Wearing suits to church has been a common American tradition for decades.

This has been a great SI discussion. Excellent and thoughtful points all around.

To get back to Jim’s point, the heart of this issue really revolves around the purpose of worship. Worship is not a program or performance. It is not a reverential mood conveyed by organ music, incense, or nice suits and dresses. Worship is a heart response to the truth of God’s word (John 4:23). The emphasis must never be on form or style, but on the Person of Christ and the Word of God.

That said, our clothing does communicate, and can either support or distract from this mindset. Here are my personal principles for church dress (more detail in this post):

• Seriousness. A worship service is not the place to relax and have a good time. It is a time to focus your heart and mind on the Word and worship. Your clothing shouldn’t say, “I’m at church but I really want to be kicking back beside the pool.”
• Modesty. Modesty refers to much more than the cut of women’s clothing. Some churches seem to be running a fashion show. Some preachers feel the need to be on the cutting edge of style. Appropriate dress for church minimizes attention to self and distraction from the purpose of coming together.
• Appropriateness. Obviously dress for worship will vary between cultures. Each culture has its own norms of what is appropriate for various occasions. Churches, too, have their own unique cultures. Culture is like a social language; those who share it understand the nuances that fashion and manners communicate. Pay attention to the culture you are a part of, and use it appropriately to communicate to the glory of God.

Amen, Ian.

Appropriate dress for church minimizes attention to self and distraction from the purpose of coming together.

One wonders whether one should dress up for family worship. One wonders whether it is appropriate to pray before going to bed while wearing pajamas.

Ron, and now we digress.

Speaking of digression - Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas to bed.

– Peet added this –

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That’s where the “dressing up to visit an important person” argument falls apart. In my view, dressing appropriately, modestly, and seriously has to do with what you are communicating to others. It’s not primarily for God’s benefit - He sees the heart! Of course the setting does play a part in what is appropriate as well.

It’s worth noting, if we’re going to use the priestly garments as a reference point, that the vast majority of Israelites were not Cohens, and were poor, but were yet commanded to come to the Temple three times annually, no? So unless I’m missing something, I would expect there to have been a lot of people around Jerusalem during Passover/Rosh Hashanah wearing garments that showed every dusty, dry, hot step of that multi-day journey from home to Zion. So I don’t think we can argue, seriously, that in “olden days”, people were wearing garments that we’d identify as dressy.

Except for the priests and some Levites, of course.

Jesus wore a suit and He had short hair.

I had forgotten about the infallible logic of Jack Hyles. Who could argue with Jack?

Christ’s hair wasn’t as long as popular movies portray Him. Note that not cutting hair was from a vow, not common practice. Statues from 1st century show shorter hair, not longer. Christ with longer hair comes from certain artistic periods, not Scripture. Another example of our culture influencing Christians’ thinking. I get the impression from today’s Fundamentalists that the issue of hair length just isn’t brought up any more, along with other “inconvenient” and “embarrassing” issues such as clothing. If we’re going to use Jms 2:2 to minimize “dressing up”, then we should all “dress down” to the worst examples. Admittedly, acceptable clothing styles change. The dresses we consider modest today would be considered immodest 100 years ago, even by unbelievers. Even conservative bathing suits today would be immodest 100 years ago. We are all affected by our current culture. Yet cultural customs are not in themselves our guide. Just because Western and Oriental cultures have different clothing customs does not make either right or wrong. The difficulty, as always, is applying Biblical principles and examples to particular cultural practices. A line does exist where particular clothing becomes wrong. The trick is knowing where that line is. In our town, the “cool” churches are the ones with the “cool” pastor wearing casual shirt and jeans/shorts, shaved head, and athletic build. Oh, and the church has a “cool” name like “Awakening” or “The Well” or something similar. Discussion about “wearing suits” is part of a much larger topic of just how we relate to an ever-changing culture, usually changing in ways that are not good. Sometimes, though, we don’t recognize that the changes are “not good” until we have incorporated some of those changes into our personal lives and churches and have seen what they have done to us. Of course, nothing is usually “settled” in these online discussions, but they can be interesting to read.