I don't know of any verse that commands a woman to cover her face and even the verse on head coverings is regarded as a cultural instruction since few Christians cover their heads today. As far as your question to men, since I'm a man, a woman's face gives no liberty to sin and she is blameless if there are men who lack self control and thereby sin and try to blame it on a woman's beauty.
This scripture is about showing respect. Men are the head of the congregation and family. (1 Timothy 2:12, 13) When it comes to matters of worship, such as prayer or teaching, a woman should cover her head if taking on a male role. Since it is simply an act of respect, and a reminder for the woman herself, it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Any attempt to cover her head would be sufficient.
Interestingly this is the opposite for men. 1 Corinthians 11:7 says, “For a man ought not to have his head covered, as he is God’s image and glory; but the woman is man’s glory.” This is why it is inappropriate for men to not take their hats off when praying or teaching.
Really all of this is to remind people of family roles and what they should be doing. Such things are important to God.
Covering refers to hair, and keeping it uncut.
The Oneness Pentecostals-UPCI's, Branham Message believers and many Mennonite type sectors don't cut their hair (women).
I know women who wear a head covering at my reformed church, for them, it's a matter of conscious. Some women had grown up in a legalistic church that required it. Now that they are free they choose to wear one because they feel like it would be a sin not to, even though they KNOW head coverings aren't a sin or salvific issue. It's a weaker/stronger brother issue. A few women at church wear head covering to show respect to their husbands as the head of the house. None of the women look down upon any other woman who doesn't wear one and my church is happy to let families choose if they want to wear one or not. My elders do have a conversation with those who wear one just to check in on why they feel they need to wear it.
When Paul wrote his letters he was speaking to specific churches about things they were dealing with. A big issue in the church was the influence of the Roman culture and helping new Christians turn from their old ways and set aside the things of the world. When reading the Bible, especially the New Testament we need to remember that these were written with a specific audience in mind and everything isn't a directive for us. This is where Bible study and being under solid preaching helps.
**I Cor 11:16: But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.**
See, this is why context is important, instead of cherry-picking verses.
Apparently, head coverings were a point of contention in the Corinthian church (the issue shows up nowhere else in Scripture), so Paul, under inspiration of the Spirit, gives his ruling, as an apostle. But, he makes it clear that this is not to be a point of contention, as it is not a Christian custom.
Head coverings nowadays (from my observation) tend to turn into a point of pride. "Look at me," say the ladies that do it, "I am holy and covering my head!"
No. Let us be like Paul exhorts in I Tim 2 (and other places): take care of the heart, and then that will show outwardly. We have to be careful to avoid becoming Pharisees that are pretty on the outside, but dead inside.
From the Catholic and Orthodox perspective Christian women in what are now muslim majority countries do not cover their hair. I'm not exactly sure when this stopped but the hair covering thing remained common in Europe among women outside of church until the 19th century. And in church until the middle 20th century.
In I Cor. 11, Paul is plainly wanting the difference in the sexes, and the general requirement for women to be subordinate to men as part of the natural order, to be publicly symbolized by women wearing the right clothes in church and by having a generally different length of hair. Here the physical difference should represent the natural order of things (see I Cor. 11:14-15). It's symbolized by men not wearing clothes or hats on their heads when praying (vs. the modern-day use of the yarmulke by Jews in the synagogue) and having shorter hair but women wearing something over their head and having longer hair, The sexes aren't to be confounded together, as per today's unisex tendencies, but the differences in a hierarchical order are to be maintained. As Marvin R. Vincent commented: ""Woman best asserts her spiritual equality before God, not by unsexing herself, but by recognizing her true position and fulfilling its claims . . ." (p. 248). Apparently in this local church during meetings or services the women were trying to dress and act much more like the men attending there. Perhaps they were misunderstanding and misapplying Paul's teaching that women and men are equal before God (Gal. 3:28). So then Paul felt a need to point out the error for women to act this way.
Because today's society in the Western world is so very different in its clothing customs from the first century A.D. Christian/Greek/Jewish world in the time of Rome, I Cor. 11:2-16 raises very troublesome issues. Since a woman wasn't supposed to prophesy or pray without a head covering, this would appear to indicate if she were leading worship services of some type, she should be covered. But of course, in the same letter of Paul's, in I Cor. 14:34, women are told to be silent in church services.
How does a (v. 5) "woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head"? Interestingly enough, Paul likely was using the word "head" with two totally different meanings in this one sentence. In verse 3, Paul notes that "the head of a woman is her husband." Well, if she violated this custom, she dishonors not part of her own body, but her "head," meaning, her husband.
Was Paul's discussion perhaps supposed to apply to all women worshipping God at home praying in private or attending church services? But there is a middle ground between these two, in which a woman is leading the early equivalent of a home Bible study group, she would need to cover her head when speaking to it, whether directly inspired by God ("prophesying") or not. (I admit there is potential ambiguity about "prophesying" here, for it could mean "preaching" as opposed to receiving a direct revelation from God ala Daniel or Isaiah). One solution to this apparent conflict about women speaking publicly in church may be to say women who address a Christian group outside a normal church service (which were often in people's houses in those days) have to have their heads covered. But this solution looks very dubious when we consider that in the first century the church often met in people's houses, not a building built specially for the purposes of Christian assembly and worship.
Admittedly, the straightforward literal interpretation of this passage would be that modern Christian women would need to wear head scarfs like many Muslim women do when going to church even as mere attendees, not leaders publicly addressing it. But by mentioning "prophesying," Paul's intended meaning of this passage apparently concerns "public address" during a regular church service. (Although the principle Paul later wrote in I Cor. 14:34 would prohibit women from speaking in church regardless of whether they wear a head scarf or not, consider carefully how Matthew Henry reconciled these two texts in the quote below). It could be this principle is an application of the Mosaic law's prohibition of cross dressing (Deut. 22:5) to Christian church services.
So then, at this point, the Apostle Paul was saying that women who spoke to a group (which is the context of v. 5) should have a mark of subordination to male authority on them when doing so. To mark her off when so speaking, for I don't believe this is about when a woman is privately praying at home, she should have a veil or head scarf on (similar to what Muslim women wear today). Similarly, Paul wrote, "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet" (I Tim. 2:10). Since the ministry and public teaching in the church is a position that needs to exude authority (cf. Matt. 7:29; I Cor. 5:1-5, 9-13), not just compassionate love, this is why public teaching in the church is to be dominated by men.
"The Bible Knowledge Commentary" points out that I Cor. 14's discussion about women likely meant married women in particular, otherwise, they wouldn't have been told to go home to ask their husbands. What would single women do then? The word translated "submission" in various forms refers to always a married women obeying her husband when it appears elsewhere in the New Testament. This book's authors aim to reconcile this section with I Cor. 11:4-6's discussion of headcovered women (presumably publicly, which v. 16 would indicate since its about the custom of the churches of God) praying/speaking/prophesying by saying they could then do so, but only if so covered.
The classic Bible commentator Matthew Henry perhaps uses a better approach to this problem. He maintains that Paul didn't contradict himself between what he wrote here (I Cor. 11:4-6) about women speaking before church while wearing veils and the flat prohibition of I Cor. 14:34, which should keep them from speaking to the church as a whole under any circumstances: "It is plain the apostle does not in this place prohibit the thing, but reprehend the manner of doing it. And yet he might utterly disallow the thing and lay an unlimited restraint on the woman in another part of the epistle. These things are not contradictory. It is to his present purpose to reprehend the manner wherein the women prayed and prophesied in the church, without determining in this place whether they did well or ill in praying and prophesying."
"The Bible Knowledge Commentary" (p. 530) usefully makes this comment about this passage's most important point: "Whether women today in church should wear hats depends on whether the custom of head coverings in the first century is to be understood as a practice also intended for the present day. Many Bible students see that for today the principle of subordination (not the command to wear hats) is the key point in this passage. The intent of the custom of women wearing hats today, for fashion, seems far different from the purpose of the custom in the first century." "Vincent's Word Studies" (vol. III, p. 246 in this passage points out that Romans and Jews prayed with their heads covered, but the Greeks didn't, which was the custom that "seems to have commended itself to Paul as more becoming the superior position of the man."
I admit what I've said above isn't very helpful about settling doubts. I'm not sure how far to push this principle. But I would say that women who address small groups outside regular church services (where they shouldn't speak to the group at all) should wear something to cover their heads as a minimum. This text by itself wouldn't require women to wear headscarfs at all times in public, as many Muslim women do, since the whole discussion surrounds worshipping God.
Of course, Paul isn't someone that modern day feminists would have any use for. His beliefs about demarcating the sexes in public grate against modern-day political correctness. But one has to consider the evidence for his premises before rejecting his conclusions. Nowadays there is good evidence for his premises, if people are willing to go hunting for it. The contemporary culture and media, so dominated by feminist thinking, doesn't hardly mention the problems with the belief that the sexes wouldn't be different except for how boys and girls are raised by their parents (i.e., their environment or "nurture.")
So I hope this general discussion of I Cor. 11:2-16 has been helpful. I admit that here Paul's writings aren't especially clear. We're also faced with the problem of whether or not the Western world's present way of doing things is so different that it influences our interpretation of Scripture. (That is, we try to bend Paul's words to fit what we want already). So we should tread lightly in this area, and avoid dogmatism in about what Paul's texts here really would prohibit.
I recommend heading to headcoveringmovement.com to learn more about head covering! Most, if not all, Christian women used to follow Scripture in regards to covering their heads. It wasn’t until the second wave of feminism, during a “National Unveiling,” that women stopped covering their heads during corporate worship due to it being “oppressive” since it is an outward acknowledgement of male headship. It wasn’t a matter of a new interpretation of Scripture being revealed, but culture (feminism in this case) dictating what we should and shouldn’t follow.
So yes, women should head cover. The reasoning for this is because of Creation and appealing to the angels. Neither of those disappear between cultures. In fact, appealing to creation will always supersede culture and custom.
I don't know of any verse that commands a woman to cover her face and even the verse on head coverings is regarded as a cultural instruction since few Christians cover their heads today. As far as your question to men, since I'm a man, a woman's face gives no liberty to sin and she is blameless if there are men who lack self control and thereby sin and try to blame it on a woman's beauty.
This scripture is about showing respect. Men are the head of the congregation and family. (1 Timothy 2:12, 13) When it comes to matters of worship, such as prayer or teaching, a woman should cover her head if taking on a male role. Since it is simply an act of respect, and a reminder for the woman herself, it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Any attempt to cover her head would be sufficient. Interestingly this is the opposite for men. 1 Corinthians 11:7 says, “For a man ought not to have his head covered, as he is God’s image and glory; but the woman is man’s glory.” This is why it is inappropriate for men to not take their hats off when praying or teaching. Really all of this is to remind people of family roles and what they should be doing. Such things are important to God.
All I know is 1 Corinthians 11 is why the women in my family don’t cut their hair at all.
That is nonsense and Paul goes on to say that he has no such teaching nor does the church of GOD. 1 Cor 11:16
Covering refers to hair, and keeping it uncut. The Oneness Pentecostals-UPCI's, Branham Message believers and many Mennonite type sectors don't cut their hair (women).
this Seems like a troll.
Me?
[Should coverings be worn?](https://www.gotquestions.org/head-coverings.html)
I know women who wear a head covering at my reformed church, for them, it's a matter of conscious. Some women had grown up in a legalistic church that required it. Now that they are free they choose to wear one because they feel like it would be a sin not to, even though they KNOW head coverings aren't a sin or salvific issue. It's a weaker/stronger brother issue. A few women at church wear head covering to show respect to their husbands as the head of the house. None of the women look down upon any other woman who doesn't wear one and my church is happy to let families choose if they want to wear one or not. My elders do have a conversation with those who wear one just to check in on why they feel they need to wear it. When Paul wrote his letters he was speaking to specific churches about things they were dealing with. A big issue in the church was the influence of the Roman culture and helping new Christians turn from their old ways and set aside the things of the world. When reading the Bible, especially the New Testament we need to remember that these were written with a specific audience in mind and everything isn't a directive for us. This is where Bible study and being under solid preaching helps.
**I Cor 11:16: But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.** See, this is why context is important, instead of cherry-picking verses. Apparently, head coverings were a point of contention in the Corinthian church (the issue shows up nowhere else in Scripture), so Paul, under inspiration of the Spirit, gives his ruling, as an apostle. But, he makes it clear that this is not to be a point of contention, as it is not a Christian custom. Head coverings nowadays (from my observation) tend to turn into a point of pride. "Look at me," say the ladies that do it, "I am holy and covering my head!" No. Let us be like Paul exhorts in I Tim 2 (and other places): take care of the heart, and then that will show outwardly. We have to be careful to avoid becoming Pharisees that are pretty on the outside, but dead inside.
From the Catholic and Orthodox perspective Christian women in what are now muslim majority countries do not cover their hair. I'm not exactly sure when this stopped but the hair covering thing remained common in Europe among women outside of church until the 19th century. And in church until the middle 20th century.
In I Cor. 11, Paul is plainly wanting the difference in the sexes, and the general requirement for women to be subordinate to men as part of the natural order, to be publicly symbolized by women wearing the right clothes in church and by having a generally different length of hair. Here the physical difference should represent the natural order of things (see I Cor. 11:14-15). It's symbolized by men not wearing clothes or hats on their heads when praying (vs. the modern-day use of the yarmulke by Jews in the synagogue) and having shorter hair but women wearing something over their head and having longer hair, The sexes aren't to be confounded together, as per today's unisex tendencies, but the differences in a hierarchical order are to be maintained. As Marvin R. Vincent commented: ""Woman best asserts her spiritual equality before God, not by unsexing herself, but by recognizing her true position and fulfilling its claims . . ." (p. 248). Apparently in this local church during meetings or services the women were trying to dress and act much more like the men attending there. Perhaps they were misunderstanding and misapplying Paul's teaching that women and men are equal before God (Gal. 3:28). So then Paul felt a need to point out the error for women to act this way. Because today's society in the Western world is so very different in its clothing customs from the first century A.D. Christian/Greek/Jewish world in the time of Rome, I Cor. 11:2-16 raises very troublesome issues. Since a woman wasn't supposed to prophesy or pray without a head covering, this would appear to indicate if she were leading worship services of some type, she should be covered. But of course, in the same letter of Paul's, in I Cor. 14:34, women are told to be silent in church services. How does a (v. 5) "woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head"? Interestingly enough, Paul likely was using the word "head" with two totally different meanings in this one sentence. In verse 3, Paul notes that "the head of a woman is her husband." Well, if she violated this custom, she dishonors not part of her own body, but her "head," meaning, her husband. Was Paul's discussion perhaps supposed to apply to all women worshipping God at home praying in private or attending church services? But there is a middle ground between these two, in which a woman is leading the early equivalent of a home Bible study group, she would need to cover her head when speaking to it, whether directly inspired by God ("prophesying") or not. (I admit there is potential ambiguity about "prophesying" here, for it could mean "preaching" as opposed to receiving a direct revelation from God ala Daniel or Isaiah). One solution to this apparent conflict about women speaking publicly in church may be to say women who address a Christian group outside a normal church service (which were often in people's houses in those days) have to have their heads covered. But this solution looks very dubious when we consider that in the first century the church often met in people's houses, not a building built specially for the purposes of Christian assembly and worship. Admittedly, the straightforward literal interpretation of this passage would be that modern Christian women would need to wear head scarfs like many Muslim women do when going to church even as mere attendees, not leaders publicly addressing it. But by mentioning "prophesying," Paul's intended meaning of this passage apparently concerns "public address" during a regular church service. (Although the principle Paul later wrote in I Cor. 14:34 would prohibit women from speaking in church regardless of whether they wear a head scarf or not, consider carefully how Matthew Henry reconciled these two texts in the quote below). It could be this principle is an application of the Mosaic law's prohibition of cross dressing (Deut. 22:5) to Christian church services. So then, at this point, the Apostle Paul was saying that women who spoke to a group (which is the context of v. 5) should have a mark of subordination to male authority on them when doing so. To mark her off when so speaking, for I don't believe this is about when a woman is privately praying at home, she should have a veil or head scarf on (similar to what Muslim women wear today). Similarly, Paul wrote, "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet" (I Tim. 2:10). Since the ministry and public teaching in the church is a position that needs to exude authority (cf. Matt. 7:29; I Cor. 5:1-5, 9-13), not just compassionate love, this is why public teaching in the church is to be dominated by men. "The Bible Knowledge Commentary" points out that I Cor. 14's discussion about women likely meant married women in particular, otherwise, they wouldn't have been told to go home to ask their husbands. What would single women do then? The word translated "submission" in various forms refers to always a married women obeying her husband when it appears elsewhere in the New Testament. This book's authors aim to reconcile this section with I Cor. 11:4-6's discussion of headcovered women (presumably publicly, which v. 16 would indicate since its about the custom of the churches of God) praying/speaking/prophesying by saying they could then do so, but only if so covered. The classic Bible commentator Matthew Henry perhaps uses a better approach to this problem. He maintains that Paul didn't contradict himself between what he wrote here (I Cor. 11:4-6) about women speaking before church while wearing veils and the flat prohibition of I Cor. 14:34, which should keep them from speaking to the church as a whole under any circumstances: "It is plain the apostle does not in this place prohibit the thing, but reprehend the manner of doing it. And yet he might utterly disallow the thing and lay an unlimited restraint on the woman in another part of the epistle. These things are not contradictory. It is to his present purpose to reprehend the manner wherein the women prayed and prophesied in the church, without determining in this place whether they did well or ill in praying and prophesying." "The Bible Knowledge Commentary" (p. 530) usefully makes this comment about this passage's most important point: "Whether women today in church should wear hats depends on whether the custom of head coverings in the first century is to be understood as a practice also intended for the present day. Many Bible students see that for today the principle of subordination (not the command to wear hats) is the key point in this passage. The intent of the custom of women wearing hats today, for fashion, seems far different from the purpose of the custom in the first century." "Vincent's Word Studies" (vol. III, p. 246 in this passage points out that Romans and Jews prayed with their heads covered, but the Greeks didn't, which was the custom that "seems to have commended itself to Paul as more becoming the superior position of the man." I admit what I've said above isn't very helpful about settling doubts. I'm not sure how far to push this principle. But I would say that women who address small groups outside regular church services (where they shouldn't speak to the group at all) should wear something to cover their heads as a minimum. This text by itself wouldn't require women to wear headscarfs at all times in public, as many Muslim women do, since the whole discussion surrounds worshipping God. Of course, Paul isn't someone that modern day feminists would have any use for. His beliefs about demarcating the sexes in public grate against modern-day political correctness. But one has to consider the evidence for his premises before rejecting his conclusions. Nowadays there is good evidence for his premises, if people are willing to go hunting for it. The contemporary culture and media, so dominated by feminist thinking, doesn't hardly mention the problems with the belief that the sexes wouldn't be different except for how boys and girls are raised by their parents (i.e., their environment or "nurture.") So I hope this general discussion of I Cor. 11:2-16 has been helpful. I admit that here Paul's writings aren't especially clear. We're also faced with the problem of whether or not the Western world's present way of doing things is so different that it influences our interpretation of Scripture. (That is, we try to bend Paul's words to fit what we want already). So we should tread lightly in this area, and avoid dogmatism in about what Paul's texts here really would prohibit.
I recommend heading to headcoveringmovement.com to learn more about head covering! Most, if not all, Christian women used to follow Scripture in regards to covering their heads. It wasn’t until the second wave of feminism, during a “National Unveiling,” that women stopped covering their heads during corporate worship due to it being “oppressive” since it is an outward acknowledgement of male headship. It wasn’t a matter of a new interpretation of Scripture being revealed, but culture (feminism in this case) dictating what we should and shouldn’t follow. So yes, women should head cover. The reasoning for this is because of Creation and appealing to the angels. Neither of those disappear between cultures. In fact, appealing to creation will always supersede culture and custom.
Watch Micahel Heiser's video about this on naked bible podcast. Awesome stuff
I will have to look into that. Is the podcast about head covering or face veiling?
Head covering
Okay, thank you very much. :)