The Case for Covering: Part 2
Author’s Notes:
I choose to write with a pseudonym for practical purposes but have no problem with people at the Village knowing my name or associating me with this piece.
This article does not represent the official position of The Village Church Columbus, but is a means to engage in thoughtful discussions about obedience and faithfulness to God and His Word.
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In the first part of this two-part article, I discussed the passage in 1 Corinthians 11, which instructs the church in Corinth to follow the tradition of women covering their heads during the church service. After going through the passage and making some notes on the text, I presented a biblical case for the head covering, which hinged on the head covering as a symbol of authority to the angelic realm. In this second part of the article, I want to explore how churches have historically applied the head covering in light of the 1 Corinthians 11 passage.
II. A Historical Case for the Head Covering
There is much evidence that only in the twentieth century have women begun to abandon the tradition of covering their heads, and even this seems to have been largely in the West. When I traveled to India in 2014, I was impressed by the women drawing up their scarves from around their necks to cover their heads during the church service. In conversing with a friend of mine, I learned that when he traveled throughout Russia, he also encountered this practice in the Orthodox churches he visited (more on this here).
So what did the early church fathers think about head coverings?
Hippolytus of Rome wrote in his Apostolic Tradition, which dates to 215 AD: “All the women should cover their heads with a pallium, and not simply with a piece of linen, which is not a proper veil” (ch. 18 vs. 5). His injunction is sandwiched with more instructions on prayer in the church, which seems to indicate that he is taking the veiling as strictly within the church service.
In his work, On the Apparel of Women, Tertullian (who lived 155-220 AD) quite passionately tells women: “...banish quite away from your ‘free’ head all this slavery of ornamentation. In vain do you labor to seem adorned: in vain do you call in the aid of all the most skillful manufacturers of false hair. God bids you ‘be veiled.’ I believe for fear the heads of some should be seen!” (book II, ch. 7, Of Elaborate Dressing). In his tract, On the Veiling of Virgins, Tertullian also argues that the veiling applies to all women, married or not, after the woman hits puberty.
The Didascalia Apostolorum, an early Christian legal treatise (~230 AD) asks women: “when thou walkest in the street, cover thy head with thy robe, that by reason of thy veil thy great beauty may be hidden” (ch. 3). Here, the Didascalia seems to be understanding the veiling in everyday life, not just in church.
In his Paedagogus (written about 198 AD), Clement of Alexandria writes: “Woman and man are to go to church decently attired… Let the woman observe this, further. Let her be entirely covered, unless she happen to be at home. For that style of dress is grave, and protects from being gazed at. And she will never fall, who puts before her eyes modesty, and her shawl; nor will she invite another to fall into sin by uncovering her face. For this is the wish of the Word, since it is becoming for her to pray veiled” (book 3, ch. 11: “Going to Church”). Here, Clement very clearly understands the veiling to be while praying during the church service.
There are plenty of other church fathers who had lots to say on the issue of the veiling, but I hope those whom I have given are sufficient to show that most of the fathers agreed the veiling should be practiced during church, even if there was disagreement as to the specifics.
But what about the rest of church history?
I jump quickly through the Middle Ages to the figure of Thomas Aquinas, though there is good evidence that women were veiling between the early church fathers and his times. In Aquinas’s commentary on Corinthians, he writes extensively about this passage. He comments: “We must consider why man should not veil his head, but the woman. …a veil put on the head designates the power of another over the head of a person existing in the order of nature. Therefore, the man existing under God should not have a covering over his head to show that he is immediately subject to God; but the woman should wear a covering to show that besides God she is naturally subject to another” (608).
Likewise, Martin Luther wrote that, “the wife should put on a veil, just as a pious wife is duty-bound to help bear her husband’s accident, illness, and misfortune on account of the evil flesh” (pg. 31).
And yes, even our good friend John Calvin believed women should wear the veiling, where he wrote about it in depth in his commentary on Corinthians: “[speaking of vs. 10] In the term power [“authority” in the ESV],... [Paul] means a token by which she declares herself to be under the power of her husband; and it is a covering, whether it be a robe, or a veil, or any other kind of covering” (298-299). Calvin goes on to say that the veiling is not exclusively to be practiced by married women but virgins also, “for Paul looks beyond this–to God’s eternal law, which has made the female sex subject to the authority of men” (299).
So what happened? How did such a common practice of the church disappear so quickly? What changed between the Catholic 1917 Code of Canon Law, which states, “Men, in a church or outside a church, while they are assisting at sacred rites, shall be bareheaded… women, however, shall have a covered head and be modestly dressed, especially when they approach the table of the Lord” (Canon 1262) and the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which did not address the head covering (and thus did away with the previous canon)?
Allow me to put before you one hypothesis: feminism. In the traditional Christian world where there has been so long a historical divide between men and women and their respective roles, a practical symbol of such difference was not a difficult idea. Why challenge such a passage in the Bible if there is a basic cultural and Christian understanding: men are not women and women are not men. Their standing before God in the Sunday service reflected such a perspective.
However, come the twentieth century, replete with its bra burners and abortion activists, feminism careened off the rails of the original desire for a woman’s right to vote and began to question the very difference between men and women. If there is no metaphysical or ontological difference, then why should there be a symbol in church of the difference?
“In the traditional Christian world where there has been so long a historical divide between men and women and their respective roles, a practical symbol of such difference was not a difficult idea.”
Betty Friedan, a pioneer of the modern feminist movement, co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966, which passed a resolution only two years after its founding in 1968 demanding that women stop wearing head coverings in churches, due to the covering being a “symbol of subjection”:
WHEREAS, the wearing of a head covering by women at religious services is a custom in many churches and whereas it is a symbol of subjection within these churches, NOW recommends that all chapters undertake an effort to have all women participate in a ‘national unveiling’ by sending their head coverings to the task force chairman immediately. At the Spring meeting of the Task force on Women in Religion, these veils will then publicly be burned to protest the second class status of women in all churches (pg. 277).
According to an article from Catholic News Service, in 1969, fifteen members of the NOW approached communion bareheaded at St. John de Nepomuc church, and some of the women placed hats they had carried into church on the communion rail in protest: “A woman in the group explained that St. John de Nepomuc Church had been chosen for the first of such protests because in the past the pastor, Father Joseph Wamser, had in his homily asked women to wear hats at Mass” (pg. 6).
Those fifteen women chose that church deliberately, since the pastor was one who asked the women of the congregation to cover their heads. Such a context indicates that at the time, there were many other pastors who did not ask women to cover their heads. So while I point to this very specific story as an example of feminism explicitly contributing to the veiling being disregarded, it is clear that the practice of veiling was already beginning to be abandoned by the culture at large. Fifteen women may have known exactly what they were representing when they left their hats at the communion altar in 1969, but a mere fifty years later, most women today know little to nothing of the scriptural command given in 1 Corinthians 11.
However, whether we are aware of it or not, there are still subtle ways we recognize the principles of 1 Corinthians 11. Ever wonder why there are so many fancy hats at the royal weddings in the UK? Ever wonder why men traditionally don’t wear hats in church or take off their hats to pray? Ever wonder why nuns have wimples? It’s all because of 1 Corinthians 11!
Even though many Christians today recognize that food or holy days are a matter of personal conscience (Romans 14), there are laws that Christians know we ought to follow, such as sexual purity (Hebrews 13:4), obedience to authorities (Romans 13:1) and abstaining from blood (Acts 15:29). Not that obedience to such laws justify us before God, but rather, God calls us to obey him as an act of faithfulness and love (John 15:10). Culture is not our authority, God is (Acts 4:19, 5:29; Gal. 1:10).
For some, the head covering is simply a cultural practice that Paul instructed the Corinthians to keep over 2,000 years ago, but for most of church history and yes, to many global Christians even today, the head covering is an act of biblical obedience, even though when it comes to the specifics, churches have chosen to apply it in a variety of ways. Wherever you fall on the present issue, my hope is that this two-part article has given you a greater love for the Word of God and a deeper appreciation for the church over the last 2,000 years. Soli Deo gloria.