A "Hot" Accessory?

The New York Times Discovers an Ancient Trend

File: Bąkiewicz - Portret kobiety 1857.jpg - Wikimedia Commons/ Also, me trying to read the New York Time’s Deathless Prose

It’s been some weeks since I’ve had time to catch up on the New York Times. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the shroud and all that, have been much on my mind. I did wander over and type “Shroud of Turin” into the NYT search bar, and nothing very interesting turned up, so I then moved along with life. But then a dear friend sent me this thing, and I thought it was so fun that it was worth a bit of a fisk. It is by someone named Misty White Sidell and it’s called “A Hot Accessory, at the Intersection of Faith and Culture: Seen on influencers, pop stars and White House staff, cross necklaces are popping up everywhere.” It could, according to the interweb, just as well be called “Big If True” or “They Did The Meme.” Ms. Sidell begins this way:

When Arianna Salerno first moved to Washington, D.C., in 2022 to attend Catholic University she didn’t see many people wearing cross necklaces. But in the past year, she says she has noticed an uptick of the jewelry each time she takes the Metro, and they are now a regular presence on Capitol Hill, where she’s held multiple internships. As a millenniums-old symbol of Christian faith, the cross would seem somewhat immune to trendiness. But cross necklaces and pendants have been in vogue before and may be again as some feel more comfortable embracing their faith and seek community with others.

I love the idea of being “comfortable embracing my faith” and “seeking community with others.” That, of course, is a ridiculous way of talking about being joined to the company of God’s faithful people, but, in these sad and sorry times, it appears the best the Times can come up with. On the whole, this journalistic effort is going, if you are a person who is sups comfortable with embracing your faith and knows all about seeking community with others, to feel like a perfectly coiffed bright young thing, staring at a basilica and not having the least idea what it is. Some, on X, called it “Christians in the Mist.”

On red carpets, on social media, at protests by high-ranking Democrats and in the White House, necklaces with cross pendants are appearing with renewed prevalence. Chappell Roan wore an oversize one to the MTV Video Music Awards in September, and one dangled from Sabrina Carpenter’s neck in the music video for her single “Please Please Please.” The trendy online store Ssense sells them in nearly 50 variations, and mainstream jewelers like Kendra Scott and Zales carry numerous designs. Lately, the cross necklaces flash across cable news screens several times a week, suspended between the collarbones of Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

There’s a picture in the article of Chappell Roan with a large cross displayed on her not-well-clad-enough chest that feels, how do you call it? blasphemous. Why is this detail in this article? Pop stars have been doing this for literally ever. Had Ms. Sidell never noticed? Ninety-nine percent of ordinary people wearing a cross—which must be a pretty large number, given how many people claim to be Christian,—on’t walk around in breathless wonder over their stunning bravery. That is the provenance of people openly subverting the symbol for financial gain and worldly acclaim.

The turgid waters of American culture, I suppose, could be expected to get even muddier when people in government start suddenly doing it:

Ms. Bondi, 59, wrote in a statement that her necklaces are an expression of her “strong Christian” upbringing: “My faith is very important to me,” she said. “It is what gets me through each day.”

I can’t believe Ms. Bondi is 59. How very well preserved she is. It can’t be her faith that’s done it. She must have the temporal assistance of some divinely inspired costmology team.

Across TikTok, young Christian women have been sharing the meaning behind their own cross necklaces, saying they help cultivate a sense of belonging and connection with others. Sage Mills, a student at the University of Oklahoma who has posted videos about her cross necklace, said that seeing women in government like Ms. Leavitt and Ms. Bondi wear their own “makes me feel good. It makes me feel like God is the important thing for people that are governing our world.”

I guess this is just like back in the day, when Christians were in serious bodily danger, and so one would draw half a fish in the sand and then another would come along and complete the image, and then they could speak freely. How far we have advanced from those dim and far-off days. Now the cross “cultivates a sense of belonging and connection with God.”

I wish I could feel good about the people governing “our world.” Sometimes I feel good, sometimes I feel bad, but it’s almost never because of the jewelry choices of politicians, and more because of the policies they choose to pursue.

Now Ms. Sidell will report what she knows about Christianity:

The cross, a symbol most associated with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, first emerged during the Roman Empire when it was an instrument of mass torture, said Robert Covolo, a theologian and associate pastor at Christ Church Sierra Madre near Los Angeles. By the 4th century, Mr. Covolo said that Christians had begun to use the cross as an emblem of their religion. Not long after, the cross became a focal point for daily jewelry. Cross jewelry dating as far back as the 5th century is prevalent in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Referencing its original use, Mr. Covolo said the cross was a “symbol of the Roman Empire asserting its power with impunity.”

Over centuries, the cross evolved as a signpost of the moral compass one shares with fellow Christians and a kind of talisman with deeply personal significance. “They have an official meaning but people bring their own meaning, which is where symbols really get their power,” said Mr. Covolo, 58, who in 2020 published a book about the link between Christianity and fashion.

Ok, so, I thought I knew a lot about my preferred faith, but I’m kind of confused here. I’m not sure why the Victoria and Albert museum gets mentioned, and I have no idea why Mr. Covolo would bring up Rome asserting its power with impunity in this particular context, when it is mostly Christians and morally confused pop stars who wear crosses. All of these various facts feel deeply irrelevant, like the way my children, when trying to write a five-paragraph essay, grab at anything and shove it in, because they don’t know what’s expected of them or why they’re bothering.

Many still wear theirs as a straightforward declaration of their faith and as an expression of communion with other believers. About 62 percent of U.S. adults identify as Christian, according to a Pew Research Center study released in February. The group’s annual religious landscape study also found that the country’s Christian population has stabilized after decades of decline.

Now that’s a real comfort. I just hope that the Christian population is going to go to church so they can get a little bit deeper into their comfortable feelings and community connections. Imagine all the people, just to try to co-opt the zeitgeist, living for Jesus. You can say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. If 62 percent of U.S. adults identify as Christian, then forgiveness and mercy should be the bedrock of society. Something seems a little off-kilter here.

“It’s the easiest way to know that I have shared beliefs with people,” said Ms. Mills, 20, who received her cross necklace as a gift to celebrate her rebaptism last year. When Breanna Anderson, a social media specialist in Orem, Utah, visited Jerusalem in 2022, she purchased her first cross necklace, even though the cross is not a common symbol for her religious affiliation, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Even though it’s not a symbol of the church, it can be a symbol of devotion to Jesus Christ and believing in him,” she said. The necklaces had become more popular with younger congregants of her church, and in broader “Utah culture,” Ms. Anderson, 26, added.

Well, that’s disappointing. The Jesus of the Latter-day Saints is not the real Jesus. But perhaps by wearing a lot of crosses, some will become curious about the real thing, though I seriously doubt it.

That cultural meaning can be harder to define as the symbol now seems to vary in interpretation across geography, church affiliation and even — to a growing extent — political value systems.

I mean, is it harder to define? Don’t Christians—and secondarily, confused people—just wear them because they want to? Why is this a thing that was even written? Why can’t they do an in-depth piece on why the Shroud of Turin is probably real? Or at least get an actual Christian to explain what Christians believe and why so many of them wear crosses. What do you suppose “cultural meaning” even means for the Times? I wonder if Ms. Sidell would recognize “cultural meaning” if it came and bit her on the nose.

The Trump administration has welcomed religion into the West Wing with the establishment of a new White House Faith Office. In recent months, pastors with Christian nationalist beliefs have been invited to the White House numerous times. Cross necklaces have, in a way, become the jewelry of choice most associated with President Trump’s second administration. Ms. Bondi owns several cross necklaces but most often appears at official events in a diamond-set version purchased at Mavilo, a jewelry store in Tampa, Fla.

Verily verily, I don’t care at all where Ms. Bondi bought her necklace. Ok, so, I have a little confession to make. I don’t watch press briefings. I don’t pay attention to what all these people are saying every day. Back in the time of Biden, I would get on X at least once a week to see what Karine Jean-Pierre was wearing because whoever was making her clothes was a genius. I couldn’t bear to listen to her say anything, because, well, that’s a subject for another day, but I did always stop by to see what she was wearing. Ms. Leavitt, on the other hand, well, here’s the Times about her:

Ms. Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has frequently worn a large cross pendant at press briefings. But Ms. Leavitt is not the first press secretary to wear a cross: Kayleigh McEnany, a press secretary during Mr. Trump’s first term, also wore one. In an email, Ms. Leavitt, 27, called the cross necklace “the perfect accessory to any outfit,” adding that she wears the cross “because it serves as a reminder of the strength that can only be found through faith.”

That’s nice, but I don’t like whoever is arranging her wardrobe. And I’m not going to listen to the daily press briefings just because she’s wearing a large cross. And I don’t agree, it’s not the “perfect” accessory to “any” outfit. Sometimes, a gorgeous diamond or a string of pearls is more suitable. I’m sure Ms. Leavitt is a lovely person, but until she wears something that personally interests me, I won’t be thinking about her. And this is because, in my personal faith journey, I read politics for fun and do not get my deep spiritual thoughts from anyone in the American government.

The wearable religious symbol has popped up elsewhere in government. This weekend, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, wore a large silvertone cross pendant necklace to stage a sit-in protest against the GOP budget on the steps of the Capitol with Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. Mr. Jeffries was raised in Brooklyn and in his youth was an usher at the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Some Christians see the visible integration of Christianity and government as a natural progression of America’s founding values — and the cross necklace as a sign of pride and resilience.

Oh ye gods. I mean, I feel like Ms. Sidell desperately wanted to write “Christian Nationalism” in every paragraph, but maybe thought it would be too brave. Perhaps the New York Times is trying to get the Trump administration to like them, which seems the oddest timeline ever.

Daisy Rogers, 25, a stay-at-home mother and volleyball coach in Gilbert, Ariz., said the nation “was founded on Christian-like values and I don’t believe there’s a separation. I think it should stay that way.”

You know what I wish I were reading? Some brilliant political theorist or theologian who could make a case for why Christianity is a good foundation upon which to build a social order. Because, it’s actually been tried for almost two thousand years and it worked pretty well. Not perfectly, of course, not in a utopian fever dream kind of way. But it did work because the “values” of Christianity are deep and wide and coherent, and so even a godless pagan could live inside a Christian society and be better off than he would be now, with no constraints, no philosophical structure to undergird him, just all of his comfortable feelings to propel him down the broad wide road of destruction. Since abandoning overt Christian “values,” we have not progressed anywhere, but are all wandering around, confused, in a big cultural dumpster fire of vanity.

Ms. Rogers, also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, began wearing a cross necklace about a year ago as a way to convey her faith when interacting with others. While Ms. Rogers said that she feels like Christians can sometimes be perceived as weak, seeing women in government like Ms. Leavitt wear one offers “prime examples of how to be strong and Christlike at the same time,” she said. Riley White, a content creator and personal trainer in Birmingham, Ala., began wearing a cross necklace two years ago as a way to “share Christian values and love” and likened it to an engagement ring.

How dearly I wish professing Christians could be properly catechized. And one of the points of deepest confusion, as far as I can tell, is on the cunnundrum of weakness as opposed to strength. To be “strong and Christlike at the same time” is rather an interesting window into this strange mystery. For, if you look at the cross—the one Jesus carried and then was nailed to and died upon—you will observe that all the strength at his command was there relinquished….I’m using a lot of passive construction out of respect for the New York Times….where was I?

Oh yes, when St. Paul says that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, he doesn’t mean that you’re going to get to be perfectly strong by leaning more fully into your faith journey. He means that when you are weak and incapable of scraping yourself off the floor, he is able to more fully accomplish his mighty works because no one will become confused and think that you are the author of so great a salvation. They’re going to be able to see the miracle of God’s power, arranging the cosmos and the hearts of all people by the power of his will. This is not a human-directed project. It is God who is strong, saving weak sinners from death. Anyway, everyone is so creative these days:

Ms. White, 24, said that recently, she’s felt uncertainty when she spots cross necklaces worn by political figureheads in the news. “I like to see the cross worn by people who have Christian values and who treat people how the Bible tells us to,” said Ms. White. “It can be hard seeing people wear a cross and hearing how they speak about people in a way that doesn’t necessarily align with Christian values.”

Yeah, like Chappell Roan for sure.

Lucy Collins, an assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York who teaches courses in philosophy, fashion theory and ethics, said that while cross necklaces are often worn apolitically, their appearance in the political sphere in the United States has introduced implications of partisan politics.“The cross itself is not a complicated symbol, it clearly represents Christianity,” said Ms. Collins. But in contrast to the simplicity of the cross, she added, “at this moment Christianity is much more complicated.”

No, it’s still not complicated. It’s a mystery. It is the wondrous business of God overturning the powers and principalities of this world to remake all things. The cross is the way of life, the way of peace, the hope of the world. It is the place where mercy and truth kiss each other, where Jesus offered his body and blood as bread and wine so that we would spiritually perish through this mortal howling wilderness.

People wearing it in the American government needn’t alarm you. You can just move on with your day. You could pray for them that they’ll all become real Christians, if they aren’t already—how would we know since we can’t see very well into our own hearts, let alone theirs. It’s going to be fine because Jesus rose from the dead and has promised to come again in glory.

Ok, so, have a nice day!