KJS in pants

I hadn’t been planning to say anything about it, but I woke up from a wonderfully long nap with the vision of Katherine Jefferts Schori in what some have called a pair of badly cut trousers and ill fitting suit jacket with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Frank Griswold. I had seen the picture before but it seemed to be planted on the front of my mind in a new way. All kinds of things have been said, mostly on Telling Secrets, one of many blogs I never ever agree with, and also on Stand Firm. One person, for example, brilliantly remarked that KJS is from the West and people wear pants in the West (I’m from the West too but I don’t let that limit my wardrobe unreasonably). Most, besides Elizabeth Kaeton herself, felt it to be no problem. Of course, compared to the biggest problem, that she, KJS, was at this meeting in the first place in the role she now occupies, what she’s wearing is inconsequential. However her manner of dress does belie the material point. Namely that it is not the right of women to do every job. And very often, when someone (a women in this case) is doing a job she ought not, something will be off—the loudness of the voice, the cut of the suit, the content of the press release. The ill fitting clothes are like a neon sign of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which brings me to my second pillaging from Telling Secrets. There you can find this clip--so so wrong, and yet so so funny. TEC ought not have elected KJS (although why not, they’ve done everything else). She doesn’t have the theological depth to be in such a position, but most importantly, a woman ought not to be head of a church any more than she should be the head of her husband (she should not, or rather, cannot no matter how hard she tries). Fine, be ordained, do the good work, but don’t insist on being in charge of everything.