Black Stoles? No, Tippets!

As I had hoped, a visitor set me straight on the question of the Anglican vestments at the National Cathedral post-inaugural prayer service:

I'm not sure that they are "black stoles" but, rather, "scarves." The stole as a liturgical vestment was discarded in the Church of England at the Reformation and did not return until the Oxford Movement, and that unofficially and indeed, arguably, illegally. Nor were the traditional Catholic liturgical colors for vestments preserved after the English Reformation; they, too, came back with the Oxford Movement. The same was the case in the Episcopal Church, although their restoration to use in some circles in PECUSA met with less violent and less prolonged opposition in the former, than it did in the Church of England (among Evangelicals especially). In both the CofE and PECUSA the wearing of such post-Reformation style of vestments tended to hang on in cathedrals and especially big public services of a political and ceremonious sort, and this seems to me what was happening at this event.

However, the common pre Oxford Movement liturgical dress of clergy who wished to follow the rules punctiliously were surplice, black scarf, and academic hood (if the clergyman had a degree), while bishops wore rochets (instead of surplices), chimeres, and also scarves. I expect that "the scarf" may have some historical relationship to "the stole," just as "the rochet" did to "the surplice," but I'm just speculating here.

This also clarifies the vestments worn by Bp Budde, the most visible being the red chimere with a black bishop's scarf:

Bp Budde also did not wear the post-Oxford Movement bishop's mitre in the Catholic style. My visitor continues,

The use of mitres by Anglican bishops is another example.  For more then two centuries after 1559 no Anglican bishop ever wore a mitre on his head.  Samuel Seabury of Connecticut (bishop 1784-1796) was the first one to do so, having his best beaver hat refashioned into a mitre when he returned to Connectucut from his episcopal consecration in Scotland in 1784, and no other american bishop followed his example until almost a century later. 

But this raises what I think is an incongruity. The National Cathedral in Washington is a creature of the Gothic Revival movement in architecture. Via Wikipedia,

The Gothic Revival movement's roots are intertwined with philosophical movements associated with Catholicism and a re-awakening of high church or Anglo-Catholic belief concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism. The "Anglo-Catholic" tradition of religious belief and style became known for its intrinsic appeal in the third quarter of the 19th century.

The Oxford Movement was an ecclesiastical expression of this tendency. It was highly controversial in the UK, especially since the Church of England was and is a government institution. Interestingly, it became popular much more quickly in the US as the families of the late 19th century robber barons were quick to endow Gothic Revival churches and university buildings even if, like the Rockefellers, they weren't Episcopalian. The Wikipedia entry continues,

The rise of evangelicalism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw in England a reaction in the high church movement which sought to emphasise the continuity between the established church and the pre-Reformation Catholic church. Architecture, in the form of the Gothic Revival, became one of the main weapons in the high church's armoury. The Gothic Revival was also paralleled and supported by "medievalism", which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. As "industrialisation" progressed, a reaction against machine production and the appearance of factories also grew. Proponents of the picturesque such as Thomas Carlyle and Augustus Pugin took a critical view of industrial society and portrayed pre-industrial medieval society as a golden age. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused with the Christian values that had been supplanted by classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation.

But especially in the US, the Gothic Revival was an expression of new, industrialized wealth. That it should be so enthusiastically adopted by the families grown rich from railroads, steel, mining, petroleum, and automobiles suggests a wish to distance themselves from such influences and associate more closely with medieval aristocracy -- nevertheless, the cornerstone of the National Cathedral was laid by Theodore Roosevelt, who represented a peak of aggressive Republican, reconstructionist, expansionist, industrialist federal power.

I'm told that the National Cathedral, in contrast, has always been low church in its alignment, that is, reflecting the post-Reformation, Protestant, Evangelical aspect of Anglicanism, even with its Gothic Revival architectural trappings -- and with an endowment funded by Northern industrialist families who otherwise favor the medievalist, Anglo-Catholic style.

It's hard to avoid thinking that in this case, Bp Budde is continuing a liturgical style that is trying to stand athwart history yelling "stop!" as Trump, a Republican president with industrialist, federalist, reconstructionist, even partly Catholic leanings, resumes office.