Periodically, somebody takes offence at me wearing a hat when I preach. I don’t always wear one, but I do sometimes. I remember one bloke, clearly trying very hard not to tell me off for having worn a hat, asking me why I wear a hat because he had never seen a preacher wearing one before.

The main reason I wear a hat sometimes is because – and hold onto your own hat if you also happen to wear one – I often wear hats. I don’t always wear one because – and you won’t believe this – I sometimes don’t wear one out and about too! But I have, ever since about the age of 10, often worn hats. So, as a hat-wearer, I sometimes wear them when I preach. It is no different, as I judge it, from a preacher deciding to wear a button down shirt or a jumper because that is what they wear.

Fortunately, I am in good company. Those who insist they have never seen a preacher wearing anything on their head obviously hasn’t been paying attention. For example:

Here is Martin Luther preaching with what looks remarkably like a hat on his head:

And here is Ulrich Zwingli smashing it with a hat on:

And then there is John Calvin who gave it some with a hat on his head:

And his pal John Knox who was also partial to preaching in a hat:

After them – people like Heinrich Bullinger and Theodore Beza – all rarely seen without hats on.

Some while after that, we hit upon the puritan era. There we find people like John Owen and Jonathan Edwards all rocking hats. And if not wearing a hat, then sporting a big massive horse hair wig! For example, here’s John Owen:

After them, hats got a bit passe but wigs were all the rage. So, check out George Whitefield preaching in a massive wig:

And if you think that’s just something Methodists and Anglicans were into, here’s top Baptist theologian and preacher John Gill in a wig:

It wasn’t really until the Victorian era, when wearing hats indoors became something that people often didn’t do, that you find preachers not preaching with something on their head. But, of course, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones remarked some time ago, Victorianism is something that we have never managed to shake in the church. Here he is commenting on that very thing:

[A] change took place somewhere in the 1850s. Until then, the great impact of the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century still persisted and there had been other revivals and people knew about the power of the Holy Spirit. But suddenly we all became so respectable and learned and people said, “Ah, that old preaching is no longer good enough, the people are now receiving education. They are beginning to read and becoming more learned and so on.” And the middle classes were becoming prosperous and wealthy. Then followed the most devastating thing that has afflicted the life of the church – Victorianism. It entered into the churches, particularly the Free Churches, which now began to imitate other forms of worship and the great word became “dignity”. Dignity! Formality! Learning! Culture!

Lloyd-Jones, D.M., Joy Unspeakable, (Harold Shaw Publishers, 1985), p.121

Culture doing a lot of the heavy-lifting in that quote. But it is a culture that often persists. A culture often out of step with the Protestant tradition before it. And seemingly even on the issue of whether it is appropriate to wear anything on your head when you preach.

So, you tell me, who has the weight of Protestant tradition on their side?