131 thoughts on “Ties”

      1. That is what the administrator says at the school where I teach. I came to loath them, and I wear a lot of sweaters so I don’t have to wear them.

    1. The average used car salesman dresses better than the average Fundy man.
      Both dress better than I do, though.

  3. Fundy MEN, Darrell. Can you imagine what would happen in a fundy church if a WOMAN wore a tie? Pants are bad enough–but a tie! People might have heart attacks.

  6. I visited a church one time where even the baby boys wore ties. 😯 It *was*, granted, kind of cute.

    It took me a long time to learn to tell the men apart because they didn’t have any personalized outfits or anything really different about each one. Plus they had the same haircuts…and hair parts…and shiny black shoes…you get the idea. 🙂

      1. And sadly they’re so focused on LOOKING different from today’s culture that they often forget about BEING different: we are to be loving, gentle, patient, merciful, and gracious. But I know a lot of people who dress up faithfully on Sunday, ties and suits and all, but who do not model the spirit of Christ in their attitude.

        1. @PW

          That is where the real problem is. People can dress however they want, but if there lives don’t reflect Christ it is all worthless.

          Believe it or not, I was actually told many times that we need to have a difference in our lives that the world can see. Unfortuanately, a lot of it was just talk. As I got older, I began to see that much of it was simply outward conformity without any real heart change, which was exactly what was being preached against on Sundays.

        2. Changing ones appearance is something tangible that can be seen. Changing your spirit towards others and honoring God is so much more difficult to do. Without Gods help the best we can do is dress up the outside but inside may still be full of dead mens bones.

  7. Brothers, the priests put on holy garments before entering the presence of God. Has God changed? Doesn’t God deserve our best?

    Shame on this forum. 😕

        4. It feels like a joke, that was delivered dryly enough that it’s hard to tell, which I find highly amusing if it is indeed a joke.

        5. I would suspect that in the early church, and in many other places in the world today, the folks didn’t wear clothes out of the ordinary. Since there were no blue laws in 1st Century Rome, the believers may have had to work on Sunday and worked their meetings around that. They also were in the habit of meeting with other believers on a daily basis and I doubt most of them could afford special clothes to wear “to church.” It’s another way fundamentalism has bought into a certain part of culture while rejecting others.

        6. Until very recent times, the vast majority of people in the world couldn’t afford more than one set of clothes, so except for the upper classes, changing clothes to go to a meeting was not an option.

    2. Trailer park people wear t-shirts and blue jeans, but committed members will wear ties and sports coats. Hey, visitors welcome, members expected right?

    3. Anytime you pray, you are in the presence of God… Actually, if you want to get technical, since God is omni-present, we are always in the presence of God…

      Guess I’ll be wearing my suit and heels to bed, then.

      2. That’s the problem I have with talk about “going into the presence of God” or “coming before God.” My God is everywhere. Nobody is ever out of His presence.

        1. One of our pastors in a small group meeting mentioned that obeying God by loving your spouse physically is an important part of worship (obedience). He later ended the meeting with…”Now everyone go home and worship the Lord!”

          …and the Lord was worshipped that night!

    5. This was the rule for priests in the Old Testament. Now in the NT, since every believer is a priest, how much better should we dress in God’s house?

      1. A building in which the church meets is not “God’s house.” The church itself, including the individuals, is God’s house. We are the temple.

        1. I completely agree with you. In fact, I would go even further to say that we wear the best garments: the righteousness of Christ. These are better than any priestly robe.

      1. I wear my cassock on occasion outside of the liturgy, but only for formal events. No biretta, though (not historically part of our tradition). But I do wear my clerical collar most of the time, never that tab style that has become the norm. If my clerical shirts are dirty, I’ll wear a tie.

        2. I’m a Lutheran. But we do have cool outfits, most of which are dress-like, I’m afraid, and too “Catholic” for Fundies. Not to mention all the vain repetition. We do have some Anglican inspired vestments, like the tippet, and the surplice with the cassock; most of our collects are from the Book of Common Prayer, and our chant tones are mostly Anglican.

        4. No worries, brother. The garb can sometimes be misleading, so I’m used to being mistaken for either an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. 😉

    7. Unfortunately, we are the temple of God. So there’s no putting on ties one day a week to fool him.

    8. Yes, JEWISH priests 3,000 years ago. God doesn’t look on the outward appearance. (Matthew 23:27, 2 Corinthians 10:7, 1 Peter 3:3) Men do. If I remember correctly, Jesus hung out with the publicans and prostitutes. I would think they would dress a certain way. The Jesus I know loves you no matter what you look like. A quote from my pastor, “Put that in your pipe…”

    9. I love the dry humor…but ya know, it’s sad that that is the best fundies can muster to defend the “always wear a suit” rule. What;s even sadder is that as a youth pastor for 11 years, I also had our poor students feeling like they had to follow this rule too…if only I could go back and un-do some of this kind of garbage that I regurgitated to them.

        2. TomK,
          What shocks me more than anything is that you would dare to use sarcasm and satire on this website. As you may be aware, irony is not tolerated in these parts.

  8. Ugh! Dude, you are giving me serious flashbacks with that posting. Like the one time when I was like 6 or 7 yrs old and still did not know how to tie my tie, and my dad was already up in the pulpit getting ready to start the service. I was pacing in the back trying to figure out how to tie it. One of the local gringo missionaries who was just arriving saw my dilemma and pulled me to the side and said, “Come here son, let me show you how us white folks tie our ties.” WTF? 😯

      1. Of course not, the guy was just letting his white supremacy show.

        I know your question was rhetorical but I had to put in my 2 cents. 😉

      2. Apparently, anything other than a double-windsor knot was considered inappropriate. You do the math…

  9. I also love ties, but I hope I have better taste in ties than many Fundies. I think we’ve all see the Wal-Mart Books of the Bible tie, or the collage of flags, or Nativity Scene ties (Christmas special), or Crucifixion ties (Baptists, who criticize Catholics for “leaving Jesus on the cross,” can leave him there as long as he’s also on a tie), or ties that look like the Declaration of Independence or gigantic printed passages from Romans, or…

    1. One guy in my church had one with “all” the biblical names of Christ on it. It is always a good reminder, but it was kind of tacky for a tie.

  10. My hubby’s favorite tie has hundreds of small pictures of our kids all over it. It is the same shot over and over. From a distance it is nearly impossible to tell it is lots of photographs instead of an actual pattern! Of course, he rarely wears it anymore, because he hardly ever wears a tie to church anymore! :mrgreen:

    1. My husband’s favorite is this tie that looks totally black, but if you follow the tie to the bottom… you realize it’s the screaming face of Daffy Duck. :mrgreen:

      He has lots of cartoon ties. Gets sad once in a while that he really has no place to wear them.

  11. when i was in highschool, my dad made me wear a tie to church. it was garbc, so not [i]too[/i] bad; anyway, he said i could have choice of even-numbered sundays or odd-numbered.

    my momma didn’t raise no fool 😎

      1. Anything before the Civil Rights Act of 64 will do, I suspect they would prefer before the Emancipation Proclamation though.

    1. when I started my lab job, I wore a tie to work. I gave that up though when I managed to dip the end of the tie in some concentated sulfuric acid I was using to clean test-tubes.

      Say, I have an idea – every christian man should get a tie tattooed on his neck and chest…..

  15. Hmmm. As a lady, I never had to worry about ties. But I think the equivalent for women must’ve been nylons. I swear I had a gagillion pairs at one point!

      1. When I took a missions trip to Mexico one summer at BJU, the rule was that the ladies in the group had to wear nylons on the way to the trip and on the way back. Even though we were traveling in a van!!! The trip down was bad enough, but at least once we crossed the border we didn’t have to wear them any more until the end of the summer, which somehow slipped our minds. At the end of the trip we drove straight from Mexico City all the way to Houston, and the girls had to wear nylons the whole stinkin’ way. I think even the chaps hated it. I know we sure did.

        1. “Even the chaps?” Do you mean the boys had to wear nylons too? 😯
          That must have been an interesting summer.

      1. I don’t get that either. I don’t get where the fixation on nylons comes from. Guess it has to be just another fundy fetish? I suspect they just enjoy the power of making women wear ugly, outdated, etc stuff. They say power hungry maniacs most enjoy exercising their power over women generally.

        1. I made the mistake of asking our school principal once about this. (God forbid that I should question a rule, right?!) He said it has to do with rape — a girl wearing nylons is more difficult to rape than one who is not wearing nylons. Of course, all our girls (and female teachers, of course) are required to wear skirts knee-length or longer. Witches wear britches, right??? 🙄
          I informed him that none of the girls or female teachers (except the older ones) actually wear full nylons. Some wear knee highs (which look simply fabulous when the girl’s skirt isn’t long enough) and most wear footies. So, it’s kind of a moot point to enforce the hose rule. It only helped to anger him that he couldn’t control us. He’s no longer principal.
          On a brighter note, they are becoming slightly lax in this area. Pretty soon, they might let us wear gauchos!!! (not holding my breath on this, though…)

        2. The principal who has put a lot of thought into which clothing makes it easier or harder to rape women and girls scares the bejabbers out of me. I mean … 😐 😯 … just … yikes.

        3. It does remind me of the case several years ago in Italy where a judge ruled that a man was not guilty of rape because the victim was wearing jeans when she was attacked. He said it was impossible to rape a woman who was wearing jeans.

          Unsurprisingly, this caused national outrage. All the women members of the Italian Parliament started wearing jeans to every session (which in Italy was considered a drastic measure) until either the judge was fired or the laws were amended (I’ve forgotten which).

  16. I work in a fundie church/school and we still have to wear nylons. Being the rebel that I am, though, I don’t wear them to church. And, yes, I am considered a rebel.

      1. Oh, I’m sure there is, but he/she/whoever is masquerading as a friend so that I am unsuspecting. It’s all part of their evil plan. 👿

        1. Actually, there is one IFB preacher who frequently preaches at my kids’ youth activities (b/c all good fundies have preaching at EVERY activity!!!) who says that “kids are cutting themselves to Casting Crowns!” Umm.. really??? Wow..

        2. Well you need to get your kids outta there asap!

          That stuff will screw them up for years…I speak from experience.

        3. First its casting crowns, then you’ll be mainstreaming Chris Tomlin, and you know he toured this year with Toby Mac (which was awesome BTW), and obviously rap music can’t be made Christian, since its impossible to remove the Witch doctor elements from that kind of music. At this point in your downward slide you will get a tattoo, and then there is no stopping you. You will aquire a strange and unexplainable taste for Carmen and there will no longer be any hope, no mannagawd will be able to save you.

          CCM, the unpardonable sin.

        4. Also, you’ll start listening to Skillet. And from there its basically impossible to keep Three Days Grace off your playlist. Believe me, I know.

  18. In one place it was strongly implied that the double windsor was the one true knot. The trouble was that I have an 18 inch neck and a double windsor left the tie’s end 10 inches above my belt. But then that look is also fundie.

    1. I didn’t find out until I was over 40 that you can actually buy longer ties, if you are tall or have a big neck, or both.
      They aren’t always easy to find, though.

      1. Are you a half christian if you tie a half windsor?

        What about those of us who tied a reverse windsor?

    2. If you are in the orchestra, concert uniform is white shirt, black pants or skirt, and ties. I wore a white midriff shirt, black leather pants, and a bow tie with no collar. I hate conforming.

  20. It that off-white cinder block wall behind them that makes me twitch. Where’s the giant cookie cutter they use to build those buildings??

  21. Ha! Don’t they KNOW that ties are the equivalent of jewelry for men and that the real reason for them is to call attention to the genital area?! 🙄 Come on, fundies, the Mennonites have known this for a long time- time to get on the band wagon!

  22. It should also be mentioned that there should be no criticism of short sleeve shirts with aforementioned ties, because the world says that short sleeves with ties is a fashion no-no. Preferably, a permanent press short-sleeve shirt that you can almost see the t-shirt underneath through it.

    1. HA! I’ve tried to explain how hideous & tacky that look is to fundies, and they think I’m making it up.

  25. About 5 years ago we were moving on and my husband took a postition at a new church and didn’t have to dress up any more. He decided to get rid of all his ties and just kept a few fav cartoon ties. He couldn’t think he’d every be in a senario where he’d have to wear a tie again. A few months later there was this funeral…. quick trip to the store for a tie.

  26. at some point in my teens i started wearing ties to church, just from the pleasure of dressing up. i looked like a bum most of the rest of the week, literally.

    at a later point, volunteering in an ultra-fundy organization, I wore ties 6 days a week,doing ‘ministry’and teaching english in a school overseas when i was only 18… (the ties gave a liiitle bit of an edge, ie., at least try to look professional, even if you don’t know what you’re doing.) Therefore I tried to avoid ties on Sundays when possible.

    later ties were again needed for working in a school, but that’s been a while.

    currently, as a ‘full-time missionary’, i wear ties only very, very infrequently. it’s too hot here most of the year, and they’re just not part of our local fundamentalist tradition, they’re almost mennonite about such things – who are YOU showing off for…? 🙄

    yeah, so too much info… 😳

  27. BTW, i was considering wearing ties every sunday when we first moved here, just to see what reaction i’d get, since no one else did. then, as the summer progressed, with temperatures constantly in the 90’s and AC being far from the norm, i figured it out.:lol:

  28. Back in June, when I started a new church job, I wore a suit. I was told to lose the suit. The next week, I wore a tie. I was told to lose the tie. I’ve pared down to my favorite ties, which took me from about 35 to 6.

    1. Suit & Tie really does look like a salesman, which kind of fits the fundy motif of what the gospel is, a sham to be sold to suckers.

      1. The guitarist at our church, when he first came, was asked to wear a suit on the platform for Sunday AM. He complied with a willing, humble spirit, but he explained that to his family, guys in suits look like businessmen who to them were always out to take advantage of you or sell you a sham. It was strange to us, raised IFB, to hear that to some folks the suit that we thought was such a “good testimony” was actually an “appearance of evil”!

        (P.S. Since our church split, he is no longer asked to wear a suit.)

        1. The suit and the necktie do not have good associations for everyone. When I was working for the Census, I found that people in some neighborhoods would pretend not to be home if someone who was dressed up knocked on their door. We needed to be presentable, but also not to overdo it. In some situations, it’s important not to look like “The Man.”

  29. I will not wear a tie unless I absolutely have to.
    I see too much of a resemblance to the collar/leash.

  31. I am glad to say I haven’t worn a tie in over six months. Nor a dress shirt, for that matter. There’s no real dress code at my office – if I’m going to be in my office most of the day I’ll go with the BJU afternoon dress – khakis/chinos and a polo shirt; but if I’m going to be doing work in the plant floor I’ll switch to jeans since “filthy” is an understatement out there. My steel-toes go with either style. 😉

    But yeah. No dress shirts, no ties, no suit jackets, no dress pants…feels really good. Also cuts down on the clothing budget.

  32. Great post. Reminds me of how strangely no one has heard of Jack Hyles once you leave Hammond, yet he claimed to be “carrying America on his shoulders”?

    I had friends that used to ask me if Hyles had back trouble because of that comment that he used to make.

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