands of the fallible men at the table, but through the hands of women who don’t do things the way I’d choose to do them. Somehow, whether it’s the way I’d choose or not, their work feeds me. Pastors and bakers alike.

This morning some silly thoughts reminded me of this. I ripped off my piece of bread and popped it in my mouth. Immediately I thought to myself, “Oh, this is the woman who never puts in enough salt.” But as I chewed I had a doubt. “Is it? I can’t quite tell. Not as much salt as it needs, for sure. Kimberly doesn’t like as much salt as I do either. I wonder why. Ooh! Is that oil?” Right as I was about to swallow I’d suddenly noticed that the bread had much more oil than my family normally uses, and it was really nice. In fact, more salt might have messed up the smoothing effect the oil had on ol’ bite n’ swallow.

There is only one loaf, and that is all there ever will be. And yet there are so many ways to make bread.

Academia Confirms: Martin Luther Loved Poop

Fo’ shizzle.

Danielle Mead Skjelver wants to tell you all about it. You can find an entire paper authored by her on Luther’s scatological expressions at German Hercules: The Impact of Scatology on the Definition of Martin Luther as a Man 1483-1546.

Apparently in medieval and Reformation Germany, poop jokes made you more manly.

Introduction: The writings of Martin Luther are among the most studied in the world. With words sublime, he gave the Christian God back to the common man, and yet Luther also spoke with shocking cruelty and vulgarity. Martin Luther’s employment of vulgarity, and specifically scatological vulgarity, in his writings and speech has drawn criticism, embarrassment, and accusations of psychological instability. But there was power in coarse language, for Martin Luther’s combative use of scatology defined him as a virile male in sixteenth century Germany. Brash and full of bravado, the scatology of Martin Luther lent him the appearance of fearlessness. Scatology in many societies is associated with the beer hall and the military, two bastions of masculinity (analogous to today’s ‘locker-room talk’). Even among elites in the Europe of Luther’s day, scatology was not unusual. This was particularly true in German speaking lands. In a time of strong proto-nationalism, his combative and demeaning brand of scatology, which was leveled against not only a spiritual but also a foreign enemy in the Papacy, secured for him the definition of virile German male. In spite of his emaciated condition from years of fasting, and later in life in spite of corpulence, and even in spite of his public proclamations that he proudly helped his wife wash diapers, Luther was ever the man in the eyes of both allies and enemies. His virility was largely the product of his aggressive use of scatological language, for in demeaning his enemies, Luther diminished their virility. His adversaries, however, vilified his character in such a way that their attacks emphasized Luther’s masculinity.

Marriage & Sexuality Debates: Giving Up The High Ground

Battles and kerfuffles erupt all the time between Christians and pagans, and between Christians and Christians. When that happens, why do those who use terms in a historically confirmed and orthodox way keep giving away that advantage and repackaging themselves? Certainly holding to an old or traditional idea doesn’t make you right. But if you do hold such a position, why would you give away in debate the advantage of getting to set the terms of the fight?

In this video I discuss how that has happened in some discussions on sexuality and marriage.

Homosexuality Among Christians: Not A Gift, But A Deep Wound

Jonathan Gonnerman recently explained at First Things “Why I Call Myself A Gay Christian”. Daniel Mattson then replied in the same publication, telling us “Why I Don’t Call Myself A Gay Christian”.

This problem of auto-naming by Christians who struggle with homosexual sin has been around for a while, and sadly the tendency seems to be toward adopting the name of the sin.

Of course, there is a sense in which every Christian can name himself as a sinner. I am a murderer, I am an adulterer, I am a thief. And this is true, as most Christians know and as Jesus taught, even if there was not an actual assassination, rendezvous, or break-in. This is a big part of the struggle for Christians. A Christian man lusts after a woman, he knows this makes him an adulterer; a Christian man lusts after a man, this makes him some sort of sinner…a fornicator, an adulterer, a sodomite, a homosexual. He feels he needs to name himself, so he does (and of course, he’s not going to choose sodomite).

This is valid in a true but limited sense. But in the ultimate ontological-identity-self-who-am-I sense it is not true. It must not be true. The thief who now servers Christ may be able to say “I was a thief” and even “I remain a thief” in certain contexts, but he no longer identifies himself as a thief. It is laughable to imagine that in response to the question “What are you?” he would say “I am a Christian thief.” No, he is simply a Christian.

That is how Christians who struggle with homosexual sin ought to identify themselves: as Christians. Full stop. No qualifications. Now if a friend says, “But I thought you were gay”, there might be explanations and qualifications. But not until then. It is important for every Christian that whatever life they have left behind and are leaving behind for the sake of Christ not be their identity.

One of the dangers of embracing the name “gay” or “homosexual” alongside Christian is the subsequent urge to justify it and to make it good. If the label is not wholly rejected, one is only a few steps from saying that homosexuality is a gift from God, perhaps because it makes one more sensitive or artistic (seriously, this actually happens). It also tempts us toward a false sense of identification with “the gay community”. I don’t mean that there should be not sense of identification…but there should be a detachment and freedom commensurate to one’s freedom in Christ. St. Paul ached deeply for the salvation of the Jews, but was the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is through the Church and its Gospel that we best minister to homosexuals, not through Christian homosexual therapy or support groups. We must all dive into the Church of Christ, and understand that housewives and engineers are closer to us than those we’ve left behind.

I am not saying, by the way, that a Christian who makes the mistake of identity I’ve described above is not a Christian. But it is a mistake we’re talking about here, and a harmful one. Our identity is in Christ.

Here end my words. Below is fully half of Mr. Mattson’s post (linked to above), which is an obnoxious level of quoting, but hey, I include it.

I think it is a mistake to view homosexuality as a gift, in and of itself. Those who identify as gay speak of the great gifts that supposedly flow from their homosexuality. But of course, any goods that are supposedly unique to homosexuality are common to man, and all that is good in man is the result of being made in the image and likeness of God. My career in the performing arts is not even indirectly caused by my same-sex attraction, but instead because God is the creator of music and beauty. I believe that great good can come as a result of living with this disordered inclination, but it only comes when I acknowledge it as a weakness, and in response, fall to my knees before the good God who looks upon me daily with “a serene and kindly countenance,” and comforts me with the words “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

The good that flows from the homosexual inclination is not an exceptional “otherness,” as Elizabeth Scalia seems to suggest. No, the good is the redemptive healing work of God that begins when we honestly acknowledge that homosexuality is a wound. If we do so, we can become “Wounded Healers,” in the way that Henri Nouwen viewed his own wounds, which we now know included same-sex attraction. Nouwen should be our model: humbly accepting the Church’s teachings, in all things, and abandoning the rest to Divine Providence. If we desire to bring the gay community into the family of God, it will not be through a celebration of homosexuality, or by changing the language of the Church in order to make it feel more welcoming to them. The path of evangelization is the cross. In recalling St. Paul’s success at evangelization, Ratzinger reminds us that “The success of his mission was not the fruit of great rhetorical art or pastoral prudence; the fruitfulness was tied to the suffering, to the communion in the passion with Christ.”

The gay community will become family when those of us in the Church who live with the inclination accept it for what it truly is: a deep wound within our persons which we joyfully choose to unite with the Suffering Christ, on behalf of those we love so dearly in the gay community. By his wounds we are healed, and by the acceptance and transformation of our wounds, through the love of Christ, the Holy Spirit will draw them home to their Heavenly Father.

Twelve Demons Rediscovered

Twelve small sculptures of demons dating to the early 15th century have been “rediscovered” at a church in Norfolk, England. Find the story here.

The most interesting part of the story is that the demons, each matched to an apostle, appear to be triumphing over the apostles. This is confounding scholars, who have come up with admittedly weak-sauce explanations for glee and dominant physical poses of the demons.

Truth is, probably just an artist who was angry, cynical, incompetent, or all three. And now we have to find a scholarly explanation for it!

I Want to Talk Like God Is Real & Is Here

I was speaking with a Mexican friend the other day. I told him he had a beautiful family, and he said, almost automatically, “Gracias a Dios.” Thanks to God. I don’t know why it struck me that time in particular, since it’s a very natural and unremarkable expression in Spanish. But it did strike me. It made be think how devoid of God-language English has become.

This is especially true of the benighted Frozen Chosen, of whom I am, at least marginally, one. But even if we come from a tradition that uses expressions that actually make it seem like the Lord Jesus might actually exist in a way that affects their lives, these phrases often feel very artificial. Pentecostals and every sort of gnostically-inclined Protestant sound clunky and overly pious when they insist on appending “Lord willing” as a qualifier at the end of any definite statement of plans in the near future based on this passage in James 4. It is used almost exclusively among people who will recognize it as a sign of to-be-admired piety, but seldom at work or in the company of the father-in-law. The more sacramental Anglicans might be comfortable with more Christian phrases, many from Scripture, that invoke God’s blessings in an everyday sort of way. Sadly that is only an accident of phrasing; there is nothing everyday about the Anglican and his liturgical language. There was once, but that is a relic of the past.

Also please understand that I’m not talking about buzzwords and catchphrases that the latest megachurch or youth movement or earnest book  has introduced. I’m talking about really universal phrases.

So ingrained, for good or ill, is “Thanks to God” in Portuguese that “I’m an atheist, thanks be to God” is a natural-sounding joke. And not quite on the same level as “Thank God I’m an atheist”, relief being the only emotion the English “thank God” is able to convey.

I don’t mean to call out any particular Christian traditions. For many years I and nearly all the Christians I’ve shared the table with (not just at my current church) haven’t even made pentecostal- or Anglican-level attempts at shaping our everyday automatic English this way. I’m not calling out, but I am resolving to add certain phrases to my vocabulary, and suggesting that you consider doing the same.

Of course, there are problems with Christ-saturated language. Or even just religiously saturated language. Portuguese and Spanish are my comparison gauges. Portuguese features a word that is used very commonly, oxalá, and Spanish has the same word, ojalá; it comes from the Muslim occupation of Iberia, and means literally “if Allah wills it”. Oxalá is used as a part of everyday speech, with almost none of its users knowing the word’s origins. It replaces “hopefully” and “keep your fingers crossed”.

There is an sense in which the use of certain Christian phrases can be like oxalá, that is, said reflexively and without any real thought or awareness of its meaning. It can even be done superstitiously. But that’s no reason not to do it yourself. Many people talk of the “churched” population of the South, of the ubiquity of churches here and the religiosity of Southerners as if it were an evil to be condemned as leading to inevitable hypocrisy. While the ubiquity of some form of Christianity in the South has its own problems, it is surely better to be Christ-haunted that to have no glimpse of Christ at all. Christian culture is good, and so is Christian language, even if it gets abused from time to time (or often). Some might be superstitious, some might take the Lord’s name in vain, but there are only two ways that will change. Either everyone forgets the name of the Lord, or all the righteous call upon him. It’s because I prefer the second option that I’m going to make an attempt to use certain phrases, which I’ll here list, in my everyday speech.

1. God be with you/Be with God. You can say it coming and going. You can use it to salute Christians and to bless unbelievers. And as these depart, you can say Go with God. The word “goodbye”, by the way, is an alteration of “God be with you”. Portuguese, like Spanish and French, says goodbye by saying “to God”.

2. God willing. I want to avoid using it after any mention of plans or the future, as in “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.” I grew up around people who felt guilty making any declarative statement about the future (I won’t say I wasn’t one) without using that phrase. But that can end up being a piety-stick that risks being as boastful as the men mentioned in James 4 were. I do, however, want to use it as an invocation, as an acknowledgment that although breathing and going to the supermarket are gifts of God, this other thing would be a special gift from my father. “God willing our baby will be born healthy.” “God willing my parents get here safely.” Or even, if you wish, “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.”

3. Thanks to God/Thank God. This is the most awkward one to use in English, but the one I am most anxious to introduce into my vocabulary, since I’m an ungrateful sort of fellow. In Portuguese it sounds very natural to say “Our baby was born healthy, graças a Deus.” Or “My parents got here safely, graças a Deus.” Using “thanks to God” in those sentences sounds stilted, but using “thank God” only sounds relieved. Relief is all that is left of that phrase in English.

4. God bless you. This is one in which English has a leg up on the Latin languages, which merely wish a sneezer “health!” But I, as have most English-speakers, have been trained to say simply “bless you”. Since I intend to invoke the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I will say “God bless you”. This is the one I’ve had the most success making a part of my speech patterns, because it’s the one that takes the least courage. If the mood is lighthearted I will say to a sneezer, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.”

I’m going to go for it. I’m going to use the phrases. Lord willing. And I’m going to try not to sound like an ass. I’m going to try to sound like I am a son of God, and that God is with me. Ask me in a while how that went.

No Such Thing As Too Much Assurance

From the magnificent John Barach.

You cannot give your children too much assurance of your love, and you do not need to — in fact, you must not — teach them to question their assurance in order to get them to toe the line and live the way they should.

And so it is with the church.

Presumption is deadly and pastors should preach the covenantal warnings of Scripture. But no one has ever perished because he had too much assurance, because he trusted too much that God loved him, that Jesus died for him, that the Spirit was working to glorify him.

His Love Is Serious

I would not have expected Sinead O’Connor to write one of the sexiest songs in the universe, but it seems she has. For over ten years now she has been very, how to put it, spiritually active in some fringe groups of the Roman Catholic church, but I haven’t really kept track of her. I would guess that she’s a big fan of the mystics, and if she is, she seems to have taken the “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” lesson to heart.

If there’s one thing that permeates this tune besides sexiness it’s contentment. And that’s how I like my sexiness, thank you very much. A definitive love song about romance, domesticity, and fruitfulness. With just a touch of sexual innuendo. I’m going to have to get home quick so I can give wifey a buggy ride of her own.

(There’s more to this post below the video.)

The song is 4th and Vine from the 2012 album How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? It is interesting to note, as an aside, that a Catholic church on 4th and Vine in Philadelphia was burnt down by rioters in the 1840s.

Why do I like this song so much? Because it’s perfectly feminine, in praise and in love with the perfectly masculine.

This from the woman who ten years ago declared herself a lesbian, then married a man less than a year later. The contentment part doesn’t seem to have quite settled in with the artist (she’s been married three times since she was ordained as a priestess in a break-away Roman Catholic group). So I’m not saying she’s a model, but the song certainly is.

She makes herself pretty, she knows it will “look real nice” for her man, who is sweet, gentle, kind, and “no wuss”. They’re going to live happily ever after, so they go down to the church and get married. They’re going to have six kids, who will sing all the time because “their mama and their pa a-love them so right”. And it makes her warm inside when he takes her for a buggy ride.

Aw yeah.

The Wearing of The Blue: St. Paddy’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated by Anglicans (including the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutherans. And oh, yeah, the Catholic Church.

I love Irish music. The Pogues and The Dubliners are in constant rotation at the ol’ Giant Manse. I love the songs about whiskey, and lost love, and hangings, and whiskey, and shipwrecks, and immigration, and evil landlords, and whiskey. I don’t love so much the nationalistic songs. Don’t get me wrong; I like the tunes that bemoan the enmity between green and orange; I like some of the war songs, but not the ones that reek of 19th century nationalism.

The history of the conflict for Ireland is complicated and ugly. But as ugly as war and rebellion and empire can be, it was not ethnicity or religion that made women and children fair game during the 20th century. It was Republicanism. It was nationalism.

The Rebellion of 1798 was an Irish attempt to replicate the French Revolution, a godless ruthless thing if ever there was one. In fact, it was supported financially and militarily by the French Republic (this was before Napoleon). Those are the roots of Irish nationalism. And those are the roots of wearing green!

As a Reformed Christian, I know dudes who wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day. Their thinking is, Green for papists, Orange for Presbyterians. I’m Presbyterian, so I’ll wear orange.

I certainly won’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. I enjoy opposing dead and nearly-dead political movements, and Irish Republicanism is something I don’t mind saying I oppose (even though I know it will seem to some that I’m choosing to side with the bully in a playground fight). St. Patrick’s Day is a religious feast day. It ought to be celebrated as such. And as it happens, the wearing of the green has nothing to do with St. Patrick.

St. Patrick’s color used to be blue. For 1500 years it was blue. When the Republicans co-opted Irish patriotism and religion, Saint Paddy started being depicted wearing green instead of blue.

I’m not going to wear green on St. Paddy’s Day. Pinch me if you dare, little man. As much as I love my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, I’m not willing to identify with such a deeply fallen and troubled church. Or, more importantly and as mentioned above, with what the Roman church has syncretized with in Ireland: political 19th-century style nationalism.

I’m not going to wear orange. I’ve done it a couple of times, just to not wear green, and because I do trace my ecclesiastical and blood roots back to the Orange of Presbyterianism. But I also don’t want to be an ass. I am a bit of a provocateur, but I recognize that sometimes it’s too much. Wearing orange can make it seem like you’re saying, “Sure wish the fighting in Ireland were back on, and that the Protestants were kicking some papist butt.” Which is not a good thing to say.

Consider wearing blue this St. Paddy’s Day, as I am. How irenic of us it will be! There’s a shade of blue actually known as St. Patrick’s Blue. On this day you can with sartorial ease state your desire that the Western churches reunite one day in sweet peace and harmony.

And you’ll also be taking a stand against green beer. Which is no bad thing.