WHY AND HOW I AM ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT [Sat, 6-24-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—WHY AND HOW I AM ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT [Sat, 6-24-23]

 

I’m one of the few men in our church—three or four on a normal Sunday, out of about fifty-- who wears a suit and tie to worship. I do it because I’m anti-establishment.

Don’t get me wrong; I do believe it’s okay to “come as you are.” One of the iconic moments early in our attendance at St. Mark’s was when two male ushers brought the offering up during the Doxology. One was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. The other was wearing a suit and tie. It said so nicely that we include everybody.

The problem is: casualness in everything has become establishment. I am sometimes criticized for “dressing up.” That sort of criticism, either personally or on social media, is the essence of the establishment mentality, regardless of how “anti-establishment” you might look.

A friend of our daughter, Katie Kennedy, the author, sent a photo of her father as a young man in 1946, going to the movies with two of his friends. He’s 100 now, and she wanted to show that he hasn’t changed much. In the photo, the three young men are wearing suits and ties to go to the movies!

Look at all the public photos from back then, even outdoor venues like baseball games, and you’ll see the same thing—suits and ties and fedoras for men, dresses and high heels and fancy hats for women.

Back then, we all wanted to be part of the establishment—government, economy, education, church—part of the mainstream of society, so when we went out in public, we dressed like the leaders of business and education and government and church dressed, to show that we belonged.

Then came the 1960s… and Viet Nam. It was the people in suits who sent us to die in Viet Nam. We no longer wanted to be part of the establishment. So we went braless, and wore bell-bottoms and t-shirts with slogans, and flowers in our long hair.

I was a campus minister then. One day I was standing on campus, watching a student demonstration, with a woman friend who was very precise in all her ways. A “well endowed” student came toward us, wearing a t-shirt, and obviously braless. My friend said, “She just looks so disorganized.”

Precisely the point for those students!

So, little by little, even the most formal among us started dressing down. I’d walk down a hallway in an academic building and look into a classroom and be unable to tell the professor from the students.

It felt so free, so comfortable! Why not be casual all the time?

The problem is that there is always an establishment. The anti-establishment becomes the establishment.

When that happens, the only way to maintain your credibility as anti is to be more and more “extreme,” the favorite word of the world of entertainment, and to “double down,” the favorite phrase of politicians.

As everything becomes more extreme, everything becomes more divided. That’s today’s establishment.

Or…

…you can wear a suit and tie to church. To show that you are anti-establishment.

John Robert McFarland