DRESS IN CHURCH | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1881

DRESS IN CHURCH.

In ancient and in comparatively modern times various States have attempted to establish sumptuary laws for the regulation of the styles and cost of clothes, but with little success. The question of clothes seems one of most difficult adjustment. The early Methodists, who were nearly all persons belonging to the less opulent classes, and the Quakers, made strenuous efforts to check display and extravagance in dress. The modern Methodists seem to have given up any effort to control the question of dress. The Quakers still adhere to a peculiar costume as to cut and color, but wear clothes proverbial for their fineness and high price. The dress of males throughout Christendom has been reduced to the minimum of plainness. Lace, feathers, and ruffles have entirely disappeared, and jewelry nearly so, save maybe a watch-chain, or a pin, or a few buttons. There is in most youths and young men a jewelry period that passes away with the coming of soberer years.

But this cannot be said of female attire; ornamentation still forms a distinguishing feature of their style, and a large item of the expense of their dress. We know not that this will be or can be changed, but we most ardently desire to see one reform in the matter of female dress or fashion, and it is this : let church-going cease to be a dress occasion.

In the Catholic countries of southern Europe it is not fashionable, and is not considered in good taste to be gay in dress at church. We were pleased to read that the ladies of a large and wealthy congregation of Baptists, in Nashville, Tennessee, had resolved to dress in calico at church. Now we do not care or desire that ladies should confine themselves to calico—though it is neat and pretty—but we do most sincerely and religiously desire to see our lovely and beautiful women adopt a plainer style of dress at church than that which now prevails. “But,” says some fair lady reader, “why do you wish us to be plainer at church than at other public or social assemblies?” For more reasons than one; but our chief reason is that you may not dress poor women out of church and away from church, as we, alas! have too much reason to believe that you are now doing. Now we know that this is no part of your design or desire; indeed we doubt not you will hear with regret that this is the effect of your fine dressing at church. But you will ask: “Why does our finery affect for harm the poor at church more than elsewhere?” For this simple reason: the church is the only place where the poor and rich meet together. The poor do not visit in the circle of the rich—do not attend grand dinings, parties, and places of public gaiety. It is only in church that they are brought in contact, and the poor made to feel the contrast between their cheapness and plainness, and the costliness and splendor of the well-to-do. Now it ought not to be so, but so it is. This contrast is humiliating to the poor, and they shrink away from it, and will not go to church at all, or, if they do, go with a feeling of mortification, or else with an effort at display beyond their means.

Many poor women are kept from church in the morning, and some at night because they shrink from contrasting their poverty and plainness with the wealth and show of the richer classes. We cannot hope to correct this feeling in the poor. What, then, can be done? This: let it become fashionable and be regarded as a matter of good taste to be plain at church. If the ladies who are the leaders in society will take this in hand, it can be carried through and be the means of great good. Now, cannot sensible and godly women be persuaded, for Christ’s sake, and the sake of the poor, to make this effort of self-denial?

Sisters beloved in the Lord, when you read this, will you think, talk, and act in regard to it? May the spirit of all grace help you!—Galveston Christian Advocate.