I broke the folkway, or the minor everyday social habit, of appropriate topic of dress at church (Lecture). Outside of school, I am a peer to peer sex educator for Planned Parenthood, because of this I own Planned Parenthood clothing. I attended three conservative churches dressed in a t-shirt, hoodie and jeans. The t-shirt is bright pink and says “Planned Parenthood” on the front in lighter baby pink. Over this, I wore a light grey zip-up sweatshirt which stated “Teen Council” on the front and “Peer Led Sex Ed” on the back. I paired this with dark jeans and black sneakers.
I did not do anything that would be considered unusual during the adult service. This meant following all other written and unwritten rules, or norms, of the church, attending …show more content…
I drove to the church in the same car as my parents, but I left the car first with them following later on, as to not alert people that we were together. The sermon surprised me, because it had a component about sex. Especially since the passage we were studying that Sunday made no mention of any topic that was sexual. This gave me a good opportunity to see the values of the church that might conflict with the attire I was dressed in. Among many things, the sermon hit many points including how and why abstaining from sex until marriage is the right and only thing to do, how marriage is between one women and one man, and how homosexuality is not natural and consequently should be suppressed. I found the sermon humorous, since the pastor called the Christian attitude “alien” to this world, so throughout his sermon he referred to his ideal of Christian sex “alien sex”. By doing this, the pastor was stigmatizing his own religion by identifying his congregants as deviants within the larger society. He also related suppressing desires to basketball, telling the congregants to “hold back” those sexual sinful desires, like a basketball player blocks his opponent. He completed this point by miming the action of blocking an opposing basketball player on stage. I wanted to not be a spectacle, more than my attire was already making me, so I had to bite my lip to keep from …show more content…
According to my parents, the teenage girls who were seated behind me gawked at my “Peer Led Sex Ed” jacket and whispered to each other with wide eyes, indication shock or surprise. Also, a male singer on stage was shocked when the lights came up in the church and he was able to read my shirt. I think the congregants might have had this reaction due to my status, or role in the society, as “church attendee”. The status of “church attendee” at this church comes with some auxiliary traits- or expected attitudes or characteristics of a certain label- such as being polite, conservative, and follower of the lord. I believe since I was attending a Baptist church with certain ideals, they were shocked when I was not in like with the auxiliary traits that the status, I was assumed to be occupying (ie “church attendee”) had (Adler and Alder;
I did not do anything that would be considered unusual during the adult service. This meant following all other written and unwritten rules, or norms, of the church, attending …show more content…
I drove to the church in the same car as my parents, but I left the car first with them following later on, as to not alert people that we were together. The sermon surprised me, because it had a component about sex. Especially since the passage we were studying that Sunday made no mention of any topic that was sexual. This gave me a good opportunity to see the values of the church that might conflict with the attire I was dressed in. Among many things, the sermon hit many points including how and why abstaining from sex until marriage is the right and only thing to do, how marriage is between one women and one man, and how homosexuality is not natural and consequently should be suppressed. I found the sermon humorous, since the pastor called the Christian attitude “alien” to this world, so throughout his sermon he referred to his ideal of Christian sex “alien sex”. By doing this, the pastor was stigmatizing his own religion by identifying his congregants as deviants within the larger society. He also related suppressing desires to basketball, telling the congregants to “hold back” those sexual sinful desires, like a basketball player blocks his opponent. He completed this point by miming the action of blocking an opposing basketball player on stage. I wanted to not be a spectacle, more than my attire was already making me, so I had to bite my lip to keep from …show more content…
According to my parents, the teenage girls who were seated behind me gawked at my “Peer Led Sex Ed” jacket and whispered to each other with wide eyes, indication shock or surprise. Also, a male singer on stage was shocked when the lights came up in the church and he was able to read my shirt. I think the congregants might have had this reaction due to my status, or role in the society, as “church attendee”. The status of “church attendee” at this church comes with some auxiliary traits- or expected attitudes or characteristics of a certain label- such as being polite, conservative, and follower of the lord. I believe since I was attending a Baptist church with certain ideals, they were shocked when I was not in like with the auxiliary traits that the status, I was assumed to be occupying (ie “church attendee”) had (Adler and Alder;