Purpose
The simple yet dignified gown is meant to convey the authority and solemn duty of the ordained ministry as called by God to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus and preach the biblical Word of God, the bearer being a learned minister of the Word and teaching elder (presbyter) over the Church faithful.
Worn over street clothes, traditionally a cassock but today more commonly a business suit with or without clerical collar, the gown eschews ostentation, obscuring individual grooming and concealing fashion preferences, and instead draws attention to the wearer's office and not the person.
Read more about this topic: Geneva Gown
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Art for art’s sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own.”
—Benjamin Constant (1767–1834)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Man, her last work, who seemed so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Though Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed—”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)