“A Church-going People are a Dress-loving People”: Clothes, Communication, and Religious Culture in Early America

When the early nineteenth-century pastor William Henry Foote reflected upon the eighteenth-century Christians who were his forebears in North Carolina and Virginia, he paused at one point to make an observation about the clothes they wore. “A church-going people are a dress-loving people”, he said;...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Schmidt, Leigh Eric (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: 1989
In: Church history
Year: 1989, Volume: 58, Issue: 1, Pages: 36-51
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:When the early nineteenth-century pastor William Henry Foote reflected upon the eighteenth-century Christians who were his forebears in North Carolina and Virginia, he paused at one point to make an observation about the clothes they wore. “A church-going people are a dress-loving people”, he said; “The sanctity and decorum of the house of God are inseparably associated with a decent exterior; and the spiritual, heavenly exercises of the inner man are incompatible with a defiled and tattered, or slovenly mein. All regular Christian assemblies cultivate a taste for dress, and none more so than the hardy pioneer settlers of Upper Carolina, and the valley and mountains of Virginia” As they readied themselves for worship, Foote elaborated, the faithful “put on their best and carefully preserved dress” in preparation for “their approach to the King of Kings”.
ISSN:1755-2613
Contains:Enthalten in: Church history
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3167677