p. 35 | Fashion in the Church

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 16, 1872

Fashion in the Church.

THERE is a dress question in which all Christian congregations have a common interest, and with regard to which we wish they might all unite to effect a reform. It has reference to the ordinary apparel—female apparel, especially—proper to wear at church. There was a time when good taste demanded the use of the plainest clothes in the sanctuary, when the wealthiest were distinguished for the conspicuous absence of personal adornment, and sartorial display was a mark of vulgarity at such time and places. But now-a-days in the congregation on the Sabbath, rich and poor alike seem on a desperate strain, the one to make some faint approximation to the other in point of extravagant display, and the other to demonstrate the utter hopelessness of the attempt. It would almost appear as if, whatever might be thought of the propriety of a modest garb in other places, the proper costume for the house of God, where, theoretically, we all go to be reminded of our common origin and destiny, were an agglomeration of all the jewelry, and all the chignons, and all the panniers, and all the feathers and furbelows in one’s wardrobe. The wearer is to carry all this piled agony to the sanctuary as to a fair—as if her errand were not so much to praise as to be appraised—and there employ the sacred time in envious comparison of her own mountain of millinery with the Himalaya triumphs of her neighbor. Shall we ever get back to the standard of good taste and unobtrusive piety in this? Will not all good Christian people—especially those whose wealth and refinement make them the proper and only efficient leaders in such a reform—will not the pulpit of every church and of every sect unite in the effort to effect it?