The Woman in the Pantsuit at Church

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I'm as native as they usually get. I remember when Pinellas County was still in its awkward growth stages. In 30 years, it's gone from being (at best) a suburban area to a sprawling amalgam of towns and cities which is essentially a metropolis. But when I was a little girl in the 1970s, there were still pockets of the deep south here.

One Sunday when I was probably about 6-8 years old, my parents decided to go try out a different church than the one they normally went to. I was relatively young, but I'll never forget this.

Now, in the 70s you always dressed for church down here. I was a tomboy and hated getting into those darned dresses, but my mom and I wore our pretty dresses with itchy slips underneath, and Dad and the boys wore suit pants and dress shirts with ties.

I remember standing in a line of people waiting to get in to this old, white clapboard church. We stood on the wooden steps behind a well-dressed lady in a beautiful white pantsuit. I studied the cracks in the wood and the crazing in the green paint on the steps while we waited. The pretty lady talked for a little while with the men at the door, and then suddenly turned and walked away.

I tugged on my dad's arm and asked "Daddy, why did she go?"

"They wouldn't let her in because she was wearing pants," whispered my dad.

"What?" I asked, astonished. "Don't they think she needs Jesus too?" We never went back to that church.

We discussed it later on and my parents explained that she was rejected based on a misinterpreted passage of scripture. Since that church used the King James Version (KJV) as most did back then, I'll quote from the KJV, Deut. 22:5:

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.

Of course the woman was wearing a pantsuit, off the rack, purchased in the women's department. However, they thought it pertained to menswear. Contrast that with the New American Standard Version (NAS):

A woman shall not wear man's clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman's clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.

Incidentally, when I was growing up, most people still used the King James version here. When I was hunting down that scripture verse, I happened across Leviticus 18:23 today in the KJV:

... A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

And could only picture a woman being formally presented to a goat, and solemnly shaking hooves/hands with it. This is why I don't think anyone should bother using the KJV any more when there are so many vastly superior translations (and the majority of theologians and scholars agree with me).