A bicycle uses very little gasoline, thus conserving the precious fossil fuel of the Earth. Secondly, those who travel to work by bicycle live entirely by God’s grace, disdaining public approbation. Can you imagine an insurance salesman approaching your house (and your billfold) on a bicycle?
A beret is seldom stolen because you can hide it in your pocket. Moreover, anyoe with the panache to wear a beret already has a couple and does not need yours. In addition, the beret has historical and theological significance. The Basque beret comes from the ancestral lands of the indomitable Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, mother of King Henry IV, who said “Paris is worth a Mass,” and the leader of the French Calvinists who wrote the Gallican Confession, which I hope American Presbyterians will add to their Book of Confessions.
Have you ever seen a picture of John Calvin without his beret? Of course not — although I assume even Calvin removed his beret to eat dinner. At least he would be required to do so if he sat across from my wife. A beret keeps the theological brain warm and functioning properly.
There are many ways to make a public statement. For example, men and women who smoke cigars have a certain aura about them and they sit alone a lot. Bankers seldom go to work in flannel shirts and blue jeans. I must admit that I feel an immense surge of confidence when I see a physician with a ferocious Mexican bandito mustache. Here is a man truly capable of waging an heroic struggle for your life. Naturally, female doctors must be evaluated in other terms. Likewise, with the beret, ministers make a corporate statement of individual competence.
I would be absolutely furious to discover the preacher to whom I listen for the Word of God was not a thorough student of the Bible in the original languages, and the best classical and contemporary commentaries on it. In the second place, I would be extremely angry to find that my preacher had not read carefully every word of Plato’s Dialogues, Calvin’s Institutes and Immanuel Kant’s essay, “What Is Enlightenment” and his book Religion Within Limits or Reason Alone (learning from Plato, appreciating Calvin, disagreeing with Kant). I would be thoroughly disgusted to learn that my preacher was not a continuing reader of Chaucer (the poet of people), Milton (the poet of space) and especially Shakespeare (the poet of time). Whatever else he or she might study, in my judgment, without a comfortable mastery and lifelong commitment to these classic texts, one is unfit for ministry. The first provides inspiration, the second learning, the third eloquence. While not absolutely essential, I also prefer ministers who read detective stories because they have an acceptable outlet for their murderous impulses.
Not many pulpit nominating committees are able to discuss these great works in detail (that’s why they hire ministers), but they can look for the beret. Now in itself the beret is not a demonstration of theological competence, but only an indication of it. I grant that a few competent ministers do not wear berets and a few incompetent do. But, in general, the beret-wearing minister can be trusted to have read, marked and inwardly digested the great books mentioned above. And I think pulpit nominating committees should be aware of that fact.
Charles Partee
Presbyterian Outlook
January 1998
