Why: No Makeup, No Earrings

Among Black American Christians, there has always been a strong association between modesty and piety. Largely because Christianity in the United States had strong Pietist influences, every generation of Christianity, every doctrinal iteration of the faith among American-born Africans has seen its version of discipline or doctrine that, among other things, proscribes certain kinds or colors of clothes, shoes, and accessories, for both men and women. In the 1800s, for instance, bows and ribbons were, among Methodists black or white, not sufficiently modest enough for a minister's wife to wear. There is a long and broad history of sartorial modesty that has followed the church since its earliest years; the scriptures record the apostles' warnings to first-century believers to be modest in dress and hairstyles.

Pentecostals are the latest to embrace (and transcend) the call to modesty in apparel. Originally an offshoot of the Holiness movement, early Pentecostalism inherited a culture of abnegation due to so many former Holiness (especially Wesleyan Holiness) adherents flowing into the new movement, so much so that in certain circles the term "Holiness church" became synonymous for "Pentecostal congregation." (There were exceptions, of course.) 

The Pentecostal movement took off just before the Great Migration, which saw hundreds of thousands of Southern-born African Americans leaving the region of their birth and culture to resettle in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, northern Midwest, and West Coast. It is worth mentioning that the poverty of the South was such that farmers, white or black, had little to spend on fancy clothes, shoes, or jewelry. The lack of development meant that the trip to church would be on dusty or muddy dirt roads, by foot or by wagon. Additionally, blacks were discouraged or prohibited from dressing above their station in many places. Thus for many African American Christians in the South, there were financial and social considerations that led t modesty in colthing.

One underappreciated fact about this time is that there was a widespread cultural conservatism held by many different segments of the Black Church concerning modesty in clothing. Baptists were often just as strict as Holiness churches in having and enforcing rules about what to wear to church. Methodists had a long and living legacy of plainness in dress. Moreover, African Americans tended to being culturally conservative. In their memoirs Having Our Say, sisters Sarah and Annie Elizabeth Delany exemplify this conservatism as they recall how their father, an Episcopal priest, would "scowl" with disapproval when they wore long dresses in the early 1900s that broke with past traditions and revealed a little ankle.

Migrant blacks often used fashion to assert themselves as Americans and to distance themselves from their impoverished past. Nevertheless, there was a deep cultural connection between modesty in apparel and spiritual sincerity. The praying forebears of the 1800s, who had no money and often went without decent food and clothing, became the spiritual standard for many African Americans in the early 1900s. Charles Mason, in his pursuit of the sincere Christian faith he saw among former slaves, did not wear a tie, the color red, or anything that could be construed as ostentatious, like a gold watch. Additionally, makeup, jewelry, calf-length dresses, and elbow-length sleeves were considered immodest by many early Pentecostals born in the mid- to late-1800s.  Mason, like many in the movement, became less rigid about what color clothes or type of adornment was allowable among saints later in his life, and began to wear dark-colored ties. 

Bishop Lawson, like all Pentecostals, embraced the concept of modesty. However, he felt that mature Christians should be led by the Spirit in their choice of apparel, and he broke early on with the habit of using by-laws and church discipline to define standards of dress. This is not to say Lawson himself was not quite demanding. He held the minority opinion among Pentecostals that women ought to have a head-covering in the church at all times. Dr. Robert Spellman wrote in The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Bishop R.C. Lawson  of being chastised by the bishop for not wearing a suit jacket in the sanctuary. By all accounts, Lawson definitely embraced the concept of spiritual abnegation for ministers and missionaries.

However, though perhaps the majority of his following was conservative, some photographs show members of Refuge Temple wearing earrings. In one picture, a family arrives at Refuge Temple for Easter wearing similar hats; one sister in the group appears to be wearing lipstick. In another photograph, Bishop and Mother Lawson are photographed at one of his appreciation banquets: Mother Lawson is wearing a hat with feathers and and a small string of pearls, both of which were very much frowned upon during their early days in the PAW. While visiting the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Detroit in 1960, Lawson and a young Elder William Bonner are photographed with Bonner's wife, Ethel Mae, and other sisters from the church, all of whom are wearing costume jewelry. Thus, there was a time when moderation meant modest adornment, and not an absence of it.

The stereotypical image of a "saved" person, interestingly, did not come down to us directly from those early days of American Pentecost. Instead, black social conservatism, in response to cultural liberalism, and expressed through church discipline, birthed out what would become a gendered kind of holiness that made sanctification an anti-feminist statement. In the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, apparently in the 1970s, William Bonner, now presiding apostle of the church, led the organization to re-embrace a strict version of scriptural modesty. Explicit exhortations were made against jewelry and make-up. The 1980s saw the issue of the first COOLJC Missionary Guidebook, in which Mother Gertrude Frazier lays down some very strict rules about clothing and jewelry. Jewelry in general -- even the allowable cross pendant or class ring -- would come to be viewed with suspicion. In certain parts of the country, to wear earrings was another sign that a person was not "saved," or at best a new convert. Certainly no saved person could wear makeup, since a Holy Ghost-filled person would be convicted about looking "worldly." 

There is some irony in this situation, in that despite COOLJC being a Finished Work organization doctrinally, the terminology and practice of Wesleyan Holiness cohabited with, and in practice even reigned over, the notion of progressive sanctification. COOLJC saints consider themselves saved because of a discreet born-again experience. They are sanctified in ways indistinguishable from the way, for example, COGIC saints might claim: no drinking or smoking; great conviction concerning sin and worldly practices; and certain practices being "taken away" by the Holy Ghost (that is, a sudden loss of interest or lack of compulsion to pursue certain actions, causally ascribed to the Spirit). Both describe themselves as Holy Ghost-filled, and indeed, it may be that the baptism of the Holy Ghost represents a point of convergence for Wesleyan and Finished Work proponents, in that both seemed to see the baptism of the Holy Ghost as a catalyzing factor for sanctification, either in anticipation of it (Wesleyan) or immediately after it (Finished Work), or both (individual testimonies).

There was a time when the stringent requirements of sanctification served as a test of sincerity for those coming into Pentecost. However, now that the Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic movement has come full bloom, the old Holiness standards, with its feminine emphasis and anachronistic otherliness, appear quaint and dated, like a Pentecostal Hasidic order. Today one rarely finds a congregation of old-school Holiness discipline, where parishioners are allowed no adornment at all, even fobidding certain hairstyles. The New Old-School is quite specific in excluding all makeup and jewelry, with ample allowance given for modestly stylish hairdos. Some people embrace the "standards"wholeheartedly; others remain committed to a notion of progressive sanctification and expect to grow in holiness to the point that abnegation comes naturally; still others have largely vacated the notion that giving up makeup and jewelry are spiritual disciplines.