MAKING THE MAN,
SHAPING THE FAITH

Steve Kriss

On Sunday, I strolled along 125^th Street in Harlem for the first time. Recently many in the United States have become aware that Harlem isn’t just for black folks anymore. Now the home of an Old Navy, Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, HMV, and the home office of Bill Clinton, Harlem represents the odd new homogeneity of a multiracial, multi-classed U.S. The inner city and the suburbs look oddly similar as racial lines and class boundaries are crossed by fashion, music, media, and culture.

We live in an unusual era of global economics and urbanization. With increasing numbers of the world population living in urban areas, the landscape is becoming more a global metropolitan area than a global village, marked by similar cultural and commercial trademarks. Youth from around the world can wear Tommy Hilfiger; listen to Jennifer Lopez, Snoop Dogg or Kid Rock; shop at The Gap or Old Navy (in person or online); eat McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s fries; and view the same Internet pages at the same time. Mass marketing may be achieving what our best intentions never could. Rich and poor both shop at The Gap, wear Nikes and Timberlands, watch MTV.

Stores like Old Navy thrive on the cultural milieu of the turn of the millennium. The Harlem store is no different inside from a store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Old Navy strives to achieve a culture of hipness where the divide is between fashionable and unfashionable rather than rich and poor. Here is a sort of cultural domination through fashion, clothes designed to fit into and to create the mainstream rather than to stand out amid it.

For Mennonites, long marked by distinctive dress—whether plain coats or prayer coverings—or for any Christians who have been committed to distinctive attire, Old Navy means we can blend in. No one will know I am a pacifist. No one knows I can sing acapella (well, at least sort of). No one knows I will try to bless rather than curse people who cut me off in traffic. I am culturally assimilated, at least by outward appearance.

Most days I am glad for the opportunity to be assimilated into a global metropolis. Living in New York I don’t really have the need to stand out, to be noticed. After being in the city for two years, I am happy finally not to look like a tourist all the time. I may still gawk at the skyline, but I think I have learned how to walk decisively and negotiate through crowds without looking anyone in the eye. I am at least dressing the part of assimilation.

I have used clothing as a passport. I have quietly blended into a culture that is not my own. In New York City, here under clothes with recognizable brand names, no one knows I grew up poor. No one knows I am attending school with a scholarship for Appalachian students. No one knows I am often uncomfortable on the campus of wealthy, suburban, and mostly Euro-American Drew University. I wear the clothes to get by, to fit in. I participate in this globalizing uniform that seeks to erase boundaries of class, culture, and uniqueness.

Mass-marketed clothing and brand name accessibility have created the uniform brought to you by The Gap. It seems to suggest a particular reality, an income level, a sense of security, a way of being. My clothing often suggests that I have arrived at the destination. I can at least dress the part, though I am not totally sure where I am and if I really want to be here.

The assumption is that clothing helps make the person. The tradition of distinctive Mennonite clothing highlights this point paradoxically. Clothing gives an outward identity that may or may not jive with experiences or inward reality. Places like The Gap and Old Navy minimize obvious differences. I have chosen, often, to not let anyone know at first glance who I might be—to know that I grew up in a coal-mining town, to know that I am a follower of Christ who seeks to live a distinctive lifestyle.

I hide that I am from the Allegheny Mountains and grew up close to “rock dumps” in Scalp Level, Pennsylvania, where unemployment hovered around 30 percent for years. My dad was the only man in our neighborhood of several blocks who worked every day.

We lived in half a duplex with my grandparents. I shared a bedroom with my grandmother until I was about eight. At various times, other family members lived with us—uncles, aunts, cousins.

It wasn’t until college, though, that I realized how poor we actually were. It wasn’t until I read about poverty that I realized I might actually have been living it.

In high school I began to be aware of brand names—saving money to buy Nike shoes by skimping on meals on the way home after soccer games and insisting that I could only wear Levi’s jeans. My purchases of brand-name clothing made me feel proud. I remember buying my first pair of Umbro shorts to wear for athletic events. I wore them for the soccer season and gave them to another guy to wear for basketball. His dad only worked infrequently.

Brand-name clothing made me feel good. It was literally like slipping into someone else’s skin. I was no longer the poor kid from Scalp Level but the same as others who shopped at the mall.

As a college student, I became more fashion conscious. Part of upward mobility is the ability to dress the part. Even at a Mennonite college, where peace, service, and justice were emphasized, few people ignored the lure of fashion or bucked the trends of J. Crew, The Gap, or Birkenstocks. I fell in love with TJ Maxx, Value City, and outlet malls that helped me purchase my skin at discount prices.

As a Euro-American, clothing easily hides my identity. No one knows I have played in coal dirt or eaten government surplus cheese. No one knows I am a conscientious objector or at least would be in time of war. No one can tell I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of paying taxes that often go to support defense and military systems. No one knows I often question the working conditions of those who have made the very clothes that I purchase, that I am a bit squeamish each time I pull a shirt off the rack that says "made in El Salvador."

I hide behind a costume, bought from Jersey Gardens (the biggest outlet mall in New Jersey). No one really knows what I really know quietly in my heart.

My speech occasionally betrays me, like last Sunday when I preached, I said “crick” instead of “creek.” I have exchanged “younz” for “y’all,” a product of attending Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. If I remain quiet, no one knows the truth. I think of the words of the prophet, “Rend not your clothing, but your hearts.”

As I write, I am aware of what I am wearing—jeans from J. Crew, shoes by Rockport, a sweatshirt from American Eagle Outfitters. No one can tell I grew up sleeping in a room with cracked and drafty walls. No one knows I can understand Slovak words, remnants of an Eastern European peasant culture that reside mostly in my bones and in my occasional meals of pierogies, kielbasa, halupkim or halushki. No one can tell I am a Mennonte pastor, only licensed, definitely not ordained.

I am well hidden by a new skin, culturally assimilated to an often blasé middle-class reality that suggests that I have “made it.” Now, I drive a Honda SUV, walk the campus of an expensive school in New Jersey, and live in a reasonably nice neighborhood close to the beach on Staten Island.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to struggle, the way that my family did when I was young, to work hard in the steel mills like my grandfather. I have chosen to blend into academia and the urban environs of New York—and out of Appalachia. But often, I am uncomfortable. I hold up as heroes, persons who have denounced wealth for a simple lifestyle. I try to quietly choose what that might mean for me.

Increasingly, I hope that in these clothes (all bought on sale), I can speak from my experiences rather than hide them. I hope somehow I can proclaim the good news of justice and peace. I hope I can communicate a message of love and healing to a people hiding behind a sheen of cotton or polyester. I hope a message can flow from my lips and out of my actions that carefully suggests something beyond the Banana Republic, something about the community of the eternal reign of God, even though I wear cargo pants.

—Steve Kriss is a student at Drew University and a pastor both at Redeeming Grace Fellowship on Staten Island and at Carpenter Park Mennonite Church in Davidsville, Pennsylvania. His heart is caught somewhere between the Allegheny Mountains and New York City.