Why I Still Wear a Head Covering to Church

Me at 20

 Adventures in complementarianism

(TW for homophobia)

3 But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5 But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved. 6 For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head.

7 A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9 neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10 It is for this reason that a woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. … 

~1 Corinthians 11: 3-10 (This is just part of the section. He goes on for several verses more.)

I started wearing a head covering to church when I was a teenager, mostly because I was trying to make my faith my own. I had reached a point where I realized that my faith had to be separate from my parents', that it was time for me to take all I had learned growing up and sift it for myself, deciding what I believed and what I didn't.

This was the first of many steps that led me deeper and deeper into extremely conservative theology.

Really, I was just following the principles I had grown up with: We should take the Bible literally. The Bible is holistic and consistent, presenting a never-changing God, and giving instructions that are both clear and important to follow. There were some things held in mystery, such as the relationship between free will and predestination, but other things, like "being gay is bad," were obviously crystal-clear. 

So when I read an author suggesting that women should wear head coverings because the section in the Bible about it was stated pretty clearly, it seemed reasonable to me. After all, it wasn't a big deal to wear a head covering. So I grabbed one of my bandanas and began wearing it to church.

Over the next few years, I began to dive into theology more. I read my ESV Study Bible from cover to cover, absorbing the commentators' views of how the scripture should be interpreted. The more I read, the more I was convinced I was right about this particular issue. After all, seemingly-foundational taboos of the evangelical world, such as women being pastors or people being lesbians, were based on one or two isolated verses, which Paul's admonishment for women to cover their heads was a whole three-paragraph extended theological argument based on concepts of honor and dishonor, creation order, natural reason, authority structures, and even the confusing phrase "because of the angels".

I, for one, felt a mixture of smugness and concern. Smug, because I was being literally holier than thou, and concern, because if this was so important as to take up almost as much space as all the verses about homosexuality in the Bible combined, shouldn't we be obeying it rather than questioning it? Shouldn't this be one of those things that we just accepted as Biblical truth?

When Zach and I got married, we were both really fascinated by complementarianism (or "soft patriarchy"): the idea of authority and submission, overlaid on everything from marriage to theological exegesis. I wore my head covering with pride, the way I wore my wedding ring, feeling a happy sense of belonging to someone (my "spiritual head," as I called Zach at the time). I felt that all was right in the world. I knew my place in the hierarchy, and like most happy complementarian couples, we were happy because Zach is the chillest guy on the planet. Everything seemed right.

A couple years after that, I got my hands on a copy of a book I was very excited to read, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, edited by Wayne Grudem and John Piper, and even though I felt a twinge of unease that only two articles in the 23-chapter book were written by a woman (despite the male scholars insisting that women could be Bible scholars too), I eagerly flipped over the article about head coverings. 

The article, as I recall, was very thoroughly written. Wearing head coverings wasn't meant to be literal, the scholar insisted. There were Greek word studies. There were long treatises about the cultural climate of the time, what head coverings meant in that context, reasons that Paul might've brought up the creation story, ways to read the passage to interpret hair as being the covering, rather than requiring a covering… to me it seemed that the scholar was tying himself in knots trying to justify ignoring a command that, in the "plain reading" of Scripture, seemed incredibly straightforward.

I wasn't really able to articulate this at the time, but something inside me began to form cracks.

Why were scholars bending over backward to dismiss this part of the Bible, but insisted on a "plain reading" of passages that seemed to forbid, say, women from teaching?

What if all of this theology was not as unbiased as it claimed?

What if… and this was a big what if… we applied the same cultural context and deep wrestling— and, let's face it, a desire for a certain outcome— to all the ways that we wrestled with Scripture?

For a while, I doubled down. I grew more and more conservative. After all, if we interpreted some parts of scripture in a certain way, such as pulling disparate verses together to make theological arguments, why shouldn't we do that elsewhere? If Paul admonished women to cover their heads while praying, and elsewhere told all Christians to "pray without ceasing," didn't it logically follow that women should wear head coverings all the time? And while I was at it, why was I cool with Zach having long hair when it was very clear in this passage that long hair on men was an abomination? Was I conformed to the desires of the world, caring more about the approval of men rather than the approval of God? How was I supposed to take the scriptures literally when it seemed I could make them say literally anything?

The beliefs and conflicts and worries piled up on each other, holding tenuously together— until they didn't.

It's been quite a journey from there.

Ten years later, I find myself attending a church that I would've considered heretical for most of my life. It affirms and blesses LGBTQ+ people, in the congregation and in ministry; it has several women on staff and as of July, our main pastor will be a woman; it allows questions I never would've even thought to ask to be discussed openly; it allows for interpretations of Scripture to include even my own doubts and concerns. 

And still I wear my head covering. 

I have two hats I cycle through: a gray sort of beret thing, and a tan cap with patches and buttons on it. The people at choir tease me about it, and when I don't wear it, they jokingly ask, "Where's your hat?!"

The practical answer is that I prefer to wear a hat because it hides my helmet-hair from biking. 

But there's a spiritual reason, too. Multiple reasons, depending on the day. Sometimes I wear it in honor of the interpretation of those verses that I favor now: head coverings as a symbol of authority for women to preach and prophesy. But most days, I wear it to remind myself of where I've come from. I remind myself of the earnest teenager donning a Walmart bandana in hopes of drawing a little closer to God. I remind myself that I'm on a journey, and that none of my beliefs should be grasped too tightly, lest I find myself confining God to a box.

Maybe someday I'll give up covering my head when I worship. Who knows— I've given up much more than this. But in the meantime, my head covering stays.

Y'know, because of the angels.

Me at 34

~~~