Clothes are clothes, and the gender identity of clothing are usually assigned based on culture. For example, it's unmanly for a man to wear a skirt...unless he was Scottish, and it would be called a kilt. There's no problem with women wearing pants, and it's actually the norm now. Pants made for women are tailored to our curves and body type, so it's not like you can mistake them for men's pants.
Very true. As a matter of fact, women's pants are so feminine in our culture that there is actually a business out there that makes men's style clothing for cross-dressing women... :crazy
There are sitll many old time pastors who will not let female church members where pants. And I am very close to one pastor who is like that. But I do not agree with him at all, if a woman wears pants to church, so what.
Too often this is a control issue.... not saying it is with your friend, Lewis, but often times when Pastor's are concerning themselves with things like this, they are exercising too much control over the congregation. There is a huge difference between leadership and control.
I had a very good friend once who was Mennonite. We've lost touch over the past 25 years, but when we were paling around together I always noticed that she got "noticed". She wasn't exceptionally beautiful, she had fine, average features, a thin figure... her real claim to beauty was her beautiful soft brown hair, but it was always under the little white cap that Mennonite women wear. She always dressed in the very old-fashioned dresses, long sleeves, they came to just below mid-calf and either brown or black shoes.
When I say that she got "noticed" I'm not saying noticed like my friend Sally, who had supermodel good looks or even now my daughter... but noticed because she was dressed so oddly and so much differently than anyone else around her. Sometimes she was very self concsious about it. It also affected the way people interacted with her, not just guys... but pretty much everyone. She worked at the same day care I did and, until they got to know her, many of the parents would shy away from her... she got used to the kids asking her why she dressed so oddly.
This is why I've often stated and believe that this kind of dress actually can contribute to violating the principle of 1 Peter 3 and 1 Timothy 2. I read on their website this quote from some source, I'm not sure what the source is:
"Any device designed to attract attention to the wearer or excite admiration is excluded from the modest apparal which God's Word enjoins." CG 423.2
But, wearing clothing like they show... a sort of western answer to the burka... is bound to attract more attention than if they simply wore modest, but fashionable apparal.
And, there is something to be said about "exciting admiration".... I know the website was focusing on sexual admiration from men... but I believe it is just as wrong to put one out there as some kind of "spiritually superior" and seek or gain admiration because everyone is commenting upon how "modest" or "godly" or "saintly" or whatever...
What is the focus? If the focus becomes fixated upon the outward appearance... whether it's because of being overtly sexual or because the woman is putting forth that she's some sort of "super Christian"... it's wrong and it misses the point that Paul was making to the Corinthians and the Ephesians completely.
