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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by Alogon:
I find the whole high-fashion game, for men as well as women, a narcissistic waste of money, despite occasional intersting creativity. Oscar Wilde called it ugliness so complete that one is compelled to change it every three months (or words to that effect).

To see anyone reject it as thoroughly as a woman wearing a hijab is refreshing. One wants to call her "sister..."

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One of the loveliest things I've seen at uni is the interaction between the male and female Muslim students. 'Brother' or 'sister' is just their regular greeting and the family-like atmosphere between them is very inspiring to me as a Christian.

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Originally posted by Alogon:
I find the whole high-fashion game, for men as well as women, a narcissistic waste of money, despite occasional intersting creativity. Oscar Wilde called it ugliness so complete that one is compelled to change it every three months (or words to that effect).

To see anyone reject it as thoroughly as a woman wearing a hijab is refreshing. One wants to call her "sister..."

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... But, as far as the OP is concerned, wearing something that is unusual to your culture and/or station in life is not something that I would consider particularly "modest". Modesty in dress isn't simply about how many square inches of flesh are shown, it has to do with dressing in a way that others will consider decent, appropriate to the occasion, and in accord with one's position in society. The role dress plays in sexual attraction is certainly a part of that, but it is only a part. Depending on age, in my opinion a Christian woman in the West shows modesty more by a "normal" hair style or, in particular for older women, by wearing a regular head scarf. That will draw nobody's eyes. Furthermore, an unusual display of modesty is always suspect of false modesty. There is a problem when one ends up explaining to people that one is wearing something in order to be more modest. That contradicts the underlying humility, modesty should be a "silent" virtue. Ostentatious displays of virtue are warned heavily against in the gospels, and while I am not saying that the OP is suspect of this, the OP cannot simply say "I'm Muslim" and thereby imply the purpose without pointing to one's own virtues.

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Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
I think you have to look seriously at where you will be wearing the hijab. One of my students started wearing one, given to her by a Muslim friend, when she began losing her hair through alopecia. It was all fine and dandy in the nicer parts of town but when she had to venture into an area with a lot of more conservative Muslims she narrowly avoided a beating for talking to a man. His attitude was that if you dress like a Muslim you have to act like one. This seems to be an attitide that has come about quite recently in this country, I certainly never got such abuse when I used to look like a Mujahideen deserter as a student.

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Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
I think you have to look seriously at where you will be wearing the hijab. One of my students started wearing one when she started losing her hair through alopecia, given to her by a Muslim friend. It was all fine and dandy in the nicer parts of town but when she had to venture into an area with a lot of more conservative Muslims she narrowly avoided a beating for talking to a man. His attitude was that if you dress like a Muslim you have to act like one. This seems to be an attitide that has come about quite recently in this country, I certainly never got such abuse when I used to look like a Mujahideen deserter as a student.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
I think IngoB is onto something here. I don't think it's just about what might attract the opposite sex. Whichever sex you are, is wearing clothes that are designed to 'make a statement', the walk of faith, a Christian concept? Is the desire to proclaim ones own personality to the world around you an admirable idea in the first place?

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Actually it's the opposite - I don't want to be seen as a Christian hijacking something Islamic in a way that's offensive to Muslim women. I have no problem with people thinking I'm Muslim because I can easily refute that.

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Originally posted by Alogon:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
I think IngoB is onto something here. I don't think it's just about what might attract the opposite sex. Whichever sex you are, is wearing clothes that are designed to 'make a statement', the walk of faith, a Christian concept? Is the desire to proclaim ones own personality to the world around you an admirable idea in the first place?

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I emphatically agree with your point. Getting up in light too dim to read by, I'm not often wide enough awake to even think of "making a statement." Just finding something clean and maybe even unwrinkled to stuff myself into is trouble enough. I claim no virtue here, only laziness, hoping it doesn't shade over into thoughtlessness.

But I'm surprised that IngoB would say anything against clerical collars or monastic habits. Whether intended by the wearer personally to make a statement or not, they do. They are not typical street dress. They distinguish the wearer from the general population, even if they are uniforms and those so attired pray fervently for the growth of their orders that they may be a little less unusual. As a layman, I wouldn't want it any other way.

Aren't hijabs the same?

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Originally posted by Alogon:
But I'm surprised that IngoB would say anything against clerical collars or monastic habits. ... Aren't hijabs the same?

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Originally posted by Spiffy:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Actually it's the opposite - I don't want to be seen as a Christian hijacking something Islamic in a way that's offensive to Muslim women. I have no problem with people thinking I'm Muslim because I can easily refute that.

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Uh, wearing a hijab, which is associated solely with Muslim women, is going to be seen as hijacking. Get a scarf, get a babushka, get a veil, even get a tiechel (just don't wander into a haredi community 'cause they'll think you're married). Leave the hijab to our Muslim sisters.

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Originally posted by LutheranChik:
I think the poles must be shifting because I find myself agreeing with IngoB!

Around here we have a small but visible community of ueberfundamentalists whose dress codes for women include a rather odd combination of calf-length calico or denim dresses, knee socks and various types of snoods or headscarves. While I have no doubt that these women have been told they're modeling "modest" dress and sincerely believe that to be true, to me their unusual outfits scream, "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"

I just don't understand the motivation.

Then again, I'm a dumpy fifty-something whose dress of choice runs toward fleece shirts and matronly-cut jeans, and who wears her hair in what my mother used to call a "boyish bob." I'm not quite sure why my own non-embrace of the fashion industry doesn't count as "modesty" in some circles. Then again, it's not something we talk about in our church, which is mostly populated by fellow dumpy Midwesterners.

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Well I was never going to go down the frumper route I know that kind of dressing from American blog friends back in my evangelical days and wasn't about to start dressing like it - just my usual style (jeans and t-shirts) but more coverage eg higher necklines. I think on consideration IngoB is right (and I am surprised myself by this too! and leaving it at the more-coverage clothing will do.

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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Alogon:
But I'm surprised that IngoB would say anything against clerical collars or monastic habits. ... Aren't hijabs the same?

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I didn't say anything against religious habits. As worn by religious in their daily duties, they are decent, appropriate to the occasion, and in accord with their position in society. They are also usual (if increasingly rare) to the culture and to the station in life of the religious, i.e., they are what religious are expected to wear. Hence they are in general modest. This is in spite of the fact that such habits make the religious stick out, because this "sticking out" has intentional signal value that serves social function, just like a police uniform.

The situation with the hijab is complicated by various cultural factors, but basically, if I decided to run around in Franciscan habit in order to express my dedication to God, then we would have a somewhat similar situation (given that I'm not a Franciscan, not even a tertiary, and do not intend to become one). I don't think that this would be terribly wrong, though somewhat odd, and perhaps it could even be considered as a kind of compliment to the Franciscans. Yet be that as it may, it sure wouldn't be modest. In particular, I would not be sticking out as part of the social function generally assigned to religious, but by individual choice. In some sense I would be appropriating what Franciscans are by adopting their habit, in order to signal who I am as an individual. That puts me at centre stage, and very practically so if I showed up like this at work (where people would know that I am not a Franciscan religious). And that's just not modest, whatever else it may be.

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Originally posted by daronmedway:
This is a sound argument so far as it addresses the subject and nature of modesty in the pubic sphere. The problem with it, AFAIC, is that it is predicated upon the unbiblical notion of 'religious' as a special sub-category of the laity to whom special rules apply. Of course, I recognise the fact that these people do exist and that IngoB's use of them as an example is good. What I don't agree with is the idea that 'religious' are in any way entitled - or required - to dress more modestly merely by virtue of an invented category of Christian to which they are deemed to belong.

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Seriously?

The idea of a religious Christian community you can find in Acts 4:32-37. The reason why that requires special dedication of the members, or will fail, can be found in Acts 5:1-11. That special dedication to God can usefully be indicated to others by outer signs is shown by the hair of the Nazirites (Numbers 6:5) and the mantle of the prophet (1 Kgs 19:13,19; 2 Kgs 2:8,13-14; Zech 13:4). Of course, St John the Baptist was a Nazirite from birth (Lk 1:15) and wore a hairshirt (Mt 3:4) to indicate his mission of repentance to others. The latter is a type of the sackcloth that we can find ubiquitously mentioned in the bible as outer sign of repentance, e.g., Psalm 35[34]:13. It is not entirely clear what St Paul himself and the four men under a similar vow are doing in Acts 18:18,21:23-24. Perhaps it is a Nazirite vow (i.e., growing your hair from a fresh shave), perhaps it is a kind of tonsure, but it certainly is an outer sign of a Christian vow as well.

So we can conclude that while on an anal reading of scripture we do not find any monks or nuns there, both their special dedication to God in a community of like-minded people and the outer manifestation of such dedication in their habits can be motivated easily from scripture. The vocation of a religious is simply a creative and inspired way of obeying the First Great Commandment. It is also, of course, a vocation open to all Christians. Religious orders are not exclusive, and right from the beginning they have drawn people from all walks of life, abandoning their differences in a shared dedication to the Lord.

It is in my opinion tedious and uncharitable to attack the religious over their habits. And the idea of an "entitlement to dress more modestly" is simply paradoxical. Everybody is free to dress as modestly as they want, and it is impossible to aim to "out-modest" someone (because that would be false modesty). Religious habits nowadays indeed would be less modest than most dress, in the sense of drawing strong attention, except that their standing out is an intended and generally accepted social sign. And the religious are required to wear their habit as outer manifestation of their desired dedication and freely taken vows. There is no sense in which this is restricting their Christian faith, it is expressing it.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear