An embarrassing incident occurred at the Tente Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kenya when Jared Omwoyo, a local pastor, asked a bridal party to leave the church. Videos of the incident went viral, one receiving more than one million views on TikTok. Omwoyo said that he had “no option but to chase the bridal team away because of 'indecent dressing and bad character' and that he was lied to about their faith," according to Nyaboga Kiage of Nairobi News.
Here’s the “indecent dressing”, which is some of the most conservative dress I’ve seen at a wedding in a long time. About the only things left to cover are their arms. Now arms are indecent?
@timteichman - probably there ! What is the message of uncovered arms to the society there ? - - - You see for instance when “sleeveless” here in theThirties was introduced in dfashion / proper dress here at my place - women with a depilation of their armpits were evaluated as “lewd”. Nowadays this is evaluated as proper / non proper cosmetic care - -And our SDA brides here enjoy free shoulders and deep neckline - so repeatedly - when congratulating the newlywed couple, both sitting - I have to take care not to drop right into the brides cleavage - -
(- -or is the local pastor there introducing Alabama dresscodes of the Fourties ?)
in addition to possible cultural messages, was there a dress code posted anywhere, and was there the understanding that everyone on the premises needed to abide by it, or was all of this the result of a pastor exercising arbitrary, private judgement that no-one could have anticipated…
on the flip side, is it a cultural understanding that a pastor is expected to exercise that kind of judgement…
this situation sounds quite over the top, but maybe there’s more than meets the eye…
