Recently in plain Category

I recently read a New York Times article on the resurging phenomenon of nurse-ins, designed to highlight the lack of laws giving mothers the right to nurse in public. Little did I realize a plain dressing Quaker near Grand Rapids Michigan was at the center of its nurse-in! From the local (link-unfriendly) newspaper:

As a Quaker woman, Jennifer Seif lives a modest and simple life. Breastfeeding is natural to her, and she has nursed her children while in the grocery store, the doctor’s office and during Quaker meetings without a problem. So the Grand Rapids woman was shocked and embarrassed in April when Kent County Clerk Mary Beth Hollinrake approached her while she was breastfeeding her infant son, Micah…”It’s shocking to me that anyone would be offended.” The mother of three said she was wearing a cape dress — a garment designed for discreet nursing…

I learned about this through the blog of Jenn and her husband Scott. Here’s Jenn’s post on the incident. For those wondering about their local protection, the La Leche League has a fabulous state-by-state listing of the nursing laws.

I’ve always promised that I wouldn’t let this blog get so serious that I couldn’t share the ephemera of life. In that vein, here’s a caution for any would-be urban plain-dress hipster: it’s really hard to keep to the proper sidewalk demeanor when your MP3 player queues up the Yardbird’s “For Your Love.”

Especially when the bongos kick in.

This I know experientially.

A guest piece from Rob of Consider the Lillies

Rob describes himself: “I’m a twenty-something gay Mid-western expatriate living in Boston. I was inspired to begin a blog based on the writings of other urban Quaker bloggers as they reflect and discuss their inward faith and outward experiences. When I’m not reading or writing, I’m usually with my friends, traveling about, and/or generally making an arse of myself.”

Regular readers of Quaker Ranter will be familiar with Liz Oppenheimer’s frequent comments. My replies and email correspondence with her have inspired more than one blog posts. I’ve long known her through Friends General Conference work and through the workshops she often leads at the FGC Gatherings. She’s been exploring the conservative Quaker tradition over the last few years and is now writing a blog called The Good Raised Up.

Quaker Jane has been a regular on the Plain and Modest Dress group and now has beautifully-designed website that includes some interesting plain dress resources.

Alice Morningstar is another Plain group regular who’s now the “Public Friend” (site since closed), writing about both Quakerism and biology; see her post Why It is Essential to Publish Now (via archive.org) for why she’s public.

Lorcan is starting to get worried that I’ve never mentioned him here. He’s part of a flourishing New York City Quaker blogging group that includes Amanda’s Of the Best Stuff and Rich the Brooklyn Quaker, who’s coined the term The New Plain to describe the renewed interest in Quaker plain dress that I’ve been trying to catalog on this site.

A guest piece by Amanda

Originally posted as a comment to My Experiments with Plainness, Amanda’s story deserves its own post: “I’ve noticied that I’m becoming really attatched to my clothes. As I was grimly and methodically culling my closet, a whiney, desperate voice in my head piped up, and I began to have a serious conversation with myself… [A] reservation I have is that plain dressing may just be another way of telegraphing the image I want the world to have of me. Only instead of that message being ‘I am cool and worthy of your attention and envy’ the message might be ‘I’m so hoooooly’.”

A few years ago I felt led to take up the ancient Quaker testimony of plain dressing. I’ve spoken elsewhere about my motivations but I want to give a little practical advice to other men who have heard or even gotten ahold of the “Gohn Bros.” catalog but don’t know just what to order. I certainly am not sanctioning a uniform for plain dress, I simply want to give those so inclined an idea of how to start.

A guest piece by David, originally posted on the Plain and Modest Dress Yahoo Group

“Here are a few things I do know that apply to me. First, I feel very at odds with our society that focuses on the most superfical things. Our society spends BILLIONS on make-up, hair dye, plastic surgery, breast inplants, push-up bras, designer clothes… Beyond that, my feelings about plain dressing get less clear. Is a uniform what I am seeking? Those groups who were very uniform clothing tend to be insular and often attact as much attention to themselves as a belly shirt and designer jeans!”

As we got onto the campus of UMass Amherst to help set up for this year’s FGC Gathering, Julie & I realized that this is the first time we’ve been to this venue since we started plain dressing (last year we stayed home since Julie was very pregnant). FGC Friends tend to turn to the Lands End catalog for sartorial inspiration. Hippie culture is another font, both directly as tie-die shirts and in muted form as the tasteful fair-trade clothes that many older Friends prefer. Because the Gathering takes place in July and in sporadically air-conditioned buildings, people also dress for summer camp—khaki shorts & once colorful faded t-shirts are the de facto Gathering uniform. In this setting, just wearing long pants is cause for comment (“aren’t you hot like that?!”) Try broadfalls and a long-sleeve collarless shirt, or a long dress!

Julie, my wife, has just started a Yahoo group called “PlainAndModestDress”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress. Here’s her description:

bq. This group is for Christians interested in discussing issues of religious plain and modest dress. It is not necessary to have grown up in a plain or modestly dressing group. We are especially interested in the experiences of those who have come to this point as a sort of conversion or a “recovery” of tradition that has been lost. Traditional Catholics, Anabaptists, conservative Quakers, and other Christians welcome here. Theological points and demoninational differences are open for discussion (not argument), as are the specifics of what type of plain dress you have been called to. Discussion of headcovering is also allowed here, as are gender distinctions in dress. We may also share prayers for one another, as well as the challenges we face in trying to live in obedience to the Lord. This is not a forum in which to discuss the validity of Christianity—no blaspheming allowed.

There is much to be said about plain dress. This is not an easy witness. It forces us to deal with issues of submission and humility on a daily basis—just try to go to a convenience store and not feel self-consciously set apart. Explaining this new ‘style’ to one’s more worldly friends can be quite a challenge. These are eternal issues for those adopting plain dress and I laugh with comradeship when I read old Quaker journal accounts of going plain.

Even so, I have a bit of trepidation about a newsgroup on plain dress. I don’t want to fetishize plain dress by talking about it too much. The point shouldn’t be to formulate some sort of ‘uniform of the righteous,’ and adoption of this testimony shouldn’t be motivated by peer pressure or ambition, but by a calling from the Holy Spirit—this is the crux of what I understand Margaret Fell to have been saying when she called pressured plainness a “silly poor gospel”. (I should say that some non-Quaker do dress more as an identifying uniform, which is fine, just not necessarily the Quaker rationale).

But like any outward form or testimony (peace, Quaker process, etc.), taking up plain dress can be a fruitful course in religious education. I think back to being seventeen and bucking my father’s wish that I attend the Naval Academy—my “no” made me ask how else my beliefs about peace might need to be acted out in my life. It became a useful query. Plain dress has forced me to think anew about how I “consume” clothing and how I relate to mass marketing and the global clothing industry. It’s also kept me from ducking out on my faith, as I wear an indentification of my beliefs.

So “join the plain dress discussion”:http://www.nonviolence.org/cgi-bin/axs/ax.pl?http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PlainAndModestDress or take a look at the ever-growing section of the site called “Resources on Quaker Plain Dress”:/Quaker/plain_dress.php, which includes “My Experiments with Plainness”:http://www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000080.php, my early story about going plain.

A guest piece by Melynda Huskey

When I was a kid, I yearned for plain dress like the kids in Obadiah’s family wore. I loved the idea of a Quaker uniform and couldn’t imagine why we didn’t still have one… And now, at nearly 40, after 35 years of balancing my convictions and my world, I’m still hankering after a truly distinctive and Quakerly plainness.

See also: "Resources on Quaker Plainness"

This was a post I sent to the "Pearl" email list, which consists of members of the 2002 FGC Gathering workshop led by Lloyd Lee Wilson of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). Eighth Month 20, 2002

I thought I'd share some of my journey in plain-ness since Gathering. There's two parts to plain dress: simplicity and plain-ness.

The most important part of the simplicity work has been simplifying my wardrobe. It's incredible how many clothes I have. I suspect I have a lot fewer than most Americans but there's still tons, and never enough room in the closets & dressers (I do have small closets but still!). I'd like to get all my clothes into one or two dresser drawers and donate the rest to charity. Two pairs of pants, a couple of shirts, a few days worth of socks and undergarments. This requires that I wash everything frequently which means I hand-wash things but that's okay. The point is to not worry or think about what I'm going to wear every morning. I've been to a wedding and a funeral since I started going plain and it was nice not having to fret about what to wear.

I also appreciate using less resources up by having fewer clothes. It's hard to get away from products that don't have some negative side effects (support of oil industry, spilling of chemical wastes into streams, killing of animals for hide, exploitation of people constructing the clothes at horrible wages & conditions). I try my best to balance these concerns but the best way is to reduce the use.

These motivations are simple-ness rather than plain-ness. But I am trying to be plain too. For men it's pretty easy. My most common clothing since Gathering has been black pants, shoes and suspenders, and the combo seems to look pretty plain. There's no historic authenticity. The pants are Levi-Dockers which I already own, the shoes non-leather ones from Payless, also already owned. The only purchase was suspenders from Sears. I bought black overalls too. My Dockers were victims of a minor bike accident last week (my scraped knee & elbow are healing well, thank you, and my bike is fine) and I'm replacing them with thicker pants that will hold up better to repeated washing & use. There's irony in this, certainly. If I were being just simple, I'd wear out all the pants I have--despite their color--rather than buy new ones. I'd be wearing some bright & wacky pants, that's for sure! But irony is part of any witness, especially in the beginning when there's some lifestyle shifting that needs to happen. As a person living in the world I'm bound to have contradictions: they help me to not take myself too seriously and I try to accept them with grace and good humor.

But practicality in dress more important to me than historical authenticity. I don't want to wear a hat since I bike every day and want to keep my head free for the helmet; it also feels like my doing it would go beyond the line into quaintness. The only type of clothing that's new to my wardrobe is the suspenders and really they are as practical as a belt, just less common today. A few Civil War re-enactment buffs have smilingly observed that clip-on suspenders aren't historically authentic but that's perfectly okay with me. I also wear collars, that's perfectly okay with me too.

The other thing that I'm clear about is that the commandment to plain dress is not necessarily eternal. It is situational, it is partly a response to the world and to Quakerdom and it does consciously refer to certain symbols. God is what's eternal, and listening to the call of Christ within is the real commandment. If I were in a Quaker community that demanded plain dress, I expect I would feel led to break out the tie-die and bleach and manic-panic hair coloring. Dress is an outward form and like all outward forms and practices, it can easily become a false sacrament. If we embrace the form but forget the source (which I suspect lots of Nineteenth Century Friends did), then it's time to cause a ruckus.

Every so often Friends need to look around and take stock of the state of the Society. At the turn of the 20th Century, they did that. There's a fascinating anti-plain dress book from that time that argues that it's a musty old tradition that should be swept away in light of the socialist ecumenical world of the future. I suspect I would have had much sympathy for the position at the time, especially if I were in a group of Friends who didn't have the fire of the Spirit and wore their old clothes only because their parents had and it was expected of Quakers.

Today the situation is changed. We have many Friends who have blended in so well with modern suburban America that they're indistinguishable in spirit or deed. They don't want to have committee meeting on Saturdays or after Meeting since that would take up so much time, etc. They're happy being Quakers as long as not much is expected and as long as there's no challenge and no sacrifice required. We also have Friends who think that the peace testimony and witness is all there is (confusing the outward form with the source again, in my opinion). When a spiritual emptiness sets into a community there are two obvious ways out: 1) bring in the fads of the outside world (religious revivalism in the 19 Century, socialist ecumenicalsim in the 20th, Buddhism and sweat lodges in the 21st). or 2) re-examine the fire of previous generations and figure out what babies you threw away with the bathwater in the last rebellion against empty outward form.

I think Quakers really found something special 350 years ago, or rediscovered it and that we are constantly rediscovering it. I have felt that power/ I know that there is still one, named Jesus Christ, who can speak to my condition and that the Spirit comes to teach the people directly. I'll read old journals and put on old clothes to try to understand early Friends' beliefs. The clothes aren't important, I don't want to give them too much weight. But there is a tradition of Quakers taking on plain dress upon some sort of deep spiritual convincement (it is so much of a cliche of old Quaker journals that literary types classify it as part of the essential structure of the journals). I see plain dress as a reminder we give ourselves that we are trying to live outside the worldliness of our times and serve the eternal. My witness to others is simply that I think Quakerism is something to commit oneself wholly to (yes, I'll meet on a Saturday) and that there are some precious gifts in traditional Quaker faith & practice that could speak to the spiritual crisis many Friends feel today.

In friendship,
Martin Kelley
Atlantic City Area MM, NJ
martink@nonviolence.org

Related Posts

• Plain Dressing at the FGC Gathering (Seventh Month 2004)
• Gohn Brothers and some plain dressing tips (Seventh Month 2004)

This is a list of testimonies, guides, books and resources on the Christian testimony of plainness, historical and present. It focuses on the traditionalist Quaker understanding of plainness but it’s not restricted to Quaker notions: you’ll find links and discussions to the related concepts of modest dress and simple dress.