[Sorry for the delay in posting your comment -- for some reason it was trapped in the spam filter. Relevant stories are always welcome here!]

Years ago when I was YM President, I had been working for months to get a young man active again. When He finally decided to be active he was very active and very self-motivated. His first day passing the sacrament he hadn’t worn a tie. One of the other deacons freaked out and started to make a scene. Our ward didn’t have a full complement of deacons, so I was also passing, I queitly whispered to the freaked out deacon not to worry about it and that his fellow deacon would figure it out soon enough. Sure enough the next week the reactivated kid showed up in a tie, and to my knowledge nobody said anything overtly to him.

I also like the commandment creep comment. We so often get hung up on our traditions to the detriment of the spirit of the meeting. Ina branch on my mission we had an older brother who always acted as usher. He would not allow the sacrament trays to pass outside of the chapel and instead waved the people in the foyer to come forward and partake by reaching in to the chapel. My first Sunday passing the sacrament in the ward, nobody warned me, and as soon as I tried taking the tray into the foyer, the usher admonished me in a loud voice distracting the whole branch from reflecting on the ordinance. I didn’t try it again, since I knew he wouldn’t budge, and it would be worse to disrupt the spirit of the meeting. Being submissive even when it feels wrong, is sometimes about not being a stumbling block as well.

Another factor in clothing choice: At the moment there is a family with four young children visiting the library. They have obviously just been participating in a wedding, and are either the most naturally well behaved kids I’ve seen in a while, or else their behavior is being affected by the wearing of their Sunday best.

Since then Clark #46 comment has made all of my points in a way more elegant and succinct fashion. I hesitate to try again, but alas it was my first attempt at being a commenter and and not just a lurker here, and I spent the entire time my little boy was at preschool crafting it so that time will not have been spent in vain (however you may consider misspent in vain after reading it) with your indulgence I’m going to try again.

A member of my Stake Presidency talked about the white shirt issue in these terms: Anything that draws attention to the person administering the ordinance and distracts away from the actual ordinance should be avoided. Asking our young men to wear a white shirt is an easy way avoid distraction and keep attention where it should be focused.

I think there also is something to be said for wearing a white shirt because the young man is representing the Savior in the preparation, blessing and passing of the sacrament.

When it is a rule that is easy to obey and not obeying could possibly distract those who have come to partake, I think that young men should be encouraged and enabled to comply.

However there are circumstances when it would not be easy if not impossible to obey this simple admonition, for example in the military, or in an area of extreme poverty but for the rest of us in the rest of the circumstances we should not get ourselves so riled up about this small thing asked, most of all because it attaches to such a big and important and most of all sacred thing.

This same presidency member told a story of an interaction he had with his teenage son. Their family was from New Zealand and the members of the family had shiny black fabulously curly hair. The teenage son loved to tease his out into an amazing afro style do.

The father had pleaded with his son not to wear his hair like that when he blessed the sacrament. He said he felt that the hair style was a distraction to those in the congregation waiting to partake of the sacrament.

The son shot back to the father “Well I think you don’t want me to wear it like this because it embarrasses you, and anyway you wore your hair like this when you were my age.” At which point the son produced a school picture that of the father when he was about 15 years of age.

Momentarily dumbfounded and angry all the father could think was why he had not burnt that picture before his son had become a teenager. He was also angry because what his son said was true. He was embarrassed by his son’s appearance on Sunday.

Only when the father was able to strip his own pride out of the equation could they have a real conversation about the issue. When it really was just a matter of not wanting his son to draw undo attention to himself when representing the Savior when blessing the sacrament; (and not about bruising the fathers ego) was the father able to help his son understand.

Now the son pulls all of that amazing hair back and it is bound at the nape of his neck in a very discrete dignified manner when he blesses the sacrament.

I think if we understand and help the young men understand what business it is that they are about when they are participating in priesthood ordinances their difficulty (and ours) with obedience will diminish.

Hunter, actually, I’d like to see your suggestion implemented — not solely in connection with the white shirt issue. Sometimes I think we need a handbook running down in great specificity all the commandment-creep issues and telling members to cool it. That would include the one about white shirts only at church (not just for those administering the sacrament, but for all men), and the one about women not opening (or is it closing?) meetings with prayer, and the one about cola drinks, and the one about dressing in your church clothes for the full Sabbath, and the one about all PG-13 movies are okay but no R movie is, and all the others. We could throw in the generals in heaven story, and the not valiant in the pre-existence canard, and whatever other false commandments and non-doctrinal “doctrines” we can’t seem to stamp out.

Of course, such a thing would have to be updated even more often than the CHI, but at least members could point to an official statement whenever someone tries to impose a non-sanctioned sanction.

But what if the colored shirts distract from the ordinance of the sacrament. What if the loud ties and patterned coats make it difficult to focus on the meaning of the ordinance? I think the apostle Paul sums it up in Rom 14:13

“Let us therefore not judge one another any more, but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or any occasion to fall in his brothers way.”

Anyhow, all kidding aside, Ardis, thanks for widening the lens a bit on this discussion. Good perspective, thanks.

This thread has raised so many competing principles, or at least ones that bump into and overlap each other. I don’t think we’ll ever reach consensus. Part of the reason for that is that white shirts, beyond merely covering the body and protecting from cold, are symbolic, and the meaning of the symbol is contested, stretching from unrighteous dominion to commandment creep to economic burden to socioeconomic marker to individual fashion statement to conformity to sustaining leaders to white=righteousness to I-don’t-give-a-flying-fig. If we disagree with each other, it’s probably in part because we’re talking about different symbolic meanings.

I think the extremes on both ends are wrong (“I am the bishop and you WILL do what I say!” and “I’m going to wear my wildest/ugliest/most distracting shirt to show that bishop that he can’t tell ME what to do!”), but in between those extremes I’m in the don’t-give-a-flying-fig camp (as long, that is, as Keepa doesn’t become a forum for disgrunted people to whine about how unjust and hypocritical the church is for even raising the question — I don’t want to host that). The issue just isn’t worth a battle on anyone’s part, regardless of symbolic freight.

My purpose in contining to post the dress code variations I find is far less about the specifics of dress than it is about the social habits these bulletins display. Sometimes the author’s tone is imperious, other times attempting to reason, other times extremely compassionate. They show a tendency in our past to go to extremes — dressing the deacons in matching bowties and white pants on the one hand, or irreverent cartoon ties and wild plaid coats on the other hand. They always show a tendency on the part of leaders to want the sacrament service to be reverent and dignified, and also the apparently universal tendency of teenage boys to indulge in whatever the current crazy fashion is. That all is what intrigues me and keeps me looking for more.

Somewhere in this tug-o-war, we should be able to find some basic principles (neat? clean? not calling attention to oneself?) despite the variant ways that, over time, church leaders have tried to define and implement those principles.