‘Men need to be respected and women need to be loved’ is the gist of a line of thinking I came across in a Christian book. The author believed this to be the basic nature of men and women, at the level of the Making, innate. I thought about it for a long time and concluded I was not in agreement with it.
I remember being struck and intrigued by the remark of a friend that she needs to be ‘treasured and adored’, and I have noticed that many men seem to feel a strong need to be admired; but I think of those needs as part of the frailty of human beings which makes them vulnerable to manipulation and control by others.
For me, part of the attraction of the Plain life is an understanding that people of either gender and any age need to be both loved and respected if they are to flourish; but that love and respect should be unconditional, arising from the commitment and attitude of the one who loves and respects rather than a reward for being loveable and respectable. Of course, since we are all human, it helps things along if we make ourselves easy to love and respect!
In similar wise I think that trust, in the Plain Christian sense, is a gift not a reward.
Trust and respect are aspects of the package of unconditional love that is integral to the life of a Plain Christian. It is a gift, and it is not to be withdrawn. Even when people let me down badly and it has become necessary to put in place clear boundaries to protect myself from them, it is still a requirement of my calling to treat them with love, trust and respect, and also honesty. This is a balancing act – but so is any relationship.
The concept advanced in the Christian book (that men need respect and women need love) is inherent in the thinking of the majority of those who practice or favour head-covering in the Church.
The scriptural principles they have in mind are set out in this passage:
1 Corinthians 11:4-16.
This body of thought in the Church also supports the understanding that women will be wearing headcoverings as a sign of submission to men (usually they would say that a woman wears a headcovering as a sign of her submission to her husband, but as all the women and girls wear headcoverings it’s clearly a gender thing not a husband-wife thing, otherwise only married women would wear the headcovering).
The scriptural texts supporting the submission of women to men include Ephesians 5:15-33
If you read on over the chapter divide into Ephesians 6, the first few verses continue the argument, instructing children to obey their parents, and slaves to obey their masters:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. (Ephesians 6:5-8 NIV)
(The same instructions are given again in almost identical form in Colossians 3)
This whole section in Ephesians 5-6 opens with those words in Ephesians 5:15, ‘Be careful, then, how you live’. The word ‘careful’ I take to mean ‘mindful’ rather than ‘worried’ or ‘anxious’. It’s about leading a serious, diligent and sober life.
The thrust of Christian teaching was towards creating a revolution within society rather than the overthrow of society. In the pastoral epistles, the point is made repeatedly that if each individual person behaves with gentleness, kindness and humility, there will be no need to either make laws or get rid of them. Like going for a walk with a quiet, well-behaved, self-disciplined dog – it won’t matter if the dog’s on a leash or not, it won’t affect the way the dog walks alongside you. Laws and leashes are for beings who lack inner control.
The New Testament also offers us these verses about men and women:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21 – part of the passage we read already).
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28 NIV).
When I read the New Testament as a whole, paying attention to the implication of some of Jesus’ encounters with women, what I think I am seeing is a vision of human society in which men and women have equal status, their lives being taken up into the life of Christ, but having towards one another so humble and gentle an attitude that there is no need to overthrow the structures of society.
Paul’s letter to Philemon about Onesimus is a good example of this. There’s no need to overthrow slavery if the slave-owner is going to set the slave free by himself – and that’s the way Paul wants it to be done. He doesn’t want to smash and break the grasping, clutching fist, he wants the man to unclench it himself, and become open-handed.
So my understanding of headcovering and gender relationships is that the covering is a reminder to humility, gentleness and submission to Christ – not to men.
However, I do believe there is an issue of nature to be addressed about gender relationships: and I think that as we each have a unique masculine/feminine balance in our psychological and biological makeup, this issue is only good for a generalization and there will have to be exceptions where the people concerned are exceptional (there will always be the occasional woman who dreams of being a truck-driver and man whose soul is satisfied by embroidery – and why not?)
A.S.Neill, known for Summerhill School, when asked if he could detect any gender differences noticeable in his pupils, replied that he had observed when the children were taken camping that almost always the boys tended to go exploring, ranging far and wide, while the girls preferred to stay close to the tents.
In our hunter-gatherer past, I am told that in general the men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers. These different tasks require entirely different sets of characteristics.
I believe that men and women are very different, respond differently, are suited to different occupations – in general.
Generally speaking, I think women are better suited to the domestic and neighbourhood circles, and men to the public arena – what is sometimes described as cauldron magic and sword magic.
I find this is certainly so in myself. I intensely dislike confrontation, I am happy with a nurturing role, I do not like dealing with strangers, and I am unhappy if my work is not home-based.
Therefore it suits my nature to take the role that appears submissive – follow behind my husband into a public gathering and let him handle the management of the interface between our home and the outside world.
I am also very happy to teach and lead and preach in a women-only setting. It troubles me not at all if no men ever hear or consider what I have to say and what I think. If you can influence anybody you can influence everybody, and influencing women and children is good enough for me.
I do not think there should be women church leaders and bishops because I do not think there should be church leaders and bishops; but women in holy orders is fine with me – I think we are all in holy orders, I believe in the priesthood of all believers and every Christian person is set apart as holy unto the Lord. Those who have heard a calling to the priesthood feel a vocation which I respect, and I don’t mind what gender they are because the whole construct is for me an unnecessary apparatus added on. If I ran the world and the church, society would be a circle not a hierarchy, and the teachers would be those seen to be wise and the leaders would be those who people trusted and followed and it would be as simple as that. But I don’t; we have a hierarchical structure to work with because of its masculine inception, and therefore inevitably there will be women called into holy orders because that’s the only recognized official channel for the charismata with which they have been gifted.
So for myself, I have come out of ordained ministry, I prefer to lead and teach among women and children only, I find peace in covering my head in submission to Christ, and I aspire to a gentle and humble spirit that offers love, trust and respect on an unconditional basis to all people and including a proper respect for my own person and well-being.
Two small additional points:
Point 1) I note that, in 1 Corinthians 11:16, Paul argues for short hair on men, long hair and covered heads on women, on the basis of critical mass – the overwhelming common mind of the church (If anyone wants to be contentious about this, we have no other practice— nor do the churches of God v16). In verse 14 he asks: Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him? Well, obviously not if by ‘nature’ we mean ‘biology’: he must be talking about ‘the way things just are’ or ‘what we experience as normal’. Therefore this whole business of headcovering is not a root aspect of our relationship with God – it doesn’t arise at the level of the Making: it’s part of the patch and repair of our fallen-ness. This witnesses in my heart, at least. If I could be the person I ought to be in jeans and T-shirt with a shaved head, fine; but I can’t, my clothing makes a difference.
Point 2) In 1 Corinthians 11:16, Paul says, famously, women should cover their heads (in part) because of the angels. We have no idea what he meant. But there are two kinds of angel. There is the angel who is sent from God, a communication from the World of Light: and there is also the Arising Angel of a community, the corporate or group personality that forms from any human society. If I keep to the Quiet Way (which I am seeing will involve headcovering for me), not only does this rejoice the Kindred of the World of Light (one kind of angel) but it also keeps me recollected in the kind of behavior that avoids offending the Arising Angels of human society, and indeed influences the kind of Angel that will Arise.