Sorry to disappoint Randy, but a little research would have revealed that if you go back in history the pants “controversy” was addressed as far back as 13 November 866, when Pope Nicholas I wrote to King Boris I of Bulgaria in response to a question about whether Bulgarian women should wear dresses instead of trousers:
‘Whether you or your women wear or do not wear trousers neither impedes your salvation nor leads to any increase of your virtue’ (‘sive vos, sive feminae vestrae, sive deponatis, sive induatis femoralia, nec saluti officit, nec ad virtutum vestrarum proficit incrementum‘ – Patrologia Latina, CXIX, 1002;).
Which, of course, only goes to demonstrate the complete moral bankruptcy of the Roman Catholic Church.
This quote sums up the state of fundamentalist rival camps so very well that I decided to post it here without further comment.
One of the many things that trouble the Independent Baptists is our camp mentality.Somehow or another, through the desire to be separated and consecrated, we’ve ‘separated’ and ‘consecrated’ ourselves into our own independent camps. For instance; there’s the Shouting & Running The Aisles Camp, and the Non-Shouting & Running The Aisles Camp; then there’s the Southern Gospel Music Camp and the Bluegrass Gospel Music camp, and in opposition to them we have the Conservative Music Camp; and let’s not forget the camp that says it’s OK to have a Mission Board, and the Camp which thinks Mission Boards are of the Devil; the Anti-Horn-Rimmed Glasses Camp; or how about the Camp that allows the use of bass guitars & drums in the church, and the opposing Camp who cuts off fellowship with all such; and then the Camp who teaches that every believer should remember the very day and hour of their conversion, and the Camp who teaches that it’s not necessary; and of course the Get Rid Of Your TV Camp side by side with the TV is OK camp. Space constraints limit me from mentioning the Seminary Trained & the Anti-Seminary Campss, the Textus Receptus Camp, and the KJV1611-Only Camp; the Anti-Bus Ministry Camp; the Harold Sightler Camp, the Anti-Mustache Camp, the Ruckman Camp, the Hyles-Anderson Camp; the 1-2-3-Repeat-After-Me Soul-Winner Camp, the Anti-Divorced & Remarried Minister Camp, etcetera, etcetera.
Everything changes — even fundamentalists. But much like any other organization that claims for itself absolute and final authority on, well, pretty much everything, fundamentalists are loath to admit that sometimes they do in fact re-think their stances on things.
One day you’re hearing Steve Green’s music being decried as having crawled from the ninth circle of the underworld. Then suddenly, without warning, your choir is blasting out “Find us Faithful” as if it had been written at least a hundred years ago. The trick here is that nobody in leadership will ever actually come out and say “Hey, guess what? We were wrong about that Steve guy. His music is actually ok.”
Ladies, that skirt had better be down to your ankles…or below the knee…or “at” the knee…or at least at the knee while leaning slightly forward and holding your breath. And if you’re paying enough attention to realize that something is definitely up with fundamentalist hemlines, I’d advise you to also have better sense than to mention it where they can hear you.
And of course, the fundamentalist can absolutely defend every single new nuance of standards directly from the unchanging Word of God. It would seem that even travelers on the old paths have to put up with a certain amount of construction.
