Dress
In North America and Europe, up until the late 1950s it was often expected that worshippers wore their best clothes to church services (known colloquially as the Sunday best). This tradition has declined in many mainstream churches but is still much in evidence in the Southern Baptist and Mormon traditions in the U.S., and in many black evangelical churches.
Those who support more relaxed dress codes do so on the basis that congregants should come to God as they are, and that communion with God requires no special clothing. Those who support more formal dress consider that although communion with God does indeed not require special clothing, a church service is an office of devotion and as a matter of respect, it is therefore appropriate to wear one's best attire.
Even where dress code is more relaxed it is still generally considered proper to dress modestly.
Read more about this topic: Church Etiquette
Famous quotes containing the word dress:
“I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It is principally for the sake of the leg that a change in the dress of man is so much to be desired.... The leg is the best part of the figure ... and the best leg is the man’s.... Man should no longer disguise the long lines, the strong forms, in those lengths of piping or tubing that are of all garments the most stupid.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)
“Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)