What does the Bible say about women wearing pants?

By Josh Spiers: Formerly Apostolic Pentecostal, always Christian

The first thing that we must understand when asking this question is that no one in the Bible wore pants. They did not exist back then—at least not in the form we have them today. Because of this, the Bible never dealt with the subject of women wearing pants. [Note: I have added an article on what the Israelites did wear when they were in Egypt and during the Exodus.] The Mosaic Law does, however, deal with the subject of cross-dressing. The Mosaic Law says, "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" (Deut. 22:5 NASB). The argument against women wearing pants that I always heard when I was in the UPC was this:

Deut. 22:5 applies to us today. Even though we are not under the Mosaic Law anymore, something that is an abomination to God is always an abomination. (This is based off of Rev. 21:27, which says that "no one who practices abomination" (KJV) will enter into the New Jerusalem.) [1]
Since pants are men’s apparel, and dresses are women’s apparel, it is an abomination for a woman to wear pants or for a man to wear dresses.

Notice that I said that this is the argument that I heard during my time in the UPC. It is only fair to say that the official position paper of the UPC uses a different line of reasoning. They say, "[W]e should avoid…slacks on women because they immodestly reveal the feminine contours of upper leg, thigh, and hip1."

In this article I am going to take a look at both views, and then I’ll wrap up with an important point about hypocrisy.

Edit (1/2/07): I found another position paper from the UPCI on men and women’s apparel. In this other paper they do use a modified form of the Deut. 22:5 argument.

Are Slacks Automatically Immodest?

I think that it is ridiculous to say that slacks are inherently more immodest than dresses. Slacks and dresses can be immodest. It is possible that pants on a woman would have been considered immodest 200 years ago in many Western societies, but that’s pure conjecture. Either way, I know of no man in Western culture who is automatically thrown into temptation because a woman wears pants. What we have to deal with is what is modest today, not what was modest 200 years ago or 2,000 years ago. The Bible never defined modesty, it only told us to be modest.

Are Pants "Men’s Apparel"?

I do not think that pants can be thought of as only men’s apparel in modern Western culture. Cultures and dress codes change over time. They always have. When Deut. 22:5was written men were probably wearing linen kilts and women were probably wearing "full-length, light weight, loose-fitting dresses"[2] In the mid-19th century men were wearing breeches and women were wearing dresses that did not show even their ankles. Yet now the dress code laid by the UPC is that women have to wear dresses but they can come up to the knee3. Why did they choose this style of apparel and not the style that was worn when Deut. 22:5 was written, or the style that was worn in the 19th century? The reason is that cultures and styles change, and the UPC apparently picked the style of apparel that happened to be in fashion when their doctrines started to develop.

There is no biblical excuse for taking a girl who is a third-generation wearer of pants and telling her that she has to only wear dresses. At some point we have to admit that culture has changed. Again, we’re concerned with what culture is now, not what it was in the 1800s and early 1900s.

[1] Bear in mind, the Jewish Scriptures were written in Hebrew, not in seventeenth century King James English. What has made Christian believers so vulnerable to Bible tampering is that almost none of them can read or understand the Hebrew Bible in its original language. Virtually no Christian child in the world is taught the Hebrew language as part of a formal Christian education. As he and countless other Christians earnestly study the Authorized Version of the Bible, there is a blinding yet prevailing assumption that what you are reading is Heaven-breathed. Tragically, virtually every Christian in the world reads the translation of men rather than the Word of God. On the other hand, every Jewish child in the world who is enrolled in a Jewish school is taught to read and write Hebrew long before he or she even heard the name of Luther.

Unbeknownst to parishioners worldwide, the King James Version and numerous other Christian Bible translations were meticulously shaped and painstakingly retrofitted in order to produce a message that would sustain and advance Church theology and exegesis. This aggressive rewriting of biblical texts has had a devastating impact on Christians throughout the world who unhesitatingly embrace these corrupt translations. As a result, Christians earnestly wonder why the Jews, who are the bearers and protectors of the divine oracles of God, have not willingly accepted Jesus as their messiah.

[2] FIFTH CENTURY GAUL (France)

In the ﬁfth century, the area of southern Gaul was divided into ‘Narbonensis Prima’ (capital Narbonne), and Viennensis (capital Arles). It was the most Romanized region of Gaul, according to the ﬁrst century Pliny.1

The geographer Strabo noted that even its produce was Italian: olives, grapes and ﬁgs.2 He continues by saying that in climate, culture and geography, the inhabitants and the area are more like Italy than the rest of Gaul where they “wear tight breeches”!3

The contacts with the Italian peninsula had started in the third century B.C. with trade routes set up between Campania and southern Gaul. A military alliance was established between Marseille and Rome after the second Punic War. The region was fully annexed by 120 B.C. The new province was named ‘Provincia’.

"Although the belief in the unity of God is taught and declared on virtually every page of the Jewish Scriptures, the doctrine of the Trinity is never mentioned anywhere throughout the entire corpus of the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, this doctrine is not to be found anywhere in the New Testament either because primitive Christianity, in its earliest stages, was still monotheistic. The authors of the New Testament were completely unaware that the Church they had fashioned would eventually embrace a pagan deification of a triune deity. Although the worship of a three-part godhead was well known and fervently venerated throughout the Roman Empire and beyond in religious systems such as Hinduism and Mithraism, it was quite distant from the Judaism from which Christianity emerged. However, when the Greek and Roman mind began to dominate the Church, it created a theological disaster from which Christendom has never recovered. By the end of the fourth century, the doctrine of the Trinity was firmly in place as a central tenet of the Church, and strict monotheism was formally rejected by Vatican councils in Nicea and Constantinople.2

When Christendom adopted a triune godhead from neighboring triune religious systems, it spawned a serious conundrum for post-Nicene Christian apologists. How would they harmonize this new veneration of Jesus as a being who is of the same substance as the Father with a New Testament that portrays Jesus as a separate entity, subordinate to the Father, and created by God? How would they now integrate the teaching of the Trinity with a New Testament that recognized the Father alone as God? In essence, how would Christian apologists merge a first century Christian Bible, which was monotheistic, with a fourth century Church which was not?"

Did the authors of the New Testament believe in the Trinity? Click here.

This task was particularly difficult because throughout the Gospels and Paul’s letters Jesus never claims to be God. On the contrary, the New Testament makes it clear that he is not God, but rather an agent of God, entirely subordinate to the Father. For example, in John 14:28, the author of the fourth Gospel has Jesus declare,

“I go unto the Father, for my Father is greater than I.”

From Did Jesus Claim to be God?

Patiently waiting for the so called “anti-Christ” (son of perdition)? You Missed Him...

...the apostasy (a total desertion of or departure from one's religion, principles, party, cause, etc.) is not only here, but has been here since 325 A.D.
Read more:

1 Hist. Nat. III, 4, 31 (LCL 353).

2 Geogr. IV.1.2. (LCL 196).

3 Geogr. IV.4.3.

Source:[2] http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=81970