Patriarchy, 1Cor11, and head coverings

One of the significant cultural misadventures of our time has been to equate patriarchy with misogyny – the rule of men - with cruelty.

1Cor11 is a passage that appears to counter the anti-patriarchal thinking of our day, only to veer off into the rather odd context of head covering in worship and long hair, short hair, or no hair.

Can we extract anything useful from 1Cor 11, or is it best left undisturbed, like an untilled field, left fallow for a future age that can shed light on these strange verses?

Like any argument, there is little point debating the latter points until you’ve understood the fundamental starting point, the premise, of the argument. Paul constructs 1Cor11 exactly like an argument; there is a premise from which all his points about hair and head coverings follow.

The premise:

‘But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of any woman is man, and the head of Christ is God’ v 3

Have we relinquished the truth of this verse in the name of equality? Or in reaction and horror of misogyny: male dominance, cruelty, rape and all manner of abuse?

From Jane Eyre’s declaration ‘I am an independent woman!’ to Emily Pankhurst and the suffragettes, equal voting rights, the need to keep up pressure for equal pay for women, and ironically, the present-day fight by feminists to sharpen up the definition of a ‘woman’ so that female spaces (e.g. in sport) cannot be infiltrated by those born biologically male yet self-identify as women, the idea of patriarchy (submission to male rule) seems outdated and downright dangerous!

One of the offshoots of this cultural rebalancing has been, however, to undermine our confidence in the scriptures as the authoritative word of God. Have we, however, thrown the baby out with the bath water?

Let’s tackle ‘headship’ in verse 3 in reverse and ask whether ‘headship’ can be equated with oppressive rule.

‘…the head of Christ is God…’

If we explore the relationship between Christ and God in the gospels and other New Testament epistles, we see complete submission yet not a sniff of oppression.

‘Truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, only what He sees His Father do; for whatever He does, the Son does in likewise manner’ John 5v19

‘Let this attitude be in you that was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal to God but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, and coming in the likeness of man…and humbled Himself becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross’ Philip 2v5-8

Here we see equality and yet voluntary submission. Christ as equal to God, nevertheless submitted to the Father, ‘taking the form of a servant’.

When the disciples ask Jesus about prayer, He answered by saying ‘Our Father’…and then ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done’ so that they would enjoy the same relationship with God as He was showing them.

Investigating further, we might be troubled by the contradiction between Jesus’s relationship with His Father in heaven and our notions of freedom as pursued via the rise of the autonomous self or the cult of the individual, so:

‘For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He does…for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgement…’ John 5 v 20, 26,27

I am trying to find words to express the ‘scent’ of this relationship. There is a sweetness in it. A flow of love. Are we so fearful of losing control, of submission, of dethroning our supposed autonomy and individuality that we have lost the paradoxical nature of submission towards someone who loves us? In exalting the autonomous self, have we not impoverished ourselves of and lost freedom and peace? And authority. The paradoxes seem to pile up one on top of the other: submission resulting in freedom; submission resulting in authority; submission far from diminishing life turning out to be the source of life.

At the heart of the headship of God with Christ is love. The opposite of oppression.

The carry over to a man and Christ is the second crucial hinge upon which this argument swings.

‘The head of every man is Christ’

It is worth being reminded that Paul’s opening statement: ‘…I want you to know…’. Is critical to his argument. The truth concerning the headship of Christ over a man is not learnt naturally. To ‘know’ is far more than an intellectual revelation similar to, say, knowing what subtraction means and being able to do it. This is a deep spiritual truth that goes to the core of who we are as men, it requires spiritual revelation in our hearts not just our minds.

The core of this relationship between the man and Christ is love. Christ has loved me, loves me. Me! I may think I don’t deserve it, don’t nurture it, often neglect it…but the truth is He loves me. With the same outcomes for me as it was for Him: freedom, peace, authority and much else. As I submit to His rule over me, His rule of love, I end up doing what I see Him doing, saying what I hear Him saying, having His peace, His life, His authority.

Lastly, women.

‘The head of any woman is man’

But that head, the man, can only function well, if his head is Christ Himself, the woman is on the receiving end of all the benefits accrued by the man due to his relationship with Christ, and Christ, God. So the woman has love, peace, and freedom, and authority. Paul goes on to speak of women praying and prophesying…almost a dual carriageway to and from God. Speaking to God in prayer, and hearing from God resulting in prophecy.

There are faint memories of how deep this revelation ran in our society. In a crisis, e.g. the Titanic, it is the woman and children that are saved in preference to the men. A man gives up his seat for a woman on a train. Or holds the door open for a woman. These cultural traditions run deep and can, of course, become symbols of male dominance rather than acts of sacrificial love…but it is the latter that is intended.

Let’s tackle the head covering and hair aspects of this passage.

‘Every man praying or prophesying with His head covered dishonours his head and every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonours her head ’ v 4,5

Culturally, this is why it is almost instinctive still, for men to remove their caps or hats in church. But we must not be diverted from what we have learnt about Paul’s reference to headship. He is not talking about the brainbox on our shoulders, he is referring to the previous verse.

If a man prays with his head (Christ) covered i.e. putting a barrier somehow between Christ and God, he dishonours his head (i.e. Christ). No, when we pray as men, we need to recognise that our head (Christ) is equal to God and loved by Him. Whether or not putting on or removing hats, caps, or deciding on hair length accompanying or illustrating the spiritual truth Paul is trying to establish at Corinth in v3 is, perhaps, up to each individual.

It is so easy to throw out the baby with the bath water

The last point is important. The premise for Paul’s argument is, undoubtedly, verse 3, however verse 11 – which may appear to be contradictory or more in line with current cultural norms – is the measure of verse 3.

‘Nevertheless, neither is man independent of woman, nor woman of man, in the Lord. For as woman came from man, even so man also comes from woman; but all things are from God’

The cultural misadventure has been to confuse patriarchy with misogyny and patriarchy with inequality.

Christ is submissive to God and yet equal. The woman takes a man to be her head if Christ is his head. This is what Paul means by the apparently throwaway clause in v11 ‘in the Lord’. It is worth reminding ourselves to whom Paul is writing: Christian believers in Corinth. This is not applicable to those not in Christ…even if it might benefit wider society, who see it working.

Verse 11 certainly underlines our commonality and equality; we are not independent of each other across the gender divide, nor are we unequal. Nevertheless, neither of these important markers of human dignity, equality and gender identity, are undermined by submission as above.

This form of patriarchy, as modelled by Christ and God, is what we might call biblical patriarchy worked out through fathers, husbands, and elders. It is the opposite of misogyny, and fathers, husbands, and elders submitted to Christ and God’s love, detecting any such abuse from others would seek to correct it.

It is so easy to throw out the baby with the bath water. In an attempt to ensure that dreadful abuse is uprooted and prevented from recurring, it is no surprise that we might overreact.

What must not be ejected though, is the love of the truth and the bible states that ‘Your word is truth’ in reference to scripture.

Finally, I submit this to you as an honest reflection on these verses. I know I haven’t written a sequential commentary on each verse, or visited the Greek, and that further study is always required, but I hope that my small essay is thought-provoking, but not provocative for the sake of being provocative!

If you’ve read this from my website, you’ll have detected a long time ago that I carry XY chromosomes. I’m a bloke. And I know that I have been granted two ears and one mouth for a reason, so I’m very aware that as a man, I’m not ‘independent of woman’, and need to listen twice as hard as speaking.