Friday, March 29, 2019

As They Were Passed On To You


Slate apprises me of a controversy I didn't even know was a controversy.  (I noticed today, for the first time, a student wearing leggings.  In my day we called them "tights."  In the '80's, people sprayed water on jeans in order to squeeze into them to get that look.  The difference was, they couldn't sit down again until they took them off.)  The heart of the matter, of course (!), is:  what do the people in the pews think? (You'd think the issue for churches is:  'Why aren't there more people in the pews?', but no, the issue is:  'What are the people in the pews wearing?')

The leggings debate takes on a special urgency in Christian circles, where the stakes are not just which pants are flattering, but which pants are godly. Modesty is a virtue named in the New Testament, and lust is a sin. But the Bible unhelpfully does not include original illustrations. Does modesty require covered shoulders? Long skirts? Or just a spirit of not “trying so very hard to look good in all the ways that are so relatively unimportant,” while also, of course, looking traditionally feminine? Meanwhile, huge swaths of mainstream Christian culture are almost indistinguishable aesthetically with mainstream American culture, and even take pains to imitate it. The result is that many young Christian women feel perfectly comfortable wearing leggings, while others see them as not just unflattering but immoral.

Well, yeah, some churches are indistinguishable from the culture; in fact, they all are. Who attends worship in a toga, or Italian Renaissance costume?  (Okay, okay, the worship leaders tend to dress in medieval garb, I'll grant you that.) The distinctions are really generational, as evidenced by the letter writer Graham quotes.  She ends the article quoting the letter writer's plea for jeans (which, especially during the tight jeans craze of my younger years, also showed off butts), which is from her (the l.w.'s) generation. But I can remember the controversy over wearing those in church, and how self-consciously rebellious I felt to do it. Before that, I can remember my parents being upset because a woman wore a pants suit (ask your Grandpa, punk!) on Sunday morning. She was more comfortable than the other women, and until they learned to go along with it, they resented her for it.  The culture they'd grown up with defined "appropriate" clothing, and it took awhile to accept a change in culture, both in church and outside of church.

(The funny part of this article, to yours truly, is that the one Mass I've ever attended was in seminary, for a class (not with a class, mind).  My friend and I found a Latin Mass (special dispensation, apparently), and the women all wore 1950's clothing (and what pop culture is that?) and covered their heads.  No, not Muslim style, but, as fading memory serves, with lacey things that harkened back to my youth in the '50's, which I barely remember as I was 5 when the '60's started.  "Christian culture" v. "American mainstream culture" is such a silly idea, the more you get down to it.)

And why does this happen churches in particular? Because modesty is a virtue and lust is a sin?  The latter is certainly RC doctrine (I presume the Seven Deadlies are still around).  The former is from Paul:

I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you. 3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man,[a] and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

7 A man ought not to cover his head,[b] since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own[c] head, because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. 12 For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

13 Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? 14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering. 16 If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice—nor do the churches of God.

(That's why the women in the Latin Mass covered their heads, if only slightly.)  I have no ready-made exegesis of Paul here, except to say he's reflecting his culture, not creating "Christian culture."  That bit about the shaved head calls to mind nothing more than that final scene of "Ryan's Daughter" where the village shaves the titular character's head in order to shame her.  I'm doing nothing more than assuming that's an ancient practice known even in Paul's day (I pastored a church where some remembered the men still sitting on one side for worship, women and children on the other, so don't think these "old" practices don't have very, very long lives.), which is why he would mention it with such opprobrium.*  I don't have much truck with Paul's language here, either; just pointing out how "Christian culture" is always pretty much the culture of its society and when those old practices linger long enough, we think they come from religion, rather than influenced religion in the first place.

So back to the question:  why does this conflict seem particular to churches?  Despite Paul's admonition, it's not for theological reasons (any more than churches that don't enforce that 'dress code' are "liberal"); it's because young people dominate schools, old people dominate churches (with or without a large cohort of children present and accounted for).  Clothing culture in schools adopts change much faster than other parts of culture, because that's where the young adopters of change are. And what starts there makes its way up the generational chain. The one institution in our culture where the generations are most likely to grind like millstones?

Church, of course. And so it changes last, least, and most loudly.

(Admit it; for all that, you thought there'd be more to it, didn't you?)


*Not to drag that discussion out above, but Paul explicitly rejects creating a new practice peculiar to his house churches (which were entirely family affairs anyway, in the sense we have of "extended family."  They were not separate buildings used only once a week by a group of otherwise unrelated people who didn't already know each other.  V. 16, there, ends the discussion explicitly noting what he advocates is a cultural norm, and his churches have no need to create new practices, nor should they.  That "church/culture" distinction has always been a rather flimsy one.

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