Althouse: "Beards of Ministry/A field guide for pastoral facial hair."

April 19, 2015

"Beards of Ministry/A field guide for pastoral facial hair."

An informative graphic.

(Via WaPo.)

14 comments:

SJ said...: Amusingly, of all the ministers I know, I can't think of one who wears facial hair like those.

(Though there was an older minister who sported an Abe-Lincoln style beard. Possibly because I knew him for most of my childhood, his style of beard is the one that makes me think "minister".); 4/19/15, 8:28 AM
rhhardin said...: It doesn't have the winter bicyclist.

That's hair anywhere it will grow.

Wind protection.; 4/19/15, 8:38 AM
Paddy O said...: Also, what your pastor's jeans say about their theology.; 4/19/15, 8:44 AM
Paddy O said...: Note my 10 o'clock shadow, by the way...; 4/19/15, 8:45 AM
Phil 314 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/19/15, 9:22 AM
buwaya said...: Shaved, short hair, wearing a soutane.
These are telling, though not dispositive, markers of sound theology.; 4/19/15, 9:24 AM
Phil 314 said...: I've seen several of these facial hair patterns in my time. One pattern, Goat Pharoah, is a parody of popular worship song singer,
David Crowder from his earlier "David Crowder Band" days. Now a solo artist with a much fuller beard and trucker hat he's got a mountain man look going on; 4/19/15, 9:27 AM
caplight45 said...: I got no facial hair and I got no hair "up there." I guess I'm square. Sounds like a country western song.

I tried a full beard once in my thirties after I had not shaved for a couple weeks while on vacation. When I stepped into the pulpit I could tell people were looking at me strangely but they couldn't figure out what was different about me. So I had to tell them I was growing a beard. That's how light my facial hair is. Kept it a year and ditched it much to my wife's pleasure.; 4/19/15, 10:06 AM
Phil 314 said...: As for "via WaPo" this is actually from "Christianity Today". I'm sure most WaPo readers don't get the allusions but it does give them the chance to once again chortle at the silly religionists.; 4/19/15, 10:16 AM
Phil 314 said...: Paddy O,
Your jeans link reminded me of Matt Chandler; he's of the "Jeans with Elaborate Crosses Stitched on the Back Pockets" variety.; 4/19/15, 10:25 AM
Xmas said...: Went in looking for pictures of Al Jourgensen. Left disappointed.; 4/19/15, 12:31 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: As Buwaya Puti suggests, beards were forbidden to Catholic clerics in the 1917 Code of Canon Law: before that time, the Roman Church tended to require shaving but not always or everywhere (and certain monastic orders always enjoined shaving). The Code now in force is silent about beards.; 4/19/15, 3:09 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Marc Puckett,

Interesting! There's a Chesterton essay somewhere taking apart a sentence from some critic or other saying that the Catholic Church has "tolerated strange heresies, including married and even bearded clergy." Married and even bearded! GKC says that it's a rare sentence where every last word is funny, but this one makes the grade, including "and" and especially "even."

Nonetheless, I didn't know about canon law.; 4/19/15, 5:03 PM
Marc in Eugene said...: "… Does the reader realise the despair that falls upon the hapless Catholic journalist at such moments; or how wild a prayer he may well send up...? What is the good of his laboriously beginning to explain that a married clergy is a matter of discipline and not doctrine, that it can therefore be allowed locally without heresy-- when all the time the man thinks a beard as important as a wife and more important than a false religion? What is the sense of explaining to him the peculiar historical circumstances that have led to preserving some local habits in Kiev or Warsaw, when the man at any moment may receive a mortal shock by seeing a bearded Franciscan walking through Wimbledon or Walham Green? What we want to get at is the mind of the man who can think so absurdly about us as to suppose we could have a horror of heresy, and then a weakness for heresy, and then a greater horror of hair. To what does he attribute all the inconsistent nonsense and inconsequent bathos that he associates with us? Does he think we are all joking; or all dreaming; or all out of our minds; or what does he think?"

The critic Chesterton refers to was an Anglican, I suppose, who was scandalised at what he perceived to be Roman 'inconsistency' in admitting former Orthodox clergy to the communion of the Catholic Church in what we would now call Ukraine.

The 1917 Code transformed the existing traditional consensus, as it were, of local and regional councils' decrees, episcopal decisions, custom, and just habitual practice, into positive law. (There was a long period in the 17th and 18th c when many of the Popes themselves wore beards, I think.); 4/19/15, 6:16 PM