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 politica...