{"id":99,"date":"2015-04-05T12:06:10","date_gmt":"2015-04-05T12:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.ruudmedia.com\/gsc\/?p=99"},"modified":"2017-12-06T12:17:07","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T12:17:07","slug":"hardball-democratic-operative-finds-joy-designing-christian-vestments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/hardball-democratic-operative-finds-joy-designing-christian-vestments\/","title":{"rendered":"Hardball Democratic Operative Finds Joy Designing Christian Vestments"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Political strategist Garry South in his Marina del Rey home. (Cheryl A. Guerrero \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p><\/div>\n

The question was rhetorical.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan a boxer be a Christian?\u201d Garry South asked. \u201cBecause you know what he does: He pounds the crap out of another human being. He draws blood!\u201d<\/p>\n

South, a famously pugilistic political strategist, was neither apologizing nor seeking forgiveness as he answered, very much in the affirmative, his own query.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you hold every practitioner of every profession to a very pure standard of doing the Christian thing,\u201d he said, \u201cmost people are going to fall outside that orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Democratic strategist Garry South has designed religious vestments for more than 30 years. Some have been commissioned by Catholic or Episcopal parishes. (Cheryl A. Guerrero, Los Angeles Times)<\/p><\/div>\n

South is a person of strong and abiding religious faith, which may surprise those familiar with his pile-driving personality and blast furnace of a mouth, features engaged the past few decades by several California Democrats, including, most notably, former Gov. Gray Davis.<\/p>\n

Politics has always been a mix of the high-minded and underhanded, fusing the idealistic and cynical.<\/p>\n

Still, the hobby South has pursued for nearly 30 years, a sideline to political warfare, is more than a bit unexpected: It\u2019s designing religious vestments, the elaborate garments used as part of Christian worship. His latest work, an altar frontal featuring tapestry and gold fringe, will be used for the first time at an Easter service in Fullerton.<\/p>\n

Talk about the sacred and profane.<\/p>\n

South, who has lived in Southern California since the early \u201990s, grew up in Montana in a highly religious household. He attended evangelical services at least three and sometimes seven times a week. Eventually, he came to question what he considered the anti-intellectual grounding of fundamentalism, though South says, \u201cI never stopped going to church, or believed it was all hooey. The basic core of Christian faith stuck with me very deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

In college, where he began his career in Democratic politics, South also began exploring different faiths and studying religious history. Attending an Episcopal service, he was struck by the robes worn during the liturgy and the symbolism each possessed.<\/p>\n

After graduating, he moved to Washington to work for the Democratic National Committee and later serve in Jimmy Carter\u2019s Agriculture department. He lived just two\u00a0blocks from Georgetown University and took advantage of the Catholic school\u2019s vast library to deepen his research, seeking to better understand the meaning of individual vestments and the traditions attached to different faiths.<\/p>\n

South showed an early aptitude for artistry \u2014 a still life he painted in sixth grade hung in his parents\u2019 home until they died at ripe old ages \u2014 and after 10 years of study he combined his skill at drawing with his religiosity to design his first vestment. He donated that 1986 Roman-style piece to an Episcopal church in Washington, in memory of his late grandmother.<\/p>\n

Since then, South has created more than three dozen pieces \u2014 tunics, maniples, stoles and more \u2014 taking up to a year and a half on each design and spending many thousands of dollars. Some have been commissioned by Catholic or Episcopal parishes; all were donated or sold at cost.<\/p>\n

Over lunch at one of San Francisco\u2019s old-line, white-tablecloth restaurants, South mostly ignored his soup and crab cocktail \u2014 and a series of waiters \u2014 as he held forth on braids and tassels, embroidery, trim and fabric; he prefers silk, rayon or some combination and never, he said, touches polyester.<\/p>\n

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“There\u2019s a certain satisfaction and pride when you go to a religious service where the vestments that you designed out of your own head are a part of that service. It\u2019s a feeling most people will never have,” Garry South says. (Cheryl A. Guerrero, Los Angeles Times)<\/p><\/div>\n

(South sketches his designs in colored pencil and works with specialized manufacturers in Maine and London, who produce each garment to his specifications. The embroidery is done by experts in Pakistan.)<\/p>\n

There is a joy, South said, in doing something so far afield from his usual endeavors, a sensation he likens to a composer hearing his work fill up a symphony hall. It\u2019s a creative outlet, he said, and morally satisfying in a way campaigns are not.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just something that hangs on a wall,\u201d he said, forking a mouthful of crab. \u201cThere\u2019s a certain satisfaction and pride when you go to a religious service where the vestments that you designed out of your own head are a part of that service. It\u2019s a feeling most people will never have.\u201d<\/p>\n

And no, he interjects before the question is even asked, it\u2019s not as though he\u2019s seeking some sort of redemption or leveling of the cosmic scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve done a lot of things in politics \u2026 that probably wouldn\u2019t pass muster with the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes,\u201d said South, an Anglican Use Catholic, but he has never felt compelled to seek priestly forgiveness for any campaign trespass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m hired to do a job, and that\u2019s what I do,\u201d he says, thumbing through a smartphone gallery of his sacred works before presenting a finely wrought Spanish design. \u201cPeople get into this field understanding it ain\u2019t patty-cake\u2026. That\u2019s the way democracy works. Democracy is ugly and messy and it\u2019s hardball.\u201d<\/p>\n

And God works in mysterious ways.<\/p>\n

Twitter: @markzbarabak<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2015,\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The question was rhetorical. \u201cCan a boxer be a Christian?\u201d Garry South asked. \u201cBecause you know what he does: He pounds the crap out of another human being. He draws blood!\u201d South, a famously pugilistic political strategist, was neither apologizing nor seeking forgiveness as he answered, very much in the affirmative, his own query. \u201cIf […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}