The Church of England appears to be in full scale retreat from the job of marrying people. And this is happening as the new government has indicated it intends to reform marriage law, which could have significant implications for the Church of England.

One of the historic articles of faith in the good old CofE has been that no matter how empty the pews are on a Sunday, somehow people will find their way back to Church for its role in the holy trinity of life events, to hatch, match and dispatch - to christen babies, marry couples and bury the dead.

Mouse is hear to beak the news that the evidence appears to show that this belief is build upon sand. Perhaps partly in response to this context, major reforms of marriage laws is planned and the new government has committed to take this forward.

In 2022 the Law Commission published a review of 'outdated wedding laws'. This review made a series of recommendations, including:

• equalising the marriage law across different religions and beliefs, removing the privileged position the Church of England holds in marriage law and allowing ministers of other religions and non-religious groups (notably humanists) to conduct legal marriages
• liberalise the law which restricts weddings to licenced venues - typically places of worship or licenced secular venues - and move to a model where the officiant is authorised, rather than the venue
• removing the distinction between religious and civil weddings and moving to a legal construct for a licenced officiant to undertake weddings on an equal basis, retaining freedom for religious weddings to hold to their formularies and traditions
• modernising the legal process around weddings, such as allowing couples to give notice of a wedding online

These proposals are only hypothetical, however, and we wait to hear more detail of the new government's intentions in this area. Their manifesto contained only a pledge to reform the law in relation to cohabiting couples, but they have made noises about legalising humanist weddings, and given a nod to the Law Commissions proposals. In response to a Parliamentary question on this issue in July, for example, Justice Minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said:

We are aware that weddings are an important issue for humanists and that the Law Commission has made recommendations for wholesale change of weddings law in July 2022. We will take the time as a new Government to properly consider this issue. We will set out our next steps on our manifesto commitment to strengthen rights and protections for women in cohabitating couples in the near future.

Within this context, one would expect the Church of England to be a significant voice. Many believe that it is the Church of England which marries many, if not most, couples in England. But this is not so.

Statistics on weddings have been dropped from the Church's annual statistical summary, Statistics for Mission, perhaps an indication of their status, but they are still available from the Office of National Statistics (where they combine the numbers for England and Wales). Mouse has run the numbers.

You don't need to be a stats wizard to see that the gap between the blue line (all marriages between opposite-sex couples) and the yellow line (marriages in the Church of England and Church in Wales) is getting bigger. In fact, the proportion of CofE / CiW marriages has dropped from around half in the early 1960s to 13% in 2022.

Church-watchers with long memories will remember the launch of a major initiative back in 2010 called the Weddings Project. It was designed to catch de-churched or un-churched couples on the look-out for a special place and way to tie the knot. A national team was assembled, resourced developed to support parishes and dioceses were engaged. There were even suggestions that it was making a difference. The decline was, to some extent stemmed. The proportion of CofE / CiW weddings stabilised at around 24% for a while.

But it was canned. 

It didn't help the project that following the legalisation of gay marriage in 2013, the CofE project was constantly followed by the caveat that church weddings are only available to opposite-sex couples, in an age when an increasing number of marriages were between same-sex couples, and opposition to gay marriage is often simply considered homophobia. 

But the reason for killing the initiative was that the strategy in vogue for church growth was swinging away from centralised teams pushing for growth and swinging towards centralised bodies dishing out cash to big churches to help them plant new churches or revive flagging churches under a new 'Vision and Strategy'. A number of central teams were abolished and the Life Events team was one of them. Since that time the decline in the proportion of weddings held in the Church of England or Church in Wales has accelerated.

Whether this new vision and strategy for church growth will work or not remains to be seen, but at least by the measure of wedding numbers the strategy is yet to show any fruits. Mouse is always very conscious that individual's decisions around where and how to marry depend on many things outside the control of the Church. But it is hard to believe that the church can have no impact.

Mouse's take on all this is that we are failing in this area. Whatever your views on same sex weddings, a full scale retreat from marriage cannot be good news for the Church.

Latest tracking survey reveals an increase in belief in God in the UK. But it isn't all good news.

Mouse's friend Justin Brierley has written a fascinating book called The Surprising Rebirth in Belief in God. His thesis is that the new atheist revolutionaries, including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens have rather gone out of fashion and newer generations are beginning to show greater interest in Christianity than previous generations.

If Church attendance in the UK is anything to go by, however, there has not yet been a reversal in the long term trend of decline. While there are growing churches in the UK, Mouse is yet to see any evidence that there is statistically significant levels of growth and many growing churches face accusations that their growth comes at the expense of other churches in their local area.

Similarly, the landmark British Social Attitudes survey has asked about religious affiliation for decades and the trend line has not budged in years - those who report they are a Christian fall year-on-year and those who claim no religion rises.

So this Mouse is always pretty sceptical when he hears preachers claiming that revival is just around the corner.

However, attendance and affiliation tell us little about belief. To that end, YouGov have been tracking a couple of very basic questions about belief in God for the past five years, which gives us a couple of tasty statistical morsels to get our teeth into.

There are a few striking headlines. The first is that there appears to have been a small but notable trend over the five year period of increase in belief in god (from 26% to 30%) and decrease in disbelief in god (41% to 38%). Revival it is not, but the trend appears steady and consistent.

Digging into the data tables it is striking that the increase seems to have been greatest among the 18-24 demographic, jumping from 22% who reported a belief in god to 39% over the five year period. Mouse suggests some caution due to the small sample size, but by Mouse's slightly sketchy understanding of statistics this appears to be statistically significant to a reasonable degree of confidence.

It is also notable that the increase is entirely accounted for by men. The numbers for women have not budged, although in absolute terms men remain far more likely to say they do not believe in god (43% Vs 32%).

So should we rejoice at this positive trend in belief? Unfortunately, the data has a sting in the tail. YouGov also asked about views on religion. When asked that question, only 20% of Brits said that 'Religion on the whole has a positive influence on the world' and a whopping 57% said that it had a negative influence.

To put that poll rating in perspective, religion is less liked than Rishi Sunak.

It is fair to say that the religion question is significantly broader than the belief question, in that respondents are likely to think of the effect of religion globally, which may draw them to conflict zones and issues of extremism. It is certainly not a question directing people to say whether they think the Church of England is a positive influence on the world.

Nevertheless, it is a hard sell to convince people to join a religion when they think religion is a negative force in the world.

Overall, however, Mouse is heartened by this data. Since around 1% if the population currently attend church, there does appear to be an opportunity to have a chat with the other 29% of the population who hold some form of belief in god.

Congratulations to top historians and podcasters Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on their recent podcast on the history of beards. Their podcast, The Rest is History, has taken the podcast world by storm, featuring in the top handful of podcasts in numerous rankings. In June, the Telegraph reported that it has had 200m downloads, and it has spawned a monthly subscription club for additional content and a chat community, two books and a live tour.

Ancient historian Tom Holland, well known in Christian circles for his book Dominion, and modern historian Dominic Dandbrook discuss an immensely varied range of historical topics from the profound to the frivolous. And so, it was natural that they undertook a two-part mini-series on the history of the beard.

Mouse can report that it was overall well-researched and entertainingly presented. Key aspects of beard history were suitably covered. They began, as Mouse's Beard Theology does in the cradle of civilisation in Mesopotamia, where kings would wear long beards to show their status as manly warriors, but priests would shave to present themselves as pure before the gods. They cover Roman and Greek beards, with a strong showing from top ancient historian Holland on point.

The series moved swiftly into the modern period. Had there been more time available they might have dwelled longer on the split between the Latin and Orthodox Church in 1054 in which the beard featured strongly. For Mouse, that story is emblematic of the role of beards through history - as markers of identity. 

The story Holland and Sandbrook told about the modern era was focused more into fashion than theology, which is understandable. However, there remains a theological underpinning which could have been explored further with more time. With the space Mouse had in his book to expand on the topic he was able to tell more of the story through the medieval period, where the first beard theology was written by Abbot Burchard who theorised that priests should shave their outer beard as a sign of humility but develop their 'inner beard'.

The modern church had an uneasy relationship with the beard through the 1960s and 70s when it was emblematic of rebellious sub-cultures, before making its peace with the beard eventually leading to Archbishop Rowan Williams winning the coveted Beard of The Year trophy.

Mouse highly recommends The Rest is History in general and these episodes in particular. And if you enjoy it why not expand on it with Mouse's Beard Theology where you can also read about Henry VIII's beard-growing competition with Francis I of France, why the Devil has a beard and many other entertaining tales.

Image created with Microsoft Designer AI

Sometimes, Mouse finds something that sounds totally bizarre, and yet, for centuries was considered totally normal. For example, he has written at length on the theological importance of beards. With the resurrection of The Church Mouse Blog, I'll be sharing a few more of these stories in the weeks and months ahead. Today, we have the fable of the foreskin - Jesus’s foreskin, to be precise. But before we get there, we need to back up a little.

The history of relics is worthy of a full post in its own right. It is often wrongly assumed that the veneration of relics was a medieval invention concocted by rapacious religious authorities to dupe and exploit the unsuspecting faithful. In fact, the veneration of relics goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. Drawing on stories from the Bible of the miraculous effect of touching the bones of the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 13 or the healing of the bleeding woman by touching Jesus’s cloak, relics have always been a focus for veneration. This was taken for granted by writers like Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom.

The Church’s position of relics was first formalised at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. They agreed that only God performs miracles and only God is worthy of worship, so icons and relics are not worshipped and contain no inherent magical qualities. However, they could act as a focus of worship of God, and the saints could intercede on our behalf with God. The council concluded (my emphasis):

The divine apostle Paul said: The sins of some people are manifest, those of others appear later. Some sins take the front rank but others follow in their footsteps. Thus in the train of the impious heresy of the defamers of Christians, many other impieties appeared. Just as those heretics removed the sight of venerable icons from the church, they also abandoned other customs, which should now be renewed and which should be in vigour in virtue of both written and unwritten legislation. Therefore we decree that in venerable churches consecrated without relics of the holy martyrs, the installation of relics should take place along with the usual prayers. And if in future any bishop is found out consecrating a church without relics, let him be deposed as someone who has flouted the ecclesiastical traditions.

Thus, the Church formally established the requirement for all Churches to have a relic, and the hunt and trade in relics boomed, alongside the practice of pilgrimage to venerate a particularly holy saint or martyr’s relics - particularly those with a proven track record of miraculous results.

By the 13th century, the sale of fake relics and the exploitation surrounding them had become sufficiently embarrassing for the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III in 1215 to decree:

The Christian religion is frequently disparaged because certain people put saints’ relics up for sale and display them indiscriminately. In order that it may not be disparaged in the future, we ordain by this present decree that henceforth ancient relics shall not be displayed outside a reliquary or be put up for sale. As for newly discovered relics, let no one presume to venerate them publicly unless they have previously been approved by the authority of the Roman pontiff. Prelates, moreover, should not in future allow those who come to their churches, in order to venerate, to be deceived by lying stories or false documents, as has commonly happened in many places on account of the desire for profit. We also forbid the recognition of alms-collectors, some of whom deceive other people by proposing various errors in their preaching, unless they show authentic letters from the apostolic see or from the diocesan bishop. Even then they shall not be permitted to put before the people anything beyond what is contained in the letters.

Alongside this belief in relics was a particular belief in the physical resurrection. The resurrection of the dead is a central Christian belief from the earliest times, but ideas about exactly how this will happen have evolved. 

The physical resurrection expected by the average early medieval or medieval Christian involved the reconstitution of the former earthly body. They would literally rise from the grave. This caused a great deal of theological gymnastics around what constituted the essential matter of the person which would form their resurrected body and which was incidental material which would not. Not every toenail clipping was believed to be glued back to those resurrected, but surely they needed arms and legs.

This even included another strange obsession with what would theoretically happen to the body of a Christian baby which had died after existing exclusively on a cannibalistic diet - since all of their body was made up of other people’s bodies, would all of that matter reform into their original owner’s resurrected bodies and if so, would there be anything left of the cannibal baby at the resurrection? The matter was never conclusively decided.

This belief in physical resurrection led to a particular reverence for saints' bones as it was believed they continued to hold some essence of the saint after their death, and the bone would be reunited with the original owner's body when the Lord returns and there is a physical resurrection of the dead. 

Once again, it was at the Fourth Lateran Council that the nature of the physical resurrection was first formalised in Church teaching, which concluded (my emphasis):

He [Christ] will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their deserts, whether these be good or bad; for the latter perpetual punishment with the devil, for the former eternal glory with Christ.

It is within this belief system that one particular relic emerged - that of Jesus’s foreskin.

Jesus’s circumcision is attested in Luke chapter 2, with the presentation of Jesus at the temple for the traditional rites. Theologians began to speculate about what happened to Jesus’s circumcised foreskin, however. Surely, Jesus’s body was incorruptible, so any part of it which was separated from His body would not decay and would presumably be reunited with the rest of His body when He returns and ushers in the resurrection of the faithful.

Our first evidence of stories about the Holy Prepuce (foreskin) appear around the fifth or sixth centuries with the apocryphal Syriac Infancy Gospel. Two 12th-century copies remain, containing the story that the Holy Prepuce was preserved in an alabaster box.

The relic shot to fame at the start of the 9th century. Charlemagne established an empire of a size not seen since the fall of the Western Roman Empire across continental Europe and reclaimed the legacy of those Roman Emperors by establishing the Holy Roman Empire. He did this with the backing of the papacy and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in AD800. Christmas Day of that year, Charlemagne made a gift to Pope Leo III of the relic of the Holy Prepuce. 

Provenance for the relic was clearly an issue, so Charlemagne made the irrefutable and unprovable claim that it had been given to him by an angel while he was praying at the Holy Sepulchre. Leo III placed the relic under the altar of the Chapel of St Lawrence in Rome, originally the private chapel of the papacy.

Sadly for Charlemagne, numerous rival claims to hold the relic proliferated. Researcher David Farley identified dozens of medieval churches which claim to have the relic.

Discussion of Jesus’s foreskin was clearly not considered peculiar through the Middle Ages, although one of the stranger references came from the 14th-century saint Catherine of Sienna. She wrote about a vision she had in which she received Jesus’s foreskin as a wedding ring to symbolise her marriage to Christ. She wrote:

You see very well that you are a bride and that he has espoused you - you and everyone else - and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who on the eighth day, when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!”

When disaster struck and Rome was sacked in 1527, the relics from St Lawrence were stolen, although the German soldier who stole it was captured in Calcata, around 50km north of Rome, and the relics were housed there.

It is the Calcata relic which stood the test of time.

In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the obvious excesses of the trade and exploitation of relics were clamped down on by the Catholic Church. In the centuries that followed, talk of the Holy Prepuce became more controversial. Eventually, this led to a papal decree in 1900 threatening excommunication on anyone who even discusses the Holy Prepuce (Mouse’s source for this claim is David Farley, although Mouse hasn’t been able to track down the actual papal decree, so please drop a link in the comments if you can find it).

In 1610, Galileo Galilee pointed his telescope up at the stars and noticed something odd about the planet Jupiter. When magnified, there appeared to be what Galileo first described as ‘ears’ on either side of the planet. At first, he believed them to be two other smaller planets nearby, but as observations improved, these were found to be mysterious rings circling the planet.

This discovery coincided with the efforts of the church following the Reformation to deal with some of the excesses which had led to so much trouble. The keeper of the Vatican library at the time was Leo Allatius, who took a keen interest in the new field of astronomy, and as the tide began to turn on attempts to divorce the church from the field of scientific discovery, creative attempts were deployed to reconcile the two. And so Allatius wrote De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (Discourse on the Foreskin of our Lord Jesus Christ), in which he advocated the theory that Christ’s foreskin had ascended into the heavens and had been left visible in the sky and had become the rings of Saturn.

Gradually, the church withdrew support for many claimed relics, including those with a claim to be the Holy Prepuce, although Calcata clung onto belief in their prized relic, parading it through the town each year. Until 1983. The priest in charge of it had taken to hiding it under his bed for safekeeping and discovered that it had been stolen before it could be paraded that year.

And so the last remaining claim on Christ’s foreskin was lost … for now at least.

If you would like to read more about the fable of the foreskin, Mouse recommends David Farley’s book An Irreverent Curiosity: In search of the Church’s strangest relic in Italy’s oddest town.

Image generated using Microsoft Designer AI

Mouse previously commented on the failure of the Church Nominations Commission to conclude on two successive vacancies for senior bishops. This has left two dioceses without permanent leadership for extended periods and raised the prospect that the process is ‘broken’. Many (including Mouse) speculated that this could be due to a stalemate in the Commission with positions hardened following the proposals for prayers of blessing for gay couples, although the activities of the Commission itself are conducted under strict secrecy.

Following the second failure, for the Diocese of Ely, Justin Welby commented that this is a serious issue and would be looked at. Mouse can only report that the efficiency with which proposals have been brought forward has shocked this observer. Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, has reviewed the position and is bringing proposals for reform to the House of Bishops at their meeting on 18 September, a hastily arranged meeting called specifically to discuss this issue. Should agreement be found there, proposals will be presented to Synod for adoption.

Bishop Sarah’s paper sets out only at a very high level the problems and presents a series of proposals for change. There are some changes proposed in the short term, obviously designed to reduce the likelihood of further deadlocks, alongside the recommendation to follow those with a longer-term review. The key elements are:

1. Remove the secret ballot and make voting within the CNC open to other CNC members
2. Reduce the threshold required for an appointment by one vote - notionally reducing the majority required from 71.4% to 64.4% for diocesan appointments
3. Give the presiding Archbishop an extra casting vote where a conclusion has not been reached after three rounds of voting
4. Introduce a code of conduct for CNC members
5. Change the rules for Vacancy in See Committees (the group from the diocese which sets out its requirements to the CNC) to prevent more than one clergy or lay person from sitting on the ViSC and in the reps they elect to the CNC from the same parish or church community and to ensure there is at least one female clergy and lay representative on the ViSC

At this point these are just proposals to be discussed in the House of Bishops, so we will wait to see what emerges from that and the final proposals that are put to Synod, most likely in February 2025. For those who studied Mouse’s piece on this topic, this is all very much in line with his suggestions. Making more fundamental changes may well be desirable, but given the need to ensure we can function and make appointments now and to prepare for the expected retirement of Justin Welby when he turns 70 in around 18 months, it is sensible to make some immediate short-term changes.

Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London

Of the list that Bishop Sarah has put together, Mouse would broadly endorse them, although I expect there will be further tweaks to these proposals before they come to Synod. The one which caused Mouse’s eyebrows to rise was the proposal to prevent multiple representatives from a single parish on a ViSC. I understand that this has happened in previous ViSCs, so there may be some specific history there. 

It is also quite pertinent. The CNC is currently deciding on nominations for the next Bishop of Coventry. The six CNC members selected from the Diocese’s ViSC include Rev Jonathan Jee, vicar of St Paul’s, Leamington Spa, and Chair of Coventry Diocese Evangelical Fellowship, alongside Alicia Sampson, PCC member at St Paul’s Leamington Spa. The Coventry Diocese Evangelical Fellowship which Jee chairs holds to the CEEC basis of faith and recently issued a statement condemning the decision of Synod to move forward with the blessing of gay couples. In his maiden speech in Synod, Jee said that the LLF debate reminded him of a youth group asking what sexual acts they could ‘get away with’ and that the Synod debate was asking “how far can we go with flirting with blessing sexual immorality?” 

So next time round the votes of 14% of the CNC will come from a single evangelical parish and Mouse wouldn’t be betting against another failure to make an appointment.

This aspect of the proposals is also somewhat more complex to put into practice. It is clearly an attempt to fix an underlying problem of activist parishes dominating local elections within dioceses and deaneries by rigging the outcome of a supposedly democratic process. I expect this will need some working through in practice.

The only additional proposal Mouse would encourage the Bishops to consider is the idea of a fall-back mechanism should the CNC fail to conclude entirely. Other provinces in the Anglican Communion have such mechanisms, such as the reversion of the appointment to the House of Bishops with ratification by Synod. This acts as both a means to make an appointment in a more timely manner and an incentive for the CNC to conclude and avoid the issue being taken out of their hands.

Mouse will, of course, be on hand to update you as this develops.

I previously bought you information of why Jesus wasn't actually called Jesus. In a similar vein, Mouse raises the issue of the translation problem in the Lord's Prayer.

The 'Our Father' is in many respects part of the cultural fabric of the nation. Even those who never set foot in a church will likely recall the words when prompted and many use the prayer as part of their daily devotions and regular cycle of prayer.

Some still smart at the 'modern' translation, which switches 'forgive us our trespasses' with 'forgive us our sins', out of a reverence for the tradition and elegance of the King James Version. Mouse is agnostic on that issue, but it speaks to the extent to which the prayer is known and loved that it is almost the only piece of scriptural translation that can provoke this sort of debate outside of academic circles.

More recently, the Pope caused a stir in 2017 when he said that 'lead us not into temptation' is not a good translation. God would never lead anyone into temptation, so he preferred 'let us not fall into temptation'.

It is not a good translation because it speaks of a God who induces temptation. I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen.

A father doesn’t do that; a father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation – that’s his department.

These issues, however, are what Donald Rumsfeld would describe as 'known unknowns'. We know what the Greek means and are simply searching for the best rendering into English.

But there is a bigger problem lurking in the text. It is known as a 'hapax legomenon'. A hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in ancient texts. Having just a single example of a word makes translation extremely difficult as we have no other contexts to which we can refer to fully understand how the word is used and what it means. And the Lord's Prayer has one. Well, technically it is a dis legomenon - a word that appears only twice - since it appears in both Matthew and Luke's gospel, but that hardly helps as they are repeating the same story in the same context.

The word in question is epiousion - this is traditionally translated as 'daily' in the context of 'Give us each day our daily bread'. 

When Mouse first heard this translation issue it occurred that it is a very strange sentence construct to say 'give us each day our daily bread'. And now he knows why.

This is also a great example of the translation challenges we have with the Bible. The first translation challenge is the realisation that Jesus's words probably weren't spoken in the Greek that the gospels were written in, so the gospel writers have already translated them from Aramaic into Greek. Since this word appears in no other surviving ancient text, it is quite possible that it was coined by the gospel writers for the purpose of the prayer. Then we have the issue of dealing with the ancient form of Greek.

When we turn to the issue of how to translate epiousion several options have been offered up by credible sources.

The Tyndall Bible and the King James Bible opted for 'daily' and other translators used the same logic with a twist, such as 'bread for today'. This is based on breaking the word into its component parts - epi as “for” and ousia as meaning something like “for the being” with an implicit context of the current day. Epiousion also looks a lot like epiousei which appears several times in Acts, to mean 'next' as in 'the next day', and it has been suggested that epiousion could be a masculinised version of epiousei. 

But most modern scholars reject this translation as it is just too tenuous an etymology and there are lots of examples of 'daily' in the New Testament which don't use the term epiousion. 

There is an inherent weakness on relying on simply breaking the word into its components without understanding the context. Imagine a world in which the English language became extinct and only fragments were available for future translators to work with. When they read a text that said the writer was uncomfortable with the 'vibe' of something, a translator may assume that the root of 'vibe' being 'vibrations' meant that the writer was uncomfortable with the physical effects caused by something vibrating. They may have missed the Beach Boys seminal work 'Good Vibrations' which brought an entirely new colloquial meaning to the term.

Jerome came up with a novel solution when he created the Vulgate, the latin version of the New Testament. He came up with the term 'supersubstantial' (in latin supersubstantialem). This is also based on breaking epiousion into its components but coming to a different conclusion on how to translate those components - epi as “super” and ousia as “substance”. This has the blessing of the Catholic Church which believes this, or alternatively 'superessential' is the better rendering. The Catechism talks to the multiple layers of meaning this leads us to, ultimately pointing to the bread that we all need - the body of Christ.

The problem with this is that it isn't really a translation - if you are inventing a new word to translate something into, you haven't really translated it at all. The reader has to carry on the work by figuring out what 'supersubstantial' means.

Others have suggested alternatives, such as 'bread that doesn't run out' or 'the bread we need'. These are less based on a strict translation, however, and ultimately rely on a guess at what the authors might have been trying to suggest - in some ways a more authentic attempt at translation, but attempts that can neither be verified or falsified.

So where do we land? Ultimately the only conclusion we can legitimately draw is that we don't really know what epiousion was intended to mean. That may be uncomfortable, given its place in the prayer Jesus taught us, but the fact remains that we don't. We can plump for a translation which seems to carry the ring of truth about it, but that is probably the best we can do. For Mouse's part, I'm happy to stick with 'daily' and enjoy the wonderment.

The implication of this, however, is that while we should continue to study the scriptures with diligence, we must remember that they are there to point us to the one who saves, and should not become the subject of worship themselves. We should expect to continue to learn more about our translation choices as we continue to study more ancient texts, enhancing our contextual knowledge of the language and context of the scriptures and should recognise the reality that there are real challenges with translating ancient texts.

Mouse was asked an excellent question on the platform formerly known as twitter the other day. The jist of it was why priests wear robes. There were a few instant reactions, but Mouse felt the need to dig a little deeper. Here's what Mouse found.

The wearing of robes (vesture) in the Church of England is, like many things, governed by Church Law. In this case, Canons B8 and D27.

Canon B8 starts with:

The Church of England does not attach any particular doctrinal significance to the diversities of vesture permitted by this Canon, and the vesture worn by the minister in accordance with the provision of this Canon is not to be understood as implying any doctrines other than those now contained in the formularies of the Church of England.

This is both an important theological statement and what poker players call a ‘tell’.

The theological statement is clear enough - as far as the church is concerned, there is no inherent theological significance to any particular form of clothing for priests. The tell is that this needs to be said at all and that it was felt necessary to stress that the canon should not be misinterpret to imply a theological point.

What follows in the rest of the Canon are two things which sit rather strangely together. The canon contains a set of very specific rules about what priests should wear, alongside the caveat that provided the Parochial Church Council has been consulted, those rules can be completely disregarded and the priest may wear almost whatever they want. For example,

At the Holy Communion the presiding minister shall wear either a surplice or alb with scarf or stole unless the minister has ascertained by consultation with the parochial church council that adopting some other form of dress will be acceptable and will benefit the mission of the Church in the parish. When a stole is worn other customary vestments may be added. The epistoler and gospeller (if any) may wear suprlice or alb to which other customary vestments may be added.

In this example, the canon specifies the form of vestments that should be worn for the presiding minister at a service of Holy Communion, but also says that provided the PCC agree and it is good for the mission of the church, ‘some other form of dress’ is acceptable.

The rules in Canon B8 sits alongside C27, which simply says.

The apparel of a bishop, priest, or deacon shall be suitable to his [Mouse: or her!] office; and, save for purposes of recreation and other justifiable reasons, shall be such as to be a sign and mark of his [Mouse: or her!] holy calling and ministry as well to others as to those committed to his [Mouse: or her!] spiritual charge.

This places some limits on what a priest may wear during their work as a priest. It is broader in application than B8, which specifies vesture during services, since this applies to all time working as a priest, so includes pastoral work and other duties. The only restriction is that the dress should be ‘a sign and mark of his [Mouse: still?] holy calling and ministry’ and that this must be recognisable to ‘others as to those committed to his [Mouse: again?!] spritiual charge’. In other words, non-church goers and people of other faiths should be able to recognise that the priest is a priest. Most take that to mean priests have to wear a dog-collar - the most universally recognised symbol of the priesthood.

If you think this legal formulation is a bit odd - to require something very specific then undercut it with a near cast-iron get-out clause - you would be right. And the reason is that the get-out clause element was a very late addition, introduced in 2017 as an amendment to the historic requirement for clergy to wear vestments. 

The motion to amend this canon was brought as a private members motion to General Synod with the justificaiton that it was widely ignored, particularly in evangelical parishes and ‘fresh expressions’, so the law needed to keep up with reality. And Synod agreed.

You may also note that this is an odd way to maintain church law. In this instance, as with others, we have waited until it is sufficiently widely ignored before updating. However, as our story continues, you will find this is not the first time the law on vesture has lagged practice.

Now that the legal position is clear, we can return to the question that started Mouse’s investigations. What is all this about?

The story of clergy vestments goes all the way back to the origins of the Church within a Roman civilisation. In the earliest days of the church, priests did not wear special clothing, but wore the same as everyone else. Which at the time was mostly a form of robes.

In the centuries that followed fashions developed among the population at large, but within the churches traditions began to form around the wearing of robes to mark out priests and bishops. This was done to reflect their special holy calling, particularly during the administration of the eucharist and during other important moments.

These traditions became largely settled by the 12th century. The topic was formalised for the first time at the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, called by Pope Innocent III. This was considered one of the most significant church councils due to the broad representation present as well as the significance of the decision made. It is also notorious for its instigation of regulations against Jewish and Muslim people and a renewed call to crusading.

When it comes to vesture, it was the first time a formal church-wide rule was adopted on clerical clothing:

[Priests] should have a suitable crown and tonsure, and let them diligently apply themselves to the divine services and other good pursuits. Their outer garments should be closed and neither too short nor too long. Let them not indulge in red or green cloths, long sleeves or shoes with embroidery or pointed toes, or in bridles, saddles, breast-plates and spurs that are gilded or have other superfluous ornamentation. Let them not wear cloaks with sleeves at divine services in a church, nor even elsewhere, if they are priests or parsons, unless a justifiable fear requires a change of dress. They are not to wear buckles or belts ornamented with gold or silver, or even rings except for those whose dignity it befits to have them. All bishops should wear outer garments of linen in public and in church, unless they have been monks, in which case they should wear the monastic habit; and let them not wear their cloaks loose in public but rather fastened together behind the neck or across the chest.

The requirements were not as specific as they were to become, but the overall intent was clear. Priests and bishops should dress simply in robes and wear suitable clothing at divine services.

By the time of the reformation clerical vestments had developed further with more elaborate robes for bishops, the near abandonment of the tonsure (shaving of the top of head) and traditional robing for ordinary services. The cope (a kind of decorated cape) was given to priests at their ordination and a range of symbolic meanings were attached to different elements of clerical garb.

This became an issue in England as the newly independent Church sought to find its path as both a reformed and a Catholic Church. The 1549 prayer book made specific requirements for the vesture of priests. For example

The priest that shall execute the holy ministry, shall put upon him the vesture appointed for that ministration, that is to say: a white albe plain, with a vestment or cope. And where there be many priests, or deacons, there so many shall be ready to help the priest, in the ministracion, as shall be requisite: and shall have upon them likewise the vestures appointed for their ministry, that is to say, albes with tunicles.

The idea here was principally that of uniformity rather than any particular theological significance to those specific garments. Similar rubrics were set out for vesture for other services and circumstances and for Bishops in their consecration and duties.

Reformers were not happy with the catholic style of vestments, however, arguing that they are unbiblical and unnecessary ornamentation. 

In 1548 John Hooper was nominated as bishop of Gloucester. By now Edward VI was on the throne and the reformation in England was in the hands of its most zealous advocates. Hooper had spent time in Zurich with the Calvinists leading the reformation there and became friends with Heinrich Bullinger and Martin Bucer in particular. Despite encouragement from leading reformers, including Cranmer, he refused to be consecrated as this required the wearing of a surplice and cope.

They all seemed to agree that the matter was not theologically significant, but church rules required the robes and Hooper refused to wear them on the basis that people may be misled into believing that the minister was a mediator who stood in their place at communion, which would imperil their souls. In the debate became a tussle over ecclesiastical authority. Hooper resisted, but under huge pressure (include being put under house arrest) and under encouragement from Bullinger, Cranmer, Calvin and others that the issue was simply not worth the trouble, Hooper relented and was consecrated in 1551 and later preached in the required robes before the king.

The following year the new 1552 prayer book was adopted which significantly simplified the rules.

And here is to be noted, that the minister at the time of the Communion and all other times in his ministration, shall use neither alb, vestment, nor cope: but being archbishop or bishop, he shall have and wear a rochet; and being a priest or deacon, he shall have and wear a surplice only.

This removed the issue that Hooper fought over, but the issue remained controversial and reforms reversed by Mary before Elizabeth I found the middle way. Vesture was concluded to be in a simplified form from that which existed before the reformation. After some to and fro it landed in the 1662 prayer book which we know and love.

As Elizabeth I sought to do in many areas of church life, she found a middle way and the 1559 prayer book said,

The Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the accustomed Place of the Church, Chapel, or Chancel; except it shall be otherwise determined by the Ordinary of the Place. And the Chancels shalt remain as they have done in times past. And here is to be noted, that such Ornaments of the Church, and of the Ministers thereof, at all Times of their Ministration, shall be retained, and be in use, as were in this Church of England, by the Authority of Parliament, in the Second Year of the Reign of King Edward the Sixth [1549].

This formulation leaves some room for interpretation, no doubt intentionally so. Within the Church of England, this came to a head in the late 19th century as the Anglo-Catholic revival began re-introducing Catholic style rituals and ornaments into the Church. This included more elaborate vestments, including highly decorated chasubles and copes, which had not been in use since the reformation. A series of court cases settled the matter, the final one in 1877 which appeared to settle the matter, essentially concluding that elaborate vestments are not permitted. 

In 1904 the Prime Minister Balfour established a Royal Commission on clergy discipline following controversy around 'ritualism' in the church. The report in 1906 raised the prospect of continued legal ambiguity and questioned the 1877 judgement. It also set out evidence that vesture rules were 'seldom followed', including the wearing of stoles, which was not permitted.

The 1604 Canons were almost untouched until the 1960s when they were replaced wholesale. When it came to the rules on vesture, there was some controversy. Proposals were put forward to regularise common practice and remove potential legal ambiguity.  When introducing the measure in the House of Lords, the Bishop of London argued that

whatever be the proper interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric in the Acts of Uniformity of 1558 and 1662, there is no doubt that the present practice of the vast majority of the clergy of the Church of England is at one point or another at variance with the Privy Council judgment. In particular, the wearing of a stole, which is not authorised by any interpretation of the Ornaments Rubric, is the practice in the great majority of parish churches—probably in something like 90 per cent.

Evangelicals felt that this would permit the reintroduction of vestments which had not been legal since before the reformation, so an organised campaign was mounted to resist the proposals, including an organised letter writing campaign to MPs. Nevertheless, the measure passed and practice 'on the ground' remained largely unchanged.

And this is where the Church of England largely remained until 2017.

The story tells us that there are some genuine issues involved. The consensus has always been that priests and bishops should wear clothing that makes them identifiable to those outside the church and clothing that marks out their calling while conducting divine services. However, these are symbolic and pastoral issues rather than theological issues per se. 

It is understandable that some may consider robes and vestments to be outdated and to be concerned that those outside the church may be put off by the appearance of a priest in a strange outfit. On the other hand, to dispose of these garments could give the impression that there is no such thing as a holy calling or a priestly ministry and that divine services are nothing more than public gatherings for mutual support and a bit of fun singing together. In order to reduce the appearance of strangeness, we give the impression of ordinariness, which may well be worse.

We have seen the phenomena recently of growth in Cathedral worship and a revival of liturgical practices not just within the Anglican Church but more widely. There seems to have been a realisation that practices that have served the Church for two thousand years catering worshipers on the gospels and on Christ may have some merit after all. Perhaps vesture will similarly be an area where modernising instincts will take us so far down the road before at least some travellers hit reverse.

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