I just had a funny image of a basket full of burkas.
“Excuse me miss, but that bare midriff just won’t do. Try this lovely burka, compliments of the House.”
Oddly enough, take the tone out of the OP, and I stop agreeing with it. I don’t give a damn if people show up to church buck nekkid with “Fuck me for Jesus” painted on their ass. But moriah’s post, and her* follow ups, made me laugh out loud, and teh funny makes up for just about anything.
*They say 51% of the country is female, so I’m playing the odds.
Heh. At MY church, they actually LIKE it when you come naked (we prefer to say skyclad, but, y’know, whatever)
I think that anyone who dresses for church has already missed the point. If you argree with the whole omnipotent being bit, then you’ve gotta know he/she/it/they have already seen you at your absolute worst.
Say you live as Christ lived, and do good works, but when you go to worship, you show your belly, or your armpits or your feet. I say, if that offends your God, it’s time to get a new God.
Best comeback I’ve seen in days.
Just a matter of degree.
It’s all about control; getting people to conform to YOUR standards.
Kinda like Bush and the Republican party.
Kinda like Stalin and Hitler.
Kinda like fundamentalist ANYTHING.
Definately anti-freedom.
Now, I ask you… where would Christianity be today if there were no freedom?
At the bottoms of gladiator pits.
Happy and Holy Hypocrites, Unite!
Haha. I don’t know what it is about desecration that amuses me so much. I guess it’s the thought that the OP might actually give a damn about this stuff. Is it harder to pray if you can see other people’s armpits or midriffs? Maybe Jesus gets distracted by the young naked flesh.
Never I say , never
as to the rest of the op
What would Bugs Bunny say
Declan
Why not? You’re obviously with a group of people with whom you have something important in common.
Any god that cares about how I’m dressed when I worship is a petty god.
“God doesn’t give a shit about what you wear to church, as long as you show up.” - Father Bernie, my family’s priest when I was younger.
As does mine (Russian Orthodox). All the women in my parish wear head coverings, but if someone is visiting and not covered, we don’t make a big deal of it. We leave it to them to figure out that they’re dressed inappropriately, as every other female will be covered (even the babies). Loaner shawls are always available in the narthex. In the Russian church I used to attend, inappropriately-dressed women would quickly be taken care of by the babas in the back (who you do not want to mess with).
In traditional Orthodox churches men and women are separated, too. Eastern Orthodox have the men on the right and the women on the left, while Oriental Orthodox (Copts, Ethiopians, etc.) are vice-versa.
Noting the thread title, I suspect the OP thinks there is a connection between “abomination” and “abdomen.” “Abdomination”? :eek:
Not at all. When I say you’re acting like a twat, I am making a judgment about your behavior in this thread, nothing more. When you say things like…
…and…
…and…
…and…
…and…
…and…
…you are making judgments about their moral character based on their clothing. How shallow can you be?
Since you seem to be having so much fun throwing out Bible verses…
Incidentally, all these examples came only from the OP. If I had done the whole thread, I wouldn’t get any work done today.
Dammit moriah!!! I just had to pop in to tell you that I’ve now got Duran Duran’s song “Girls on Film” stuck in my head from having read your thread title one too many times.
Or, was that image you were trying to convey? Oh my eyes, my eyes! 
Yookeroo: Any god that cares about how I’m dressed when I worship is a petty god.
GotN: “God doesn’t give a shit about what you wear to church, as long as you show up.”
Honeychiles, God doubtless doesn’t care whether you haven’t had a bath for a week before coming to church either, or whether you chose to drench yourself in overpowering cologne. But that doesn’t mean that other people won’t mind it, or that it’s okay for you not to care whether they mind or not.
If you really don’t want to deal with anybody else’s expectations about clothing or hygiene when you worship, stay home and worship in your room with the door closed. Otherwise, your community’s accepted conventional standards for appropriate dress and grooming in a place of worship apply.
And I’m a non-churchgoing liberal atheist, so I don’t have a dog in this fight. But I do think that “appropriate attire” doesn’t mean just “whatever you feel like wearing”. And moriah’s quite right that most congregations of whatever faith don’t consider that skimpy or flashy clubwear is appropriate attire for attending a religious service. moriah is, of course, being rather over-the-top in the style of his/her condemnation of inappropriate attire, but isn’t that what makes a Pit rant?
AM: *The younger women in our congregation almost seem to see wearing one of the Basket Shawls as a fashion statement. They will come in in their spaghetti straps and grab one of the very plain, rectangular shawls from the basket and put it on for the liturgy. Why they do this instead of buying a nice, fashionable shawl and wearing it to church, I don’t know. *
Either they just keep forgetting they need to cover their shoulders for church (not very likely if they keep doing this week after week), or they think that looking fashionable on the way to church or after church is more important than being appropriately dressed during church. As long as they’re willing to abide by their community’s dress standards by covering up with a Basket Shawl, though, they get a pass on it.
SS: It’s all about control; getting people to conform to YOUR standards.
The idea that people in bare midriffs and teeny tank tops are somehow being nonconformist or resisting control by their sartorial choices is laughable. All the little sheeple are only dressing like this because the fashion industry is currently telling them it’s the proper look to have. Next year when the fashion industry tells them that something else—peasant blouses or long tunics or turtlenecks or whatever—is the “in” thing, that’s what they’ll be wearing and they wouldn’t be caught dead in a middy top.
If it were a case of somebody wearing unconventional attire as a matter of principle—like a vegan wanting to wear casual shoes made of synthetics instead of leather “dress shoes”, or an abortion opponent wanting to wear an anti-abortion T-shirt—you’d have more of a case. (Although I’d still suggest that such people should try to adhere as closely to the community’s standards as their principles will allow, or else be willing to pay the price of not being welcome at the services.) But people whining that it’s too “controlling” to make them conform to a church’s dress code (for a couple of hours once a week, at most) because it interferes with their conforming to the fashion advertisers’ dress code are just being silly.
*Oh yeah, but we all know Saul (aka Santa Paul) HaTeD Jesus and persecuted Him mercilessly. *
Um, you HAVE heard that he eventually changed his mind about that, right? Using Paul’s pre-conversion anti-Christian activities as an argument against his post-conversion Christian doctrines is another big heap of silly.
And I must say, atheist or not, I always think the advice of Paul in Romans 14–15 about the stronger brethren not putting stumbling-blocks in the way of the weaker makes a lot of sense. According to which, just because you don’t care what anybody wears to a worship service, and other people’s bare skin or sleazy outfits don’t interfere with your worshipping, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be thoughtful of the sensibilities of your brethren who are more uptight about modesty.
The strumpet in the steeple has the navel with the piercing.
Proper dressing is a blessing in the pew, it is true.
There is a church by my house that used to have a sign out front that read :
" Tank tops, flip-flops, and shorts welcome. God doesn’t care how you are dressed, as long as you show up"
There is another church here that actualyy holds Sunday morning services ON THE BEACH ! People sit around in bathing suits on beach chairs and worship God ! How horrid!! :dubious:
This thread is cracking me up. Thanks, Moriah.
The last time I went near a church was when some kids were out in the median advertising their car wash. I was kind of hungover, and possibly bearing abdomen, and/or shoulder, so I didn’t go in for the “pancake breakfast.” I didn’t want that place to catch fire 'cause I walked through the door.
They were all very proper, like little Xian missionaries, and it was fun to watch them wash my car. I felt kind of wrong blasting Motorhead the whole time, but you know, they’re Xians, I figured they’d forgive me. I did give them five bucks, after all. 
If the dress code isn’t posted somewhere, it might be less an issue of respect than an issue of ignorance. I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head who would consider a high-necked sleeveless linen dress that comes a couple of inches above the knee inappropriate dress for a church service. (Well, anyone but the OP and his/her ridiculous armpit fetish, anyway.) As such, someone wearing such a dress would be quite likely to breeze right past the little basket.
You’d think that would be true of any god who cares who you fuck (if it’s consensual), but not everybody feels that way. I guess Moriah isn’t being much pettier.
Oh my God! Jesus used smileys!?