Do you dress up for church?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Castor Muscular
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Castor Muscular

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The question is for both "clergy" and peons, er, the laity. 

Do you know, without looking it up or googling it, at what point in history people started dressing up for church, and why? 

 
No dress up. My church is pretty casual. In the summer, I normally wear shorts, a tank top and sandals to church.

No, I don't know the history.
 
I get dressed for church. Mostly as a courtesy to the rest of the church family.
 
Izdaari said:
No dress up. My church is pretty casual. In the summer, I normally wear shorts, a tank top and sandals to church.

No, I don't know the history.
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The clergy started wearing special clothes in the 4th century when Constantine wanted to elevate them above the laity.  There's a long history of changes that led to today's clerical vestments, which now vary from church to church and denomination to denomination.  But none of it is Biblical.  Very late in the process, some people justified the practice by pointing back to the Jewish priest's vestments. 

The laity wore everyday clothes until about the 19th century when a large middle-class emerged, and they wanted to differentiate themselves from the lower class by wearing better clothes.  Many Methodist churches actually rejected the idea and refused to allow a "dressed-up" person into the service. 

But as time passed, the practice of dressing up for the occasion became acceptable, and eventually became expected in some churches, even though the origin was to show off your economic status.  These days, many, if not most churches allow people to attend without dressing up.  But the clergy still has its pagan outfits and vestments.

 
You mean, dress up like a vampire or something? No.
 
I didn't know the history at all. When I was IFBx, we had to, it was church policy if we were teaching in any capacity.I no longer get dressed up and my new assembly it is not required. Taken directly from our church website,"Dress is casual, worship is simple, but serious, and Jesus is the focus. We hope you’ll join us this Sunday!"  Today I wore jeans, sandals and a polo.


 
Btw, the shorts, tank top and sandals I wear to church in the summer? That's what I normally wear during the summer for everything, including work.

I have a few dresses, but they only come out of the closet for weddings, funerals and stuff like that.
 
I wear a dress,or skirt and top to church.... no nylons its to hot....
 
Recovering IFB said:
Sherryh said:
I wear a dress,or skirt and top to church.... no nylons its to hot....
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hope so or that would be inappropriate.  :D
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The 1st century church was topless.

They had no steeples (or church buildings for that matter).
 
aleshanee said:
Castor Muscular said:
Recovering IFB said:
Sherryh said:
I wear a dress,or skirt and top to church.... no nylons its to hot....
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hope so or that would be inappropriate.  :D
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The 1st century church was topless.

They had no steeples (or church buildings for that matter).
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the first churches established in america by the colonists had no buildings ... ???
at least not at first.... .. but according to sketches from the time period
they still dressed up for church.....  8)



just saying..... ;)....
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I don't think that was considered dressing up.  Those were just their non-work clothes, which people routinely wore off-hours when they weren't farming or tending animals.  Normal people were too poor to dress up.  They had two sets of clothes -- work and off-work.  Clothes were difficult to make and expensive to buy back then.  No Wal-marts or imports from China. 
 
We're pretty casual at our church. Here's our statement from our website.....

"At Parkview, we try really hard to make sure that “religion” doesn’t get in the way of people having a relationship with God and with each other.

Toward that end, we’re not crazy about rules around here, unless they’re rules that God put in place for our best interest, like “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” If God asks us to do something, we believe we should do it!

But sometimes churches can require things that God doesn’t even ask of us. So you won’t find rules like a dress code that says you have to wear suits and ties or your best dress. How horrible that people might miss out on learning about how much Jesus loves them because they can’t afford a suit!

So come as you are, and share life with us! (Of course, we’re not anti-suit and tie, either! If that’s your thing, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a “sharp dressed man!”)"



I usually wear a nice pair of dress pants and a polo.

:)
 
Well, I wear my "work clothes" to church.  Might be a dress, might be dress slacks.  Except for Sunday nights or Wednesday service.  You might see me in jeans on those occasions.

But, I suppose I could still say I "dress up" for church.  Because I do have some clothes that I won't wear in public...my PJammers (which I'm likely to wear all day if I don't have to go out) or shorts, which I will wear at home but never in public.  You see, I have the world's second-whitest pair of legs...it's not nice to blind people at the grocery store from the glare created by the fluorescent lights... ;)
 
I don't wear my loin cloth to church.  But I don't put on my swan feathers, either.

Anishinabe

 
If we didn't have the humor here it would be very boring...
 
As a young child, I always dressed in my "Sunday Best" to go to church.  And this from a kid who attended church with friends.  My folks did not raise me in the church.  As a little kid, I dressed as I did to honor God.  I dressed in my best to show Him that I made an effort.

Closer to current events, I still had the "Sunday Best" mentality with my own child...Mom, those kids are wearing jeans, why won't you let me?  Well son, that may be the best they have...but you have better.

Now that my son is grown and out of my "control", I'd gladly sit next to him in church, whether he was wearing a pair of stained "cut off" jeans or a suit and tie...if only he'd come...

Yes, I've changed my opinion.  The clothes matter way less than the heart attitude.  Come in your tattered rags...come in your most expensive suit...but come!   
 
lnf said:
As a young child, I always dressed in my "Sunday Best" to go to church.  And this from a kid who attended church with friends.  My folks did not raise me in the church.  As a little kid, I dressed as I did to honor God.  I dressed in my best to show Him that I made an effort.
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That's very nice (seriously, because you had a sincere desire to please God) but it's a pretty big error to teach kids.  It teaches that church building is a house of God where we must care about how we attend.    We are in God's presence and have access to God 24 hours per day.  God does not reside in buildings.  I'm glad you came around. ;)
 
What we wear says something about what we believe.  I'm not saying that a person has to wear a suit and tie to church, but to pretend that clothes speak absolutely nothing about what we believe is a bit naïve.
 
ALAYMAN said:
What we wear says something about what we believe.  I'm not saying that a person has to wear a suit and tie to church, but to pretend that clothes speak absolutely nothing about what we believe is a bit naïve.
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For one thing, it says there's something special about being in a church building on Sunday morning.  And that's not true.  Dressing up for church does not honor God, because God doesn't sit at the church and wait to see what you look like.  As I pointed out, God does not live in buildings.  We have 24/7 access to God.  There's nothing special about Sunday morning. except maybe the unique ability of the modern church to suffocate the members of the body.   

It might say that the dressed up person is of a higher class or makes more money than those who dress down.  That's another worldly view and antithetical to the church body.  This is why the early Methodist church rejected anyone who showed up dressed up.  They were not allowed in, because their priorities were all wrong.

It may also cover up the real you, which is, again, antithetical to the real church where the best thing you can do is show up as the real you without anything masking your flaws or emotions.  It's the same thing as getting into an argument with your family on the way, and then whipping out fake smiles when you get out of the car. 

The healthiest thing we could do as the body of Christ is to go back to meeting in homes in normal daily clothes, and engage in plenty of interaction and praise.  As an aside, it would save billions of dollars per year in the construction and maintenance of church buildings.
 
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