Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!hplabs!hao!seismo!umcp-cs!mangoe 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