Should women cover their hair?

[Palmfever]

1 Cor, 11:14
Does even nature itself not teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, 15 but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her? For her hair is given to her as a covering. 16 But if anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor have the churches of God.

A couple things the writer says here;
Nature.
'The natural man is the enemy of God.'
'We have no such practice'

Do we really believe God is looking at Godly women with a scowl as they pray, or at any time because of their hair? He states that He looks at the heart, the inner man.
Should we find ourselves in an accident and not allow our head to be wrapped? Or not pray? Sheepishly apologize?
Galatians 3:27
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
It is your heart. If we accuse ourselves, we perhaps should take off our hats... That may put severe restrictions on our walk with God given that I talk with God all day. (I like pork also.)

That was Paul and he did not here in Galatians state this is God's rule.

 

[Lily76_]

I veil due to personal choice, as i wish to glorified God in this way and also to do with my ADHD & sensory processing disorder .

 

[Josheb]

This is lengthy. I understand if its not read in entirety but give it a try anyway

Should Christian women cover their hair? In 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, it states that we should. Even if it’s just a thin headband it is still covering, so should we?
Tell me what you think.
I made this in another post as well.

The text cited specifies covering ones head while praying or prophesying.

1 Corinthians 11:4-5
Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for it is one and the same as the woman 1 Corinthians 11 New American Standard Biblewhose head is shaved.

So, I must ask a few questions to get at the presuppositions underlying the o and any problems therein implied.

• Why was the matter of head-covering taken out of context to say any and every woman should wear a head covering while attending church (or every minute of the day)??
• Why is it Christians who can otherwise read what is written for themselves and have the Holy Spirit within to bear witness to God's word become persuaded by bad teachers teaching incorrectly?

Now, let's not single out a verse or two and make them say something inconsistent with the rest of scripture, or the whole of scripture. Verse 16 explicitly states, "For her hair is given to her as a covering." So put the two together: A woman should have her head covered when she prays or prophesies.... ger hair is given to her as a covering. Don't you think if Paul was talking about hats, then he would have said hats (or scarves, etc.)? What is this "covering" supposed to be? According to verse 10, "Therefore the woman should have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels," the covering about which Paul is writing is a "symbol of authority." How then would just any hat be a symbol of authority? How would a scarf be a symbol of authority. How is long hair a symbol of authority? What kind of a symbol of authority would a woman wear when praying and/or prophesying? According to the passage itself, the woman's hair is her glory; it's a witness to the order of creation whereby the woman originated from the man and was made for the man. Keep in mind this was written by the exact same guy who declared there are no males or females in Christ.

Can you know see that it is the hat requirement that is the contentious position?

1 Corinthians 11:16
But if anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no [l]such practice, nor have the churches of God.


Let's look at some other verses, beginning with those found in the same letter. Turn a few pages over to chapter 14 and read verse 34.

1 Corinthians 14:34
...the women are to keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the Law also says.


So, which is it? Are women allowed to pray and prophesy or are they required to be silent. If they are required to be silent and the only time they need to cover their head is when they pray or prophesy, then there is no need to wear any head covering ever..... and Paul has contradicted himself.... and we therefore have no need to ever listen to anything Paul ever taught because he's just been proven uninspired. How? The Holy Spirit never contradicts itself!!!


Legalism kills.


Let's try to make some cohesive sense of what's written, yes? Chapter 11 gives us some definitive information about the head covering matter simply by stating the woman's hair is her covering and the covering she needs when praying or prophesying is one of authority.

Without having to read the entire epistle (although anyone who has not done so should do so now), let's simply point out a very obvious fact (or a fact that should be obvious to anyone who has read the epistle in its entirety). The church in Corinth was a mess. Seeds of factionalism or sectarianism were developing. Some congregants were saying they followed Jesus while others said the followed Cephas (who was separating Jews and Gentiles - Gal. 3) or Apollos and the problem was so bad Paul was thankful no sect of Paulines had developed. The church was so bad some guy thought it was okay to have sex with his father's wife (apparently not his mother) and the church was so bad they did nothing about the man's behavior, thereby giving implicit approval. Corinth is a place where people competed with "gifts of the Spirit," worship had become disorganized, and prophesy was misused. Furthermore, when Paul is writing about women in the prophecy-related chapters he does so couched in the contexts of 1) Adam and 2) the woman's husband. As far as the matter of prayer and prophesying goes, there is absolutely NOTHING in the entire epistle specifically, explicitly about a single woman who is never married or is widowed. Are we to believe there were not single, unmarried or widowed women in Corinth? Are we to believe God never moved in a single woman in Corinth? If the answers are, "No," then understand Paul is writing about some problem related to married women that he has not explained in detail. Even the appeal to the woman not originating from man and her being made for the sake of man is couched in the marital relationship and not any ancient misogyny. How do we know this? Because an unmarried woman was the responsibility of her father. There is always a hierarchy in the created order. Not in Christ, but as far as the created order goes the implied equality being made from the rib (instead of the head or the foot) is expressed in complementary roles in which the woman is the helpmete of her spouse. Paul is not writing anything that could or would be construed in contradiction.




There were problems in Corinth with prophesying in general, and there were problems with women praying and prophesying. People were speaking in tongues without any interpretation. Tongues and prophesies go together often in the NT. The problem was so bad people were walking into a worship meeting and it sounded like Babel and looked like bedlam. o tongue should occur unless there was an interpretation. The meeting needed to be organized. Women..... weren't supposed to be interrupting the service to ask questions that could be answered at home by their husbands. And Mistress Unknown who is having sex with her husband's grown son from another marriage, you should not be prophesying at all. You should be face down on the grown repenting and putting your clothes back on while the elders of the church take that younger man to task and either bring him to repentance or kick him out by handing him over to Satan so his spirit might be saved on the last day.

Paul is not writing about hats.

Now I am going to leave scripture for a moment and provide some cultural background. Because it is not scripture you all can take it or leave it. Everything about Corinth can be verified. None of it is my opinion. I'll tie it to scripture speculatively but will do so based on what the epistle states.


Corinth was a huge city. When Paul addresses his letter to a particular city there may have one or a few congregations in the city, depending on the amount of time that had passed since the gospel left Jerusalem and the size of the city. Since the letters were all written one to three decades after Calvary a fair amount of time had passed but the Church was still in infancy. There were not building specifically built for Christian congregations (the first such building found so far was built c. 130AD). Christians met in people's homes and homes were not very big in those days. Congregations were small and a congregants might go to one house meeting one day and another meeting the next day. Seeing the same people every meeting in the same home was not the norm like it is today. When the epistolary speaks of Church leadership it does so in the context of these leaders coordinating multiple small groups or gatherings and addressing problems in that sort of structure and context. Corinth was huge, comparatively speaking.

Furthermore, Corinth was also hugely pagan. The temples of Apollo and Aphrodite were in Corinth. Greek and Roman gods had temples all over the place, but the TEMPLE of each was in Corinth. It's akin to the Jews having synagogues in every town but the temple being in Jerusalem. The temple of Apollo and the temple of Aphrodite were in Corinth. Both cults had worship ceremonies and holy days characterized by what we would consider licentiousness. Most of the pagan religions were variations on the harvest motif and harvest religions celebrated sowing and reaping, and the celebration of sowing celebrated sex and therefore the religious rituals were sexualized. Both religions had temples prostitutes and it should be understood these prostitutes were not all women, nor were they all performing different-sex sex. For the purposes of this op, however, it is the cult of Aphrodite that is salient because the Aphrodite religion was run by women, not men. Aphrodite had priestesses, not priests. When temple prostitutes of any religion converted to Christ certain difficulties ensued because these were men and women who knew how to work a person at the level of the soul, using interpersonal sexual politics. Anyone who has ever worshiped in a congregation where a former prostitute (or any other sex worker) fellowships knows of what I speak. Prostitutes in general were a challenge to Christian fellowship, worship, and congregational worship and this was a more prevalent problem in cities like Ephesus and Corinth where the big temples of pagan Gods were built (Ephesus had Dionysus and Artemis; Ephesus was where the silversmiths imprisoned the apostles).

Prostitutes in general were a challenge, but female priestesses more specifically were a problem and all the more so in a cult where the goddess worshipped is all about love and sex. These priestesses were used to have authority and power, and the power and authority they held was power over men. There's no "created order" of the Bible (or Tanakh) for them. The Bible is the antithesis of everything they believe and do. The hats they wear, along with their ceremonial robes, and all the artifices of their religion are about female empowerment and female empowerment over men. In the pagan religions, especially those of Greece and Roman, Zeus/Jupiter was the head god, but he was not all-powerful. Other gods were constantly pulling the wool over his eyes, deceiving him, manipulating him, disobeying him, and the reverse was also true. Zeus did not command love; Aphrodite did.

So, when you put a woman like that into a small group of immature Christians, most of whom were poor and illiterate, that's a recipe for the kind of problems described in the letters to Corinth. It's likely the women prophesying were either former priestesses or prostitutes of the Aphrodite cult, or influenced by the city in which Aphrodite ruled the culture.

It is not about hats

Paul can say, "Women must wear hats," and be done with it if that's the problem. There's no need to appeal to the creation account if the problem is hats or scarfs. There's no reason to (seemingly) contradict himself about women being silent or praying or prophesying if the problem is wearing/not wearing a hat. There's definitely no need to mention husbands. Paul was one of the most educated men of his day and very articulate (he wrote the greatest theological summary of his day (one that what can be considered the greatest of human history given every Christian since then has been working from the book of Romans). Paul knows how to be concise when the matter warrants simplicity and/or bluntness.

1 Corinthians 11 is not about hats. Every woman who has long hair already has a covering and it glorifies her and the created order and even that should not be treated with legalism because there are no males or females in Christ and God loves short-haired women, too. Even the short-haired former temple prostitutes.

You just can't bring all that old-you stuff into the body of Christ. You've been crucified with Christ and you no longer live. The life you live you live by faith in the Son of God who gave himself for you that you may live, and live rightly.

Act like it.

 

[All4Christ]

* Senior Ambassador Hat *

Many posts in this thread violate the Christian Advice forum Statement of Purpose.

Address your posts to the Original Poster. Do not argue or debate theology beliefs and viewpoints.

See the section of the Statement of purpose below:

We would ask that members direct their responses to the member who started the thread and refrain from debating one another's theological beliefs and viewpoints. Do not use this forum to debate with other Christians as that is not the purpose of the Requests for Christian Advice forum. If members would like to discuss/debate specific Christian theological doctrines, they should do so in one of the Theology Forums.

 

[Michie]

Romans 14 comes to mind.