headcovering – Like An Anchor

In the first letter we have that Paul sent to the Corinthians, he wrote to address some specific things. Firstly, there were serious issues in this church. They were divided, arguing, and following different human teachers. They also had a big issue with tolerating sin, even priding themselves on how forbearing they were toward a man in their congregation living and sleeping with his stepmother. Paul had to set them right, and he did so by comparing them to ancient Israel and explaining how the Passover and Festival of Unleavened Bread apply to the New Covenant church.

In the midst of all this, Paul also talked about proper conduct within a church community. One of those passages is labeled in the chapter and verse model of our modern Bibles as 1 Corinthians 11:1-16. It’s a passage most people skip over because it has to do with headcoverings and hair length for men and women. It’s the only place in the New Testament where this topic comes up, and it’s one that generates a lot of debate, offense, and division so we tend to ignore it completely. But we miss something important if we skip this passage, even if we don’t agree on how to interpret it.

The Headcovering Passage

People often approach this passage as just being about women’s headcoverings, but it’s addressed just as much to men. Paul opened this discussion by saying, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” and praising the Corinthians for maintaining “the traditions just as I passed them on to you” (1 Cor. 11:1, 2, NET). He then made a statement about authority in the churches (the ecclesia, or called-out ones) of God.

But I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered disgraces his head. But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered disgraces her head, for it is one and the same thing as having a shaved head.
1 Corinthians 11:3-5, NET

In my studies on this topic, I learned that culturally, Jewish men and women covered their heads with scarves or prayer shawls while Greek/Gentile men and women tended not to cover (though they could, mostly as a fashion choice). This passage would have involved a change for Jewish men as well as Gentile women. Men who covered their heads while praying needed to stop, and women who didn’t cover their heads while praying needed to start. Full disclosure, I do cover my head when at a church gathering or praying and studying at home. You can click here to learn more about why and the research I did into the topic.

Image of a woman wearing a hat and holding flowers overlaid with text from 1 Cor. 11:6-7, 10-11, NET version: "But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, she should cover her head. For a man should not have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man. ... a woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels. In any case, in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman." — Image by Irina from Pixabay

Context For Paul’s Next Commands About Women

So why can’t we just skip over this divisive passage? For one thing, it’s part of the Bible and if we admit the Bible is the inspired word of God, then there is value in every part of it even if we’re not yet sure what to make of it. This is a significant reason to pay attention to 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, but it’s not the one that we’re going to focus on today. In this post, I want to focus on the important context clues this passage provides for interpreting other parts of the letter.

As the letter continued, Paul covered instructions for keeping Passover correctly (1 Cor. 11:17-34), spiritual gifts and unity in the body (1 Cor. 12), the “more excellent way” of agape love (1 Cor. 13), the use of prophecy or “inspired speaking” in the church (1 Cor. 14:1-25), and proper, orderly conduct during a church meeting (1 Cor. 14:26-40). Paul didn’t address the topic of women again directly until chapter 14, but since he started out this part of the letter by addressing how men and women properly pray and prophecy in the church (men with their heads uncovered, women with their heads covered), we can assume the discussions about keeping Passover, having spiritual gifts and using them properly, and love are addressed equally to men and women in the church. The NET even uses the phrase “brothers and sisters” when Paul addresses believers, because the whole church group is included when Paul uses the word “brethren” (adelphoi in Greek). We all have key roles to play, and very similar responsibilities and gifts.

Then, we come to a place where Paul again addressed women and men separately, with different instructions for each. It’s one of the infamous passages about women being silent in church.

What should you do then, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each one has a song, has a lesson, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all these things be done for the strengthening of the church. …Two or three prophets should speak and the others should evaluate what is said. … For you can all prophesy one after another, so all can learn and be encouraged. Indeed, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is not characterized by disorder but by peace.

As in all the churches of the saints,the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says. If they want to find out about something, they should ask their husbands at home, because it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in church.
1 Corinthians 14:26, 29, 31-35, NET

If you read Paul’s statement about women being silent by itself, it sounds like women shouldn’t say a word the whole time they’re at a gathering of believers. This doesn’t make sense in the context of other scriptures, which show women were deeply involved in the churches. This is where 1 Corinthians 11 can provide much-needed context to help us figure out what Paul is likely saying in this passage.

“In light of 11:2-16, which gives permission for women to pray or prophesy in the church meetings, the silence commanded here seems not to involve the absolute prohibition of a woman addressing the assembly. Therefore (1) some take be silent to mean not taking an authoritative teaching role as 1 Tim 2 indicates, but (2) the better suggestion is to relate it to the preceding regulations about evaluating the prophets (v. 29). Here Paul would be indicating that the women should not speak up during such an evaluation, since such questioning would be in violation of the submission to male leadership that the OT calls for (the law, e.g., Gen 2:18).”
NET study note on 1 Cor. 14:34

Whether you think women should cover their heads today or not, the fact is that 1 Corinthians 11 addresses the proper way for women to pray and/or prophecy. Obviously women can, and frequently do throughout the scriptures, pray and prophecy outside of church meetings. But the context of this section of scripture is how to do things in the churches, when believers are gathered together, as for a formal church service. It follows, then, that Paul talks about how women can properly pray and prophecy in church in 1 Corinthians 11, then addresses a time when silence is more appropriate in 1 Corinthians 14.

Culture Adds More Context

Image of a woman wearing a scarf on her head standing on a beach, overlaid with blog's title text and the words, "Paul’s words on headcoverings and hair length generate a lot of debate, so we tend to ignore them. But we miss something important if we skip this passage, even if we don't agree on the interpretation." — Image by Milada Vigerova from Pixabay

It also helps to take the cultural context into account when looking at Paul’s writings. Now, there are right and wrong ways to do this. Sometimes, people say that Paul just had a backwards view of women because he was influenced by his culture and so we don’t need to listen to him anymore. But in reality, some of his writings indicate he was pretty radical compared to the culture of his day.

Likewise the women are to dress in suitable apparel, with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet.
1 Timothy 2:9-12, NET

We read this today and we might feel offended that he’d say women have to be quiet and submissive and can’t teach. People of Paul’s day, though, would have read “a woman must learn” and been shocked by that. This statement “was a radical and liberating departure from the Jewish view that women were not to learn the law” (NET footnote on 1 Tim. 2:12). Some Jewish girls received Torah instruction while they were young and if they had a good family they might have learned a little more, but women weren’t generally taught very much and they certainly weren’t selected for advanced study with respected rabbis.

Jesus’s interactions with women as spiritual equals was unusual, and Paul continued His practice. He also assured his readers, though, that women serving in the church, preaching the gospel, and learning God’s words did not mean that women were suddenly going to start taking over roles that God entrusted to men. Women are to learn, yes, but they will also be submissive in the sense that God expects. Women can pray and prophecy, but they won’t (or shouldn’t) be disrupting church meetings or usurping male roles.

We often miss it today with our modern perspectives, but Paul isn’t advocating for either the subjugation of women or for doing away with gender roles in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy. It’s actually a more balanced view than we often find in churches today, which in many cases either try to follow society in doing away with different roles for men and women entirely, or follow traditional (mis)interpretations of Paul that bar women from being involved. However you interpret the passage on hair length and headcoverings, it provides much-needed context assuring us that women were deeply involved in the New Testament church and they still can be in the churches today.

Featured image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Song Recommendation: “This Girl” by Lauren Daigle

Click here to learn more about these books or to order a copy.

How I started covering

My Covering Testimony | marissabaker.wordpress.com — Flea market find — head covering for $1!

My first reaction was to talk with my mother, who was suspicious of the whole idea. I then reached out to a friend who’d been sending me “rants” about scriptures that didn’t make sense to him. My own “rant” went something as follows: “should I start wearing a scarf because this makes sense to me? or did I miss something in their interpretation of these verses that I shouldn’t agree with? Maybe my mother’s right that it’s not a big deal and it would be too distracting to people around me in church.”

Even before I heard back from him, I wore a wide headband to church that Sabbath. I thought it was big enough to count as a covering, yet not something I hadn’t worn before so it wouldn’t attract much attention. A few days later, my friend wrote something that helped confirm my decision: “It is good that you’re mindful of not causing a ruffling of feathers among fellow congregants, but we can only control so much of other people. … So, I would just encourage you to follow your conviction wherever that leads you. If people have a problem, it is their Christian duty to confront you about it, and I doubt anyone would still have a problem with you/your apparel upon inquiring about your intent in doing so.”

My friend is a smart man. I’d already taken baby-steps toward covering, but his encouragement was reassurance that I wasn’t just going “off the deep end.” I ordered my first cover from Garlands of Grace on July 15 (pictured in the featured image), and started building a collection of head scarfs. Since then, I’ve only had one person in the United Church of God groups I attend ask about the fact that I cover my head, but at my Messianic group there are a few other women who cover and the topic comes up more often. I’ve received compliments on how I wear them, as well as on the fact that I’m covering. One person said, “I appreciate that you wear a cover when you dance.” I’m not doing this to seek attention of course, but for someone whose love language is Words of Affirmation this support was invaluable.

Support for covering

In terms of scripture, the passage in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16 is the main support for the practice of Christian head covering. A few other scriptures tie in to it (such as Num. 5:18 instructing the priest to uncover the head of a woman accused of adultery), but this is the only place where it’s focused on. You can check out The Head Covering Movement for more in-depth analysis, but here’s what convicted me that covering is for the church today:

God’s created order for headship is the foundational reason for covering (v.2-3, 7-12).

It’s described as a dishonor and a shame for women to “pray or prophecy” uncovered (v. 4-6).

Paul says “nature itself” (including the examples of short hair on men and long hair on women) teach us covering is proper (v. 13-15). I also think this is support for the hair acting as a covering sometimes and an additional cover only being required when “praying and prophesying.”

The “we have no such” custom phrase grammatically refers back to the question in v. 13 of women praying uncovered. No where in scripture does Paul suggest people can ignore a command he writes about simply because they are contentious over it.

On top of those reasons, the arguments most people use against head covering are, for me, an argument in favor of it. They say it was a strictly cultural matter that no longer applies — that in Corinth, only prostitutes went about with uncovered heads and we don’t want to be mistaken for prostitutes. But Paul mentions no such thing and when we start throwing out commands because we think they’re strictly cultural we’re on a very slippery slope. On top of that, historical evidence shows the prostitutes referenced in this argument belonged to a Corinth of about 200 years before Paul’s writings and art of the time shows respectable women both covered and uncovered. The covering Paul talks about wasn’t based on a Greek or Roman practice (or even a Jewish practice, since both men and women covered in Judaism).

Left: Michelangelo’s The Pietà (1498-1499). Right: film still from Brooklyn (2015, setting 1952)

In reality, history shows us that head covering was practiced unanimously among Christian women for centuries. I hate to cite Wikipedia as a source, but in this case their article on Christian headcovering throughout history is unusually well-researched and more thoroughly cited than many other articles I’ve found online. Until a little over 50 years ago (with the sexual revolution and the feminist movement gaining traction), covering was the norm in church and often in public as well. Even fairly recently, no respectable lady would leave the house without a hat of some kind and she was expected to keep it on during church services. If you’re looking closely, you’ll notice this in well-researched historical dramas. Last year’s film Brooklyn, for example, was set in 1951 and ’52, and you’ll see Eilis removing a veil as she leaves a church in one scene and another scene where she’s wearing a pink cover at church.

Take away thoughts

While I don’t like to seem as if I’m pushing the notion of headcoverings on other people, I am doing this for a reason and a year of covering has only confirmed my choice. My encouragement to you today is to just take a closer look at this passage of scripture, and not to ignore it because we’re not sure what to do about it. Don’t start covering just because someone tells you to — study it and see if you’re convicted. And if you are, then don’t be afraid to start covering in church. Sure some people will probably think it’s strange, but as my friend said, “we can only control so much of other people.” If you’re convicted that you should be covering at church, then you’re doing it for God and not for what other people think (though you do want to try and avoid offending our brethren by how we practice covering).

Now, I don’t mean to sound like covering has been without its struggles or that it wasn’t a little weird at first or that I don’t still have questions. For example, how often to cover is still something I’m not clear on. I’m convicted of covering at church services (which is all The Headcovering Movement sees as necessary), but “praying and prophesying” could apply to other times as well. Do Bible studies count? What about dance practice, since the dancers pray as a group and sometimes I’m asked to pray aloud? I cover at home when praying in private, but should I cover for blessings on meals? or when writing these Sabbath blog posts, since that’s a sort of prophesying/inspired speaking? I’m not sure.

While thinking these things over, I’m keeping in mind that we can’t turn this into a legalistic thing, and I do think God hears prayers of uncovered women. Covering should be a way of honoring God, never something that stands between us and our Lord. But if it is indeed a command, and I believe it is, then it’s meant for our good, and that has been my experience. I’ve found that covering draws me closer to God and reminds me that I’m here to worship and to honor the Lord.

Shalom, my friends!

Tag: headcovering

Why Does 1 Corinthians 11 Matter Today?