Edit: this is a response to lotusbiosm; I have no idea why it's doing these replies somewhat out of order.
At Coates' blog, Maretha2 noted that, too: especially in the context of African-American churchgoers, church was an occasion on which you could wear something nice, instead of your grubby work clothes.
That was something I should have, and could have, figured out, even from personal context surrounding my dad's work clothes and my own martial arts gear (but didn't). Ah well. Live and, hopefully, continue to learn and/or relearn.
Personally, for me, dressing up in "dress clothes" always made me itchy and overly warm and feeling like I was performing femininity as an exciting & intriguing play on the best days--and fidgety and miserable and feeling like I was performing femininity in Kafka on the worst. I can't actually worship as well in a frilly dress, and always found it annoying/infuriating when other people assumed dressing up made me worship better, or at least didn't make me worship any differently than I would if I were in more casual clothing. (I'm not too angry with you for making that assumption, because I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt me, but I thought I should point out that it did hurt me a bit, in part because I don't know if you noticed that you'd even made an assumption--and it is, at least in my case, a factually incorrect assumption).
I don't remember if I ever read more than excerpts from "the Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism." I'll have to look for it at the library. I think your idea about Puritan/Puritanical behavior definitely held true then, and still holds true for much of modern Christianity. That's a double-edged sword, of course--what can be used to inspire us to better things can also be used to gloss over very real problems in theology and real life. So many Christians are taught that their problems should go away upon communing w/God, and are then dismayed and bewildered to find that this is not, in fact, the case, but that they are expected to act as if it were. Recipe for disaster, of course. :(
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At Coates' blog, Maretha2 noted that, too: especially in the context of African-American churchgoers, church was an occasion on which you could wear something nice, instead of your grubby work clothes.
That was something I should have, and could have, figured out, even from personal context surrounding my dad's work clothes and my own martial arts gear (but didn't). Ah well. Live and, hopefully, continue to learn and/or relearn.
Personally, for me, dressing up in "dress clothes" always made me itchy and overly warm and feeling like I was performing femininity as an exciting & intriguing play on the best days--and fidgety and miserable and feeling like I was performing femininity in Kafka on the worst. I can't actually worship as well in a frilly dress, and always found it annoying/infuriating when other people assumed dressing up made me worship better, or at least didn't make me worship any differently than I would if I were in more casual clothing.
(I'm not too angry with you for making that assumption, because I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt me, but I thought I should point out that it did hurt me a bit, in part because I don't know if you noticed that you'd even made an assumption--and it is, at least in my case, a factually incorrect assumption).
I don't remember if I ever read more than excerpts from "the Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism." I'll have to look for it at the library. I think your idea about Puritan/Puritanical behavior definitely held true then, and still holds true for much of modern Christianity. That's a double-edged sword, of course--what can be used to inspire us to better things can also be used to gloss over very real problems in theology and real life. So many Christians are taught that their problems should go away upon communing w/God, and are then dismayed and bewildered to find that this is not, in fact, the case, but that they are expected to act as if it were. Recipe for disaster, of course. :(