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In our most recent General Conference, there has been a push for members to dress up for church. It’s long been a hobby horse of E. Oaks, and that hasn’t changed. Generally speaking, current Mormon dress standards at church are a little more dressed up than most other sects, but maybe less than Easter at a historically black church–we don’t like hats and fans.

Several years ago, we had a French boy staying with us on an exchange program. I asked if he wanted to come along with us to church or if he preferred to stay home. He said he would like to come along, for curiosity sake. I had mentioned that people in our church tended to dress up for church. He was Catholic, an occasional church-goer, but not from a super devout family. When he came down in nice jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt with a slogan on it, I was worried he’d feel awkward when he saw all the other kids in dress pants and button down shirts. He borrowed a button down shirt from my son and off we went. He was further surprised to see our son administering the sacrament, a rite he was used to seeing a priest in vestments conduct.

Perhaps part of our dress standards relate to lay members performing rites. Actually, we know this is the case from talks by E. Oaks about the white shirt being “the uniform of the priesthood.” But even in my own lifetime, this was not always the case. If it’s a valuable symbolic idea, it’s nevertheless a relatively new one. The white shirt has been a missionary staple for a long time, but it became a church-wide sacrament-ordinance staple only since the late 80s. Prior to that, there may have been local preferences, but there was not a mandate. Sometimes wards take this further, like when one of our YM leaders declared that all the Aaronic priesthood holders should wear a suit jacket every Sunday as well at their white shirts and dark dress pants because it would “look sharp.” While my sons (fans of suit-wearing Barney on How I Met Your Mother) embraced this new rule, as a parent I found it to be a bit of a financial and personal burden to keep growing teenage boys in a full suit every week, particularly since we live in hot Arizona where suit jackets don’t make sense half of the year and result in thermostat wars that the women always lose. But that’s the point of church, isn’t it? Looking sharp?

Scriptures warn us not to be too dressy at church. This was one of the failings of the Zoramites in the Book of Mormon.

“Behold, O my God, their costly apparel, and their ringlets, and their bracelets, and their ornaments of gold, and all their precious things … and behold, their hearts are set upon them.” Alma 31:28

This reminds me of Isaiah going off on the women of his day in a passage that reads like a medieval pre-woke Teen Vogue:

“In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, The chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, The rings, and nose jewels, apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, The glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils.” Isaiah 3: 18-23.

Like the Book of Mormon, the New Testament is not a fan of fancy apparel:

“For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts?” James 2:2-4

So, then, why all the angst over dressing like business executives at church and on missions? Is “looking sharp” at heart a missionary tool? “Hey, look at how well dressed we are! If you join us, you’ll be upwardly mobile middle class, too!” If it smacks of prosperity gospel, that’s because it is. Like so many things, we can thank the Victorians, inventers of the middle class, for the idea that we should dress up for church. From an article on The Origins of Dressing Up for Church:

Dressing up for church became a popular practice in the first half of the nineteenth century, first in England, then northern Europe and America, as a consequence of the industrial revolution and the emergence of the middle class. While care was historically given to cleanliness and solemnity on Sabbath days, dressing up for worship resulted, not from a theological teaching, but from the influence of Victorian culture on worshiping communities.

The Victorian era spanned from 1837 (seven years after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or whatever we called ourselves then was formed) to 1901 when Queen Victoria died. This timing is particularly coincidental as it’s when Mormonism was flourishing in the west. Victorian thought was renown for several cultural traits:

Family-centrism . Rather than seeing children as an irritatingly small and whiny low-skill workforce, Victorians began to treat the home as a refuge, a locus for the family’s activities. While the role of women was still mostly limited to selfless Madonna or profligate whore, Victorianism also saw the rise of women’s education levels which opened up new possibilities for them and paved the way for women’s suffrage. Leisure also became a staple of family life as the railway system opened Britain up for family holidays. Families could enjoy time away from work together.

. Rather than seeing children as an irritatingly small and whiny low-skill workforce, Victorians began to treat the home as a refuge, a locus for the family’s activities. While the role of women was still mostly limited to selfless Madonna or profligate whore, Victorianism also saw the rise of women’s education levels which opened up new possibilities for them and paved the way for women’s suffrage. Prudery . The Victorians are the ones who added fig leaves to famous statuary. Prudery was all the rage around this time, throughout the world, not just a Protestant thing. Similarly, some priests (sometimes attributed to Pope Pius IX) chopped off the genitalia of centuries-old works of art in the Vatican during this era. [1]

. The Victorians are the ones who added fig leaves to famous statuary. Prudery was all the rage around this time, throughout the world, not just a Protestant thing. Similarly, some priests (sometimes attributed to Pope Pius IX) chopped off the genitalia of centuries-old works of art in the Vatican during this era. [1] Scientific progress , including medical advances and creating asylums and sanitariums for those who were vulnerable in society due to mental or physical disabilities. By today’s standards, these aren’t great, but they were innovative and humane for their time. Progress!

, including medical advances and creating asylums and sanitariums for those who were vulnerable in society due to mental or physical disabilities. By today’s standards, these aren’t great, but they were innovative and humane for their time. Progress! Order and conformity. This was evident in how families were run (by a patriarch), how society was run, and the expectations of piety, particularly for women and children (to keep them in line, submissive to male authority). [2]

While those may have been features of Victorian life, what really made it possible for society to shift to “Sunday dress,” among other middle class virtues, is the industrial revolution. Rather than an agrarian economy which required participation by all family members during planting and harvest seasons, an industrial economy led to the rise of a middle class. And make no mistake, middle class values inform every aspect of our lives as Americans and Mormons. We hold many unquestioned assumptions that are middle class in origin.

If you go back in time, only the wealthy had access to “dress up” clothes. The poor made their own home-spun coarse clothing, and they wore it to work in the fields until it was torn, tattered, and filthy. They did not have a second set of clothes for church. There’s a reason Jesus’ robe was such a big deal that they cast lots on it. To mock Him, Herod had put a splendid robe on him and sent him back to Pilate for judgment. It’s unclear whether this was the robe that soldiers cast lots for after the crucifixion, but it is noteworthy that the robe was not sewn together, but was rather all one piece of work. That made it more valuable. The soldiers didn’t want to devalue it by cutting it into pieces.

“Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.” John 19: 23-24

According to historian Josephus in his book Antiquities of the Jews, the temple’s high priest wore a blue vestment that had no seams. It was parted along the front and back. Perhaps this is similar to the “splendid robe” that was used to mock Jesus’ status by the wealthy, powerful Herod. Even in Jesus’ day, clothing symbolized power and wealth. Although there is less distinction between wealthy and commoner clothing at church now than then, it is still an important note. Some church members simply have more money to spend on clothing and are more likely to own more “dressy” clothes as a result.

Several Christian groups in the 18th and 19th centuries resisted the introduction of “Sunday dress” (dressing up) in favor of “plain” dress. The Amish to this day consider buttons and variety in clothing to be a worldly vanity, instead opting for hook and eye closures on clothing and mostly black and white clothes. Sects like Mennonites prohibit colorful clothing. In Puritan communities, as I learned on my recent tour of Salem, Massachusetts, wearing colors like red or other bright (and expensive to dye) clothing could result in a charge of witchcraft.

But other sects embraced the emerging “genteel” values that were becoming the norm as the middle class grew in wealth and size. Horace Bushnell, a Congregational minister in Connecticut argued that sophistication and refinement were integral attributes that mature Christians should emulate. In his essay “Taste and Fashion,” he referred to “fashion” as a hollow substitute of the socio-economic middle class for the real deal, “taste,” a virtue of his own gentry class. He decried the “fashions” of the rising upwardly-mobile middle class as artificial in contrast to the natural goodness of a family-run (by gentry, of course) farm. And yet, this seems like a familiar trade vs. gentry argument, old money vs. new money. It’s still a case of the haves vs. the have-nots, and the rising middle class that he decried was mimicking the gentry class and the trappings of wealth.

In 1846, a North Carolina Presbyterian pastor named William Henry Foote wrote that “a church-going people are a dress-loving people.” He noted that these new dress-up customs had become so ingrained that they defied weather changes that would have dictated more practical choices. Even in warm summer months, Presbyterian immigrants in both Maine and western Pennsylvania carried their nice shoes and stockings to the meetings (to avoid soiling them), and then wore them during the service, replacing them with practical clothing after the meeting before they walked home.

According to historian Nicholas Terpstra, working class men in Britain who could only afford one good suit for church would pawn the suit on Monday for money to live on during the week, only to reclaim it on Saturday for church the next day.

Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher whose life and ministry encompassed the 50 years that saw this change of culture among American evangelicals. At the end of his life, he lamented “The Methodists in that early day dressed plain . . . they wore no jewelry, no ruffles . . . But O, how have things changed for the worse in this educational age of the world!”

As Richard Bushman said in The Refinement of America, a book about the absorption of gentry values into middle class society in the early United States:

“The Methodists, who were among the most restrained Christians at first, were wearing fashionable clothing by the 1850’s, signifying absorption of genteel values.

Certainly, the man who referred to himself as Brother Joseph, who initially found the Methodist sect most persuasive (prior to 1830 at least!), would have been attracted to a more humble, less ostentatious form of dress for worship.

Say what you will, since the industrial revolution, Americans and Mormons are swimming in the unquestioned assumptions of middle class values: self-reliance, community order, and yes, prosperity gospel. We believe you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps (as opposed to the prevailing idea from earlier eras that there are immutable, god-ordained “haves and have-nots”). And an integral part of that prosperity gospel includes the trappings of our middle-class wealth. If it’s not a show of wealth, consider what we say it represents: respect toward God, making church a set-apart, special place. We deliberately make it less casual, not more. Being casual in our dress is taken as a heuristic for being casual in our respect for deity or commandment-keeping. It’s assumed as evidence of lack of commitment or discipleship. And yet, the lord looketh on the heart. Your fellow ward members, not so much.

One problem with the assumption that casual dress equals moral laxity is that what we consider “Sunday dress” is also for many of us our white-collar work wardrobe. What we wear when we dress casually isn’t, for many of us, what we wear to work, but rather what we wear for leisure, something that most workaday people didn’t have prior to the mid-1800s. That’s how many clothes we now have compared to when these norms came into effect. We have different clothes for work, worship, athletics, and leisure time, not to mention our “grubby” attire for cleaning out the garage or doing yard work. The very existence of leisure clothes is itself a sign of wealth, or at least it was when leisure emerged in the mid-1800s.

What do you think of the focus on “Sunday dress”?

Does it separate people by financial means and make visitors feel unwelcome or does it advertise that if you join us, you too can improve your wealth with our community’s support network in your court?

Does it show respect to God or is it a show for other people? How do you feel impacted by the dress standards in other churches you’ve attended? Does how we dress matter or is it a distraction?

Discuss.

[1] Leaving me to wonder where the closet full of statuary genitalia is.

[2] except Queen Victoria who was the freaking queen.