Covering of the head in worship

Discussing rituals Vijaya Barathi shared how a church she was attending insisted on women covering their heads while another church she attended did not. This made for confusion on the minds of people.

In the Old Testament, shaving one’s head was always a sign of mourning. In Deuteronomy 21:12, when a woman is taken captive she will shave her head and mourn for a month and then after the period of mourning she could be taken as a wife by the captor.

In Jeremiah 16:6 it says that the dead would not be lamented and people would make themselves bald in mourning. So also in Ezekiel 27:31, people mourn for Tyre by making themselves bald.  In Isaiah 22:12 God calls for mourning and baldness because of the calamities God was bringing on the nation of Israel. So baldness became a synonym for sorrow.

Here when Paul says that if a woman does not cover her head she may as well shave her hair off. This is a statement many have not understood, but we in India have no difficulty in identifying with the mark of widowhood. If a woman did not recognise the authority of her husband over her she may as well take on the attire of a widow who is freed from her husband.

In this sense, covering of the head was a sign of marriage, and some of the women in Corinth were rebelling against it. Paul says that for good order they should continue to observe the same.

So should women cover their heads? If the discussion is about married women then obviously single women are excluded from this stipulation. However some churches have held that woman has to be under the authority of a man and if not the husband then the father – very much like Islam. Somehow I do not agree with this, and am convinced that this applies only to married women.

Further, if a culture has some other indication of marriage in their society, instead of covering the head, the symbol prevalent in their culture would be quite adequate. The issue was not whether to cover one’s head or not but whether to submit to one’s husband by wearing the symbol of his authority.