Wearing your Sunday best

September 20, 2008 By

churchclothesWhen my husband and I were going through premarital counseling, our pastor shared guidelines on appropriate wedding day attire. It was easy enough for us to comply with.

Since then, I’ve noticed that skin seems to be the #1 accessory for brides on their wedding day. Everyone always looks smashing, of course, but I’m longing for the day when we can move on from the standard bridal uniform of a strapless white gown.

All this to say that I loved the way this Chicago Tribune report on church attire began:

Rev. David Moyer still remembers the gasp as the beautiful young bride came up the aisle.

“What was that about?” he wondered.

So Moyer, the conservative rector of Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in Rosemont, went ahead with the nuptials–quite unaware of how backless the bride’s dress really was.

“It wasn’t until I blessed them and they turned around that I looked down” and saw more of her backside than one usually sees, he recalled with a laugh.

Moyer said nothing at the time. But after years of watching wedding gowns grow skimpier and more revealing, he had had enough.

“I never thought I’d see the day,” he said recently. “But I now tell couples in premarital counseling that their wedding clothes must be dignified and lovely.”

The piece reminisces about what proper dress used to mean — men in jackets, ties and shiny shoes and women in heels, dresses and hats. The reporter speaks with clergy who lament the change and those who think it’s not a problem. The article has some great quotes and shows a nice breadth of reporting. It shows both cultural mores and theological implications of the way we dress.

My dad is a pastor who vicared in Imperial Beach, California, in the early 1970s. Apparently it was not unheard of for people to approach the communion rail in their beach gear. Sometimes this included some barely-there beachwear. It presented a bit of a pastoral challenge. Tony Campolo discussed a similar issue and how it was handled at his Baptist church:

Sitting on a couch in the tabernacle’s modern vestibule, Campolo recalled the time a group of visiting teenagers from Canada showed up in T-shirts and jeans at the predominantly African-American Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, where he worships.

“Well, the ushers turned them away,” Campolo continued, “and the kids got all mad. They said, ‘What, you don’t let poor people in your church?’

“And the ushers said, ‘Oh, we let poor people in. But you’re not poor. We’ll let you in when you come dressed with respect.’ ”

Rev. Joseph Ganiel, pastor of St. James parish in Ventnor, N.J., doesn’t turn the underdressed away. But he has had it, he said, with tank tops and flip-flops and short shorts and naked navels.

The latter pastor actually posts a dress code in the parish bulletin. The story ends with the anecdote of a woman and her two teenage sons casually dressed at church, scoffing at the notion that God cares what they wear more than what’s in their hearts. The various stories help show the difficult balancing act congregations have in promoting proper respect through attire while being welcoming of everyone.

Understanding the limited space the reporter had to work with, it might have been interesting to look a bit more at official or semi-official dress codes for certain religious groups. But it’s just a really interesting topic with many perspectives.

Print Friendly

Filed Under: Anglicanism, Catholicism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism, People, Social Issues, Worship
  • Jerry

    Mollie, this is, to me, a very interesting topic with real spiritual depth. There were a couple of lines in the story that really stood out to me:

    “Sunday has lost its sense of being a special day, and I think the clothes went with it,” …”On the other hand, we’re standing before God, and the way we dress is a reflection of the seriousness with which we take an encounter. If you were going to meet with the president of the United States, how would you dress?”

    I wish someone would have followed up with the woman who said that God cares about what is in your heart and not what you wear with the question: “But isn’t what you wear a reflection of what is in your heart”?

    I was happy to see the issue of our relationship with God touched upon in such a well-written story. Googling around for a phrase that was part of my youth “Sunday go to meeting clothes”, I happened upon a song that sums it up for me in a couple of verses:

    In our sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes we tried to look our best
    In that little country church in a valley way out west
    Us kids were always scrubbed and clean and checked from head to toe
    In our sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes

    We learned that all the good things come from up above
    And that there’s not a one of us that jesus doesn’t love
    He promised to forgive us no matter what we’ve done
    And if rags are all we have he’ll gladly take us if we come

  • Dave

    It’s simple. A church has social rules and moral rules. The shrewd clergy keep those distinct; others classify their social rules as moral rules, and wind up sounding as if God does indeed care more about the clothes on your back than the contents of your heart.

    However, if some clergy can’t figure this out, can we really expect MSM reporters to?

  • http://rub-a-dub.blogspot.com Mattk

    I am simply impressed to read a story about a real religious issue that doesn’t ave anything to do with poltics, but deals with how religious people live their lives. I’d love to read many more stories like this.

    “but I’m longing for the day when we can move on from the standard bridal uniform of a strapless white gown.”

    Me, too. 9/10 of the brides who wear them do not have the physique necessary for them. Besides, it is a wedding, not a fashion show.

  • Kathleen

    Call me an old troglodyte, but seems to me that Christian women ought not to wear backless/strapless/mini/midriff clothing anyways. Modesty is never out of style.

    I know this from personal experience. My spiritual life has grown enormously since I adopted a modified version of my ancestors’ Plain clothing.

    It’s also helpful for when I do volunteer work in risky places. People respect a modestly-dressed sister.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    There’s a whole look at our church that my college daughter calls OrthoFlowy. It’s most and kind of hippyesque. It has a simple purpose, for the Orthodox. It is comfortable clothes in which women feel OK bowing and prostrating, during prayers….

    The more things change…

  • Pamela

    I loved this article. This issue has been something I have dealt with all my life. I became a Christian when I was a teenager. I came up in a church where the people would ask people to leave if they were not dressed up. One woman that I knew at the time was a nurse. She was a Christian and wanted to get to service. She was running late so she went straight to our service. She was wearing her uniform which included slacks, which was prohibited for women to wear. She was told that she had to change her clothes. She never came back. I was really embarrassed when that happened. Right after that they had a sign at the front door telling people what was proper attire to wear. That turned me off completely. I had to go to that church since I was not grown yet. Because of this and other issues I had with that denomination I left at 17 never to return. That was over three decades ago. I thought that was dreadful.

    I have no trouble with having a modesty standard. That is just a good practice and it is in the Bible. To me modesty is different from Sunday goin to meeting clothes. Some people may actually feel that they should look their best for the Lord. However in too many church situations it is a fashion show. People that cannot afford all that stuff in many cases feel they cannot come to the church house. That should never ever be. I sincerely think that is one reason that some churches have dressed down. Also the dress code in corporate America is dressed down the past decade or so in a lot of places.

    This was such a refreshing article to read. I agree this is a part of spiritual life that I’m sure a lot of ministers may struggle with. However modesty I think can be presented in the context of the Bible. A minister does not necessarily have to point out to a person right then but maybe mention something during a sermon or something like the minister that mentioned a dress code during premarital counseling. That way the message is communicated without embarrassing the people.

  • Emily

    I thought this article was nicely written…. It is an issue, certainly, and I’m glad to see an article addressing it. Lots of churches have turned more “casual,” and it’s a struggle for many churches to draw a line between encouraging attendees to dress respectfully and discouraging them with an attitude that focuses only on appearances.

    But as far as strapless wedding gowns go, well, if the woman can wear it while covering up all important areas (ahem), I don’t see the big deal. I’ve seen far, far worse.

    In the interest of full disclosure, I did wear a strapless gown on my wedding day. Aside from the fact my shoulders were bare, it was in fact relatively modest. Considering some of the other monstrosities in the bridal salon bared a lot more than shoulders, I figured strapless wasn’t too bad.

  • http://www.geocities.com/hohjohn John L. Hoh, Jr.

    I remember serving as a vicar (intern) in the late ’80′s. Now, I understand it gets humid in the summers in Wisconsin, but young ladies with very loose tops coming up for communion and kneeling do leave very little to the imagination–actually show more than I needed to see. (The wafer I once dropped I left as I felt it was not my place to retrieve it from where it landed.) I made a mental not to make sure to teach catechism classes about proper attire for church, especially communion.

    “Well, the ushers turned them away,” Campolo continued, “and the kids got all mad. They said, ‘What, you don’t let poor people in your church?’

    I have noticed that poor people do dress up as much as possible when they come to the house of the Lord. It is the middle class who tend to be “accept me as I am, not how I dress” in attitude. We’re not saying suits and ties or tuxes. But will it kill you to at least get a pair of khakis and a polo shirt?

    Understanding the limited space the reporter had to work with, it might have been interesting to look a bit more at official or semi-official dress codes for certain religious groups. But it’s just a really interesting topic with many perspectives.

    It would be interesting to see if any church bodies have dress codes. I suspect that is a matter left to the individual congregations.

    This easily could have been a societal piece. I have seen articles of a similar ilk about how people dress for job interviews (I once conducted an interview with a guy who came in shorts; you can guess if we made a job offer to him or not). People tend to also take a very casual attitude in dress and decorum at weddings. Hey, people, the wedding is a solemn occassion in both the eyes of the church AND the state! Have some respect and decorum. Or is that the prevailing problem–that people have no respect and no sense of decorum?

  • csmith

    It shows both cultural mores and theological implications of the way we dress.

    I really enjoyed the article but have to confess that the T-shirt pictured with the story would be much more common at our church than a tie (we actually joke privately that people wearing ties are called “visitors”).

    In our case it wasn’t a cultural or theological imperative that drove our dress code, it was purely practical. When 20 of us started the church 21 years ago we met in a rented school and had to create a church in the cafeteria and classrooms every Sunday (and take it all down when we were done). After meeting in a rented school cafeteria, school gymnasium, and community center multipurpose room we finally bought a building of our own – a rundown school where we could meet in our own gymnasium.

    After spending a decade meeting in rooms that had other uses, we finally built an auditorium, but the dress code ship had long since sailed.

    I wonder how much of this trend has also been shaped by churches like ours (and the much larger ones like Willow Creek and Saddleback), that started meeting in rented facilities that required manual labor to pull off the service and just weren’t conducive to a more formal dress code.

  • elnathan45

    I wonder how many who read this still think that the “rules” ought to apply to everyone – EXCEPT them when they break them? I’m a retired pastor and I can’t tell you the number of times parents who ranted about dress in church suddenly find tight clothing, low-cut tops, ratty torn blue jeans and the like acceptable because THEIR darling looked good in it.

    The church is like a ship in the water – that’s good, but when the water is in the ship – that’s bad and we ought to address it not ignore it because we want to be liked.

  • Dave2

    I’m sympathetic to the ‘causal dress’ crowd, and I wonder why the following point never came up in the story: to act as if the Creator and Sustainer of all existence cares about human conventions of dress and social respect is an absurd insult (and the comparison between God and the President only serves to underline this point).

  • js2

    Our pastor (in a large, southern California church where people regularly wear shorts, tank tops, flip-flops, etc.) once went on a digression about modesty. He acknowledged that the current fashion was, as he put it, the “classy prostitute,” but asked if women could please dress with a little modesty in coming to church.

    The place broke into cheers and applause. The woman in the row ahead of me was clapping enthusiastically.

    After the service, the same woman, the big fan of modesty, turned around — revealing — well, she didn’t reveal her nipples, but that’s about all that wasn’t pushed up and out of her tight spaghetti-strap top. I stared. I caught a friend staring — he caught me staring — and we both broke out howling with laughter.

    I guess some people really don’t have mirrors at home.

  • Karen Vaughan

    When I was elected to Consistory, one of the elders, upset with one deacon who dressed in jeans, proposed that the Consistory all dress up on Sundays. I countered that I would only support his position if at a least one Consistory member come in jeans so that people from all walks of life would feel comfortable.

    I figured that between my formality and my then gothic looking son, we had the spectrum covered.

    But I am glad we don’t have to deal with beachware. As a city church, Summer shorts and spaghetti straps are about the extent of it.