culture #women #gender #dress

This week, on my twitter, one of the guys I follow said this:

Not once has the Holy Spirit instructed a preacher to speak a sermon against a woman wearing pants.

— Nathanael Beasley (@savedavenger) August 29, 2022

As you can imagine, all forms of nonsense and hilarity ensued. Because I cannot stay out of it, I decided to comment, and because I'm a total glutton for punishment, I've decided to write a blog post on what I think about the topic. So here is what I think about women wearing pants:

I don't think about women wearing pants.

That's it. It's such a ridiculous thing to argue about. It's a topic I sincerely wish we could move on from. In my own pastoral ministry, I've tried really hard to kill the topic with silence for the last ten years, but because the topic seems immune to that treatment, here I go...

When I think of the "pants issue" I usually try to acknowledge three truths:

1. The Bible gives clear instructions on how women should dress.

This is so obvious, and the examples so abundant, it should be beyond controversy. Passages like Deuteronomy 22:5, 1 Corinthians 11:4-15, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 and 1 Peter 3:1-6 (among others) make it very clear that God expects women to dress differently than men. It's important to note that these scriptural arguments were not made based on then current culture - but were predicated on God's creation order and on the nature of God.

You don't have to be a crazy fundamentalist to understand that the Bible teaches: 1. Women should dress differently than men. They should not dress in a way that identifies them with rebellion against their created gender. 2. Women (like men) should not draw undue attention to themselves with their clothes, hair and jewelry. 3. Women should be careful in particular not to draw sexual attention from men.

In my opinion, that the Bible teaches these principles is (to borrow a phrase from Paul) "without controversy." What isn't "without controversy" is how these principles are to be applied in the life of a church-going lady in the year of our Lord 2022.

To help with that, I try to remind myself that

2. We are living in a time that is historically novel.

For almost all of human history, two things were true: 1. Clothing was both expensive and incredibly hard to produce. 2. Culture protected and recognized the distinct role of women in society.

But we live in a time, perhaps the first time in human history, where both of those things are no longer true.

The Industrial Revolution

In the 1800s, the industrial revolution made clothing far cheaper to create. New inventions made the farming and refinement of cotton a hundred times less labor intensive and 100 times more profitable. Factories spread across the country that took that cotton and produced cloth in unheard of quantities. Suddenly, instead of clothes being something that you have to laboriously produce in your home with a spindle or a needle and thread - clothing became something you could just order out a Sears catalog.

The globalization of the last 50 years has taken that trend and put it on steroids, giving us a dizzying array of inexpensive clothing that would have been unheard of for people at any time in history before the day before yesterday. 150 years ago, I would have been prosperous to own four pairs of pants and two good suits. Today, both my wife and I have walk-in closets and we struggle to keep them from overflowing. 150 years ago, the options for the kind of clothing would have been extremely limited. Today, we can log onto Amazon and find dozens of cuts of dresses, skirts, pants and jeans and we can have them on our doorstep for very little money in two days time.

The Sexual Revolution

The industrial revolution by itself would be historically disruptive and would confuse the clothing debate, but added to it was the sexual revolution of the 1900s. The conveniences of modernity made the traditional job of motherhood and keeping a home far easier. The birth control pill (and legal abortion) that came out in the 1960s made it possible for women to control the one thing keeping them out of the workplace. Second wave feminism successfully pushed women into places they had never been before.

By the time I came around in the 1980s, divorce rates were sky-high. Almost all women worked outside of the home and pants were no longer seen as an edgy statement - they were what my grandma wore around the house.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that second wave feminism was a good thing or that it aligned with biblical values. I'm merely saying that it happened, and it was so successful in deconstructing societal norms that what would have been absolutely scandalous and edgy for women to wear 100 years ago doesn't even raise an eyebrow today.

The ladies folding Bibles

So today (literally today) I walked from my home office to the church fellowship hall, where a bunch of extremely godly women in their 60s, 70s and 80s were putting together Bibles to send to missionaries. (They do this every Thursday.) 90% of them were wearing pants. If I hadn't have been writing this, I wouldn't have thought twice about it.

Some of these ladies know the Bible better than me. Not one of them is even a bit masculine. Most have dedicated their lives to their homes and their husbands. I know lots of women who only wear skirts - and if you were to put both groups in a balance - I'd take the crew folding Bibles any day.

3. We should extend grace and liberty as Christians try to figure this out.

So here is my take, given the fact that the Bible clearly teaches distinction and modesty in dress, and given the fact that our historical moment has made such a complicated mess of that, and given the fact that "what pertains to a man" depends a lot on where and when you were born and what your momma wore around the house - I fall back on this passage:

Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. Romans 14:3-4

I'm not going to say that someone who lived in the 60s or 70s who was on the front lines of the culture war and who preached against women wearing pants was wrong. I'm going to be understanding of the people in my church who hold that standard for themselves. But personally, it's not how I'm going to live out the Bibles principles in my own family and with my own daughters.

Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.

In my mind, when God's word says...

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. Deuteronomy 22:5

...it makes a whole lot more sense that the "abomination" was referring to people like Bruce Jenner or Ellen Page, or to the small army of gender-bending 20 something copycats stocking shelves at my Walmart - than my twelve year old daughter's floral print jeans, but if you want to disagree, that's between you and God, we are still brothers (or sisters) in Christ.

Aftermath

I have never, not even one time, preached a message against women wearing pants. It's never even been hinted at in one of my sermons, but if you were to come to my church any given Sunday - you'd find that 90% (maybe 98%) of the women were wearing modest dresses. I've visited many churches where the pastor has a similar view on the issue, and found the same thing to be true there.

There are those who say this is a slippery slope, that to throw out this standard is to throw out all standards. I just don't buy that. Despite my position, the women in my church are careful to dress modestly and in my own life, I rarely go a week without telling my daughters to change and we are actively teaching them to be modest in the way they dress. When missionaries or local friends come around who we know make this a big priority, we voluntarily adopt their standard. It's not a big deal.

At the same time, I've known many Christians that put this issue up there in importance with the salvation by grace through faith. I've heard heartbreaking stories from more than one godly friend who was cut off from their family over this issue. And to be honest, I know a lot of judgmental, somewhat ignorant people who use this issue as a crutch for their self-righteousness, and I've known more than a few of these people to end up in jail for sexual perversion.

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. Titus 1:15

So I'm not thinking about pants. It's not even on my radar. I'll respect any position you take on it, so long as you do it honestly and respect my ability to do the same.