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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Dressing for Church
Message-ID: <44@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Sep-84 22:48:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.44
Posted: Thu Sep 20 22:48:30 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 03:38:51 EDT
References: <317@ihu1e.UUCP> <905@houxm.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 23

I myself tend to go to churches where the question of how to dress is taken
with the proper attitude of "who cares?".  This doesn't mean that everyone 
shows up in dirty jeans.  At my home parish and the Episcopal chaplaincy on
campus, some people come dressed fairly casually; others come in suits.  It's
all a question of what feels right for the individual.

My theological justification for what I wear is that clothes in church are
the 'vestments' of the congregation.  People should wear what they feel
comfortable in approaching God in public.  I wear the clothes I wear to
work (dress shirt and reasonably neat pants); I feel presumptious in wearing
more and disrespectful in dressing down from that.

I tend to be wary of parishes where there is too much emphasis on how 
people dress.  When the congregation worries too much about clothing, it is
overly concerned with external appearances and is forgetting its religion.

(Of course, all this is rendered moot some Sundays, when I don an alb and
carry the processional cross around the church!)

(And I really love flashy vestments on the priest!)

Yet Another Broad Churcher,
     Charley  Wingate