Should Chris­ti­an Women Wear Head Coverings?

The ques­tion of wheth­er Chris­ti­an women should wear head cov­er­ings in church gath­er­ings is answered by dif­fer­ent people in very dif­fer­ent ways. Many regard this instruc­tion from Paul in 1 Cor­inthi­ans as an import­ant com­mand­ment for Chris­ti­an women. What did the Apostle Paul intend when he wrote about this matter?

1 Paul’s Instruc­tion in Context

Our ques­tion con­cerns the fol­low­ing pas­sage of scripture:

Now I com­mend you because you remem­ber me in everything and main­tain the tra­di­tions even as I delivered them to you. But I want you to under­stand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her hus­band, and the head of Christ is God. Every man who prays or proph­es­ies with his head covered dis­hon­ours his head, but every wife who prays or proph­es­ies with her head uncovered dis­hon­ours her head, since it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a wife will not cov­er her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is dis­grace­ful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cov­er her head. For a man ought not to cov­er his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man cre­ated for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a sym­bol of author­ity on her head, because of the angels. Nev­er­the­less, in the Lord woman is not inde­pend­ent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. Judge for yourselves: is it prop­er for a wife to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair it is a dis­grace for him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is giv­en to her for a cov­er­ing. If any­one is inclined to be con­ten­tious, we have no such prac­tice, nor do the churches of God. (1 Cor­inthi­ans 11:2–16)

2 Should All Women Wear Head Cov­er­ings or Only Mar­ried Women?

A cru­cial ques­tion for under­stand­ing this pas­sage is wheth­er Paul is refer­ring to mar­ried women or to women in gen­er­al. Apply­ing the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ to every man and woman, rather than to mar­ried couples, raises ques­tions that can­not be answered sat­is­fact­or­ily. Who spe­cific­ally should be the head of an unmar­ried woman? Her broth­er, her fath­er, her unbe­liev­ing fath­er or broth­er, or some oth­er man? To whom spe­cific­ally should she sub­mit? The idea that women in gen­er­al should sub­mit to men is also not a sat­is­fact­ory solu­tion. Chris­ti­ans know that they should sub­mit to one anoth­er (Eph­esians 5:21). In the same let­ter, in 1 Cor­inthi­ans 7:34, Paul praises unmar­ried women who focus entirely on God and not on a husband.

Apply­ing 1 Cor­inthi­ans 11:3 to all women would be very vague; but if applied to mar­riage, it is quite dif­fer­ent. The wife should sub­mit to her hus­band. That is con­crete and under­stand­able; her head is her hus­band and not just any man. The idea that the state­ment ‘the head of Christ is God’ is uni­ver­sally val­id does not change any­thing here. Paul wants to say here that women can take Christ as their role mod­el, who him­self has a head, namely God. Every­one must sub­mit, the wife to her hus­band, the hus­band to Christ, and Christ to God. This was an encour­age­ment for women who felt too free and had dif­fi­culties with sub­mis­sion. Their hus­bands must also prac­tise sub­mis­sion, namely to Christ.

The Greek words for woman (gyne, gynaikos is a gram­mat­ic­al case of gyne) and for man (aner, andros is a gram­mat­ic­al case of aner) do not only mean woman or man in gen­er­al, but also wife or hus­band. This is con­firmed by Greek-English dic­tion­ar­ies^[1] and is vis­ible from oth­er pas­sages as well. In Eph­esians 5:21–33, for example, these words clearly refer to mar­ried couples. It is inter­est­ing to note that in Eph­esians 5, the hus­band is described as the head of the wife, but unlike in 1 Cor­inthi­ans 11, Christ is not described as the head of the hus­band, but as the head of the church. This means that Christ is also the head of the wife, and not just of the hus­band. When Paul speaks of the ‘head of the wife’ in his let­ter to the Eph­esians, he spe­cific­ally refers to mar­ried women and not all women. Christ is the head of all Chris­ti­ans, of hus­bands, of wives, of all unmar­ried people, as well as of wid­ows and wid­owers. The fol­low­ing graph­ic serves to illus­trate this:

He means the same thing in 1 Cor­inthi­ans chapter 11. When Paul says ‘every man’ in verse 4 and ‘every wife’ in verse 5, he does not mean all Chris­ti­ans, regard­less of wheth­er they are mar­ried or not. As an apostle, he gives instruc­tions on how wives should behave at a meet­ing. Wives should wear a head cov­er­ing. He wants to make it clear that there should be no excep­tions here.

3 Why does Paul Refer to the Order of Creation?

Some might argue that in verses 8 and 9, Paul jus­ti­fies the sub­or­din­a­tion of women with the order of cre­ation from Gen­es­is, thereby speak­ing fun­da­ment­ally about men and women. At first glance, this objec­tion appears to be val­id. It is true that the order of cre­ation is not only val­id in mar­riage; it expresses more com­pre­hens­ively that women, with their slightly dif­fer­ent gifts from God, are to be a help to men. Both men and women are to use their abil­it­ies to com­ple­ment one anoth­er in accord­ance with God’s will. This also makes sense for unmar­ried people.

Nev­er­the­less, it is a fact that Adam and Eve were the first couple. All human beings trace their ori­gins back to them; per­haps one could say that they are the arche­type of mar­riage. In verses 8 and 9, Paul alludes to the order of cre­ation (in the sense of sub­or­din­a­tion) with regard to marriage.

4 What does “Because of the Angels” Mean?

In verse 10, Paul speaks about angels; here, too, the idea of the order of cre­ation is addressed. Accord­ing to Strack and Biller­be­ck, who explain the New Test­a­ment with the help of the Talmud and Midrash, there was a wide­spread Jew­ish concept that angels were ‘God’s appoin­ted guard­i­ans of all nat­ur­al orders in the world,’ and that as such they ‘have a nat­ur­al interest in ensur­ing that women recog­nise the ancient order of cre­ation in which they are sub­or­din­ate to men.’^[2]

The inter­pret­a­tion that angels watch Chris­ti­ans to see their obed­i­ence does not make sense. Angels do not need out­ward signs to rejoice in the obed­i­ence of believ­ers. Even if they can­not see into people’s thoughts like God, who knows their hearts, that does not mean that they need extern­al sym­bols, like head cov­er­ings, to recog­nise wheth­er Chris­ti­ans are obed­i­ent. If we as humans can infer someone’s dis­pos­i­tion from their beha­viour and speech, how much more so can angels. To say that angels need extern­al signs to recog­nise some­thing in the heart of the believ­er is a simplist­ic view of spir­itu­al real­it­ies. Fur­ther­more, Paul does not write here that angels are watch­ing Chris­ti­ans. He only writes ‘because of the angels’.

5 In Which Situ­ations did Women Wear Head Cov­er­ings in New Test­a­ment Times?

Com­ment­ing on 1 Cor­inthi­ans 11, Strack and Biller­be­ck explain that mar­ried Jew­ish women always (!) wore head cov­er­ings or spe­cial hair­styles in pub­lic to express that they were under an author­ity, namely their hus­bands.^[3] There were cer­tainly Jews in Cor­inth as well.

The facts about Greek and Roman hair­styles in the 1st cen­tury are not so clear. How­ever, it seems that it was also com­mon in the pagan world for wives to make their mar­ried status recog­nis­able by their appear­ance. There are many depic­tions of women wear­ing head cov­er­ings, but it is not clear wheth­er this was done exclus­ively by mar­ried women. Depic­tions alone can­not prove this.

In any case, the cus­tom of head cov­er­ings for wives was well known, if only because of the Jews. A num­ber of ancient his­tor­i­ans believe that it was cus­tom­ary in ancient Greece for mar­ried women to wear head cov­er­ings in pub­lic.^[4] If a mar­ried woman appeared in pub­lic without a head cov­er­ing, it was con­sidered an expres­sion of mar­it­al infidelity.

6 What does it Mean that Long Hair is a Dis­grace for Men?

In verse 14, Paul says that wear­ing long hair is a dis­grace for men. Did he mean this basic­ally and for all times? Absa­lom, the son of Dav­id, was god­less in many ways, but strangely enough, his long hair is not cri­ti­cised.^[5] On the con­trary, it is even praised:

From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blem­ish in him. And when he cut the hair of his head (for at the end of every year he used to cut it; when it was heavy on him, he cut it), he weighed the hair of his head, two hun­dred shekels by the king’s weight. (2 Samuel 14:25b–26)

This applies even more to Sam­son, who, as a Nazir­ite, nev­er cut his hair (Judges 13:5). Long hair seems to have been a sym­bol of devo­tion among Nazir­ites (Num­bers 6:5).

The Black Obelisk of the Assyr­i­an King Shal­maneser III from 825 BC shows Jehu, the King of Israel, with his del­eg­a­tion pay­ing trib­ute to the Assyr­i­an king. The long hair of the Israel­ites is clearly vis­ible in this relief stone.

Anoth­er example of Israel­ites with rather long hair is found on a stone wall pan­el in the palace of the Assyr­i­an king Tiglath-Pileser III in Nim­rud, which shows Israel­ite pris­on­ers from the East Jord­ani­an city of Ashtaroth being led away by an Assyr­i­an sol­dier. Tiglath-Pileser had conquered the north and east of Israel in 734–732 BC.

How do these examples fit in with the idea that wear­ing long hair is shame­ful for a man? The prob­lem only arises if one sees it as a time­less prin­ciple. The term ‘nature’ in verse 14 is not to be under­stood in the usu­al sense, but expresses that some­thing becomes famil­i­ar or cus­tom­ary, i.e. some­thing nat­ur­al, over a long peri­od of time. We are accus­tomed to men hav­ing rather short hair and women hav­ing rather long hair. But long hair is rel­at­ive. Accord­ing to Strack and Biller­be­ck, men in Jesus’ time wore medium-length hair^[6], which we would con­sider long today. Cus­toms can change over time. Glob­ally speak­ing, it is now most com­mon or incon­spicu­ous for men to have short hair. Paul ends the sec­tion on head cov­er­ings with the expres­sion ‘we have no such prac­tice,’ which is close in mean­ing to a tra­di­tion or custom.

7 Is Paul Refer­ring to a Headscarf/Veil or a Head Cov­er­ing or a Hairstyle?

Paul uses vari­ous expres­sions such as hav­ing ‘her head uncovered’ and ‘cov­er her head,’ which people often asso­ci­ate with a head­scarf or veil. On the oth­er hand, Paul speaks of women being giv­en long hair as a cov­er­ing. This could indic­ate that wives tied their long hair togeth­er on their heads.

Strack and Biller­be­ck explain that the head cov­er­ing worn by Jew­ish wives was actu­ally a hair­style, whereby women tied their long hair togeth­er on their heads with rib­bons, bows and scarves.^[7] This is an under­stand­able explan­a­tion, but wheth­er one can say with cer­tainty that what is meant in Cor­inth is not a head­scarf but a hair­style remains open to question.

8 Does the “Prac­tice” in Verse 16 Refer to Being Con­ten­tious or Wear­ing Head Coverings?

The inter­pret­a­tion of verse 16 that some Cor­inthi­ans argued about this mat­ter, and that arguing is a prac­tice that Paul and oth­er churches do not have can­not be cor­rect. Quar­rel­ling is a sin and can­not be described as a prac­tice among Chris­ti­ans. Paul would be bring­ing Chris­ti­an eth­ics to a level that is incom­pat­ible with oth­er state­ments in Scrip­ture (Tit­us 3:1–2, James 3:14–16, James 4:1 …). With this con­clud­ing sen­tence to this sec­tion, Paul wants to sum­mar­ise once again that he and the churches of God do not have the habit of (mar­ried) women not wear­ing head cov­er­ings. Verse 16 could then be under­stood as follows:

But if any­one thinks it is good to be quar­rel­some by insist­ing that women should not wear head cov­er­ings (i.e., he wants to argue with us about it), he should know that we do not have such a cus­tom, that wives should remove the sign of sub­mis­sion to their hus­bands in the assembly and thus dis­reg­ard God’s order.

Nowadays, we have a dif­fer­ent cus­tom in our soci­ety for express­ing belong­ing in mar­riage – the wed­ding ring. Does­n’t it seem nat­ur­al and obvi­ous to us that mar­ried couples can be recog­nised by their wed­ding rings?

9 What is the Pur­pose of Extern­al Signs?

Extern­al signs are par­tic­u­larly import­ant for soci­ety. If the Cor­inthi­ans had guests and these guests saw that the women were not wear­ing head cov­er­ings, they would be offen­ded: do Chris­ti­an wives not sub­mit to their hus­bands? Extern­al signs are mean­ing­ful when they are prop­erly under­stood by those who observe the signs. If the signs do not con­vey a famil­i­ar mean­ing, they become a formality.

Con­cern­ing extern­al signs, we have to con­sider the danger of form­al­ism, for instance if a woman appears obed­i­ent in the assembly while har­bor­ing a sin­ful attitude—outwardly com­pli­ant, yet inwardly dis­obedi­ent. Should an out­ward sign carry such sig­ni­fic­ance? In fact, sym­bols gen­er­ally play a sub­or­din­ate role in the Chris­ti­an faith. In oth­er reli­gions, as well as in nom­in­al Chris­tian­ity, extern­al signs are often cent­ral while inner obed­i­ence to God is neg­lected, allow­ing the vis­ible facade to hypo­crit­ic­ally mask the true con­di­tion of the heart.

10 Is the Head Cov­er­ing an Etern­al Chris­ti­an Symbol?

In order to emphas­ise the import­ance of wear­ing head cov­er­ings, some people teach that head cov­er­ings are an etern­al Chris­ti­an sym­bol. There are prac­tices that go back to the words of Jesus, such as Bap­tism and Holy Com­mu­nion. Bap­tims and Holy Com­mu­nion are attested to sev­er­al times in the Gos­pels, and there are also many pas­sages in the New Test­a­ment that show that Chris­ti­ans fol­lowed Jesus’ com­mand to prac­tise them. The mean­ing of Bap­tism and Holy Com­mu­nion, and the sym­bol­ic acts asso­ci­ated with them are also under­stand­able in themselves.

The situ­ation is quite dif­fer­ent with head cov­er­ings, how­ever. It is not under­stand­able that women should wear head cov­er­ings only when pray­ing and proph­esy­ing, but not oth­er­wise – i.e. not even in pub­lic, where it would be par­tic­u­larly import­ant to show that women are sub­or­din­ate to men. In this con­text, people often emphas­ise that it is import­ant to fol­low the Scrip­tures, even if this is not under­stand­able to today’s soci­ety. They say that it demon­strates a will­ing­ness to do everything for God and to obey His commandments.

What would be so spe­cial about Chris­ti­an women wear­ing head cov­er­ings at meet­ings? If all the women do so at such gath­er­ings, it is not par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult to keep this com­mand­ment. In pub­lic, they do not wear head cov­er­ings, just as women in many West­ern coun­tries do not.

Chris­ti­an wives in the first cen­tury wore head cov­er­ings not only at church meet­ings, but also in pub­lic (as Jew­ish women did). This was how they expressed their sub­mis­sion to their hus­bands in soci­ety. Wear­ing head cov­er­ings only in church gath­er­ings does not make sense. The broth­ers and sis­ters in faith do not need such signs, as they know each oth­er very well due to their close fel­low­ship. Chris­ti­ans are broth­ers and sis­ters who sup­port each oth­er spir­itu­ally, con­fess their sins to each oth­er, espe­cially their thoughts and atti­tudes. They are there­fore not depend­ent on out­ward signs, such as head coverings.

11 Should Chris­ti­an Women Wear Head Cov­er­ings Only When Prophesying/Praying, or at Oth­er Times As Well?

At this point, we would like to address the ques­tion of why Paul asso­ci­ates the covered head with pray­er or proph­ecy. As already men­tioned, Chris­ti­an wives wore a kind of head cov­er­ing in pub­lic that iden­ti­fied them as mar­ried women. When some behaved too freely in church meet­ings and did not con­sider it neces­sary to wear the sign of sub­mis­sion to their hus­bands in the assembly, Paul saw this as a lack of sub­mis­sion to God’s order.

This wrong atti­tude of not sub­mit­ting to God was espe­cially inap­pro­pri­ate and harm­ful when the sis­ters involved wanted to talk to God (pray­er) or share God’s words with oth­ers (proph­ecy). Wrong atti­tudes get in the way of our pray­ers, and we can­’t rely on God’s guid­ance when we want to help oth­ers spir­itu­ally in the church (which is the point of proph­ecy). So Paul’s aim was not to say that that Chris­ti­an women should cov­er their heads only when proph­esy­ing and pray­ing, but that they should cov­er their heads even when proph­esy­ing and praying.