Saturday, November 8, 2014

Articles from Jeremy Gardiner of Head Covering Movement on the Cultural View and the Long Hair View

Jeremy Gardiner who hosts the website The Headcovering Movement, has had a couple of very interesting articles up recently.

1) ADVOCATES OF THE CULTURE VIEW MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER:

In How Homosexual Advocates Use Head Covering to Support Their Position he shows that the interpretation that the head covering was only the cultural symbol of Paul's day has been used by Gay Rights advocates to support their position that anti-homosexual views are also merely cultural, based on the Greek terms that are found in both passages. What Paul called natural is reduced by the cultural interpretation to something arbitrary and not natural at all, so that where that same Greek word condemns homosexuality as not natural the cultural view can be used to argue that it's also just a cultural preference to see it that way. This should be a heads-up for those who hold the cultural interpretation of the head covering.

2) ADVOCATES OF THE LONG HAIR VIEW MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER:

In the second article,Where Did the Long Hair View Come From? he first shows that a study traced it to the mid twentieth century, but then finds further information that shows it was advocated in the late nineteenth century as well, although it didn't become popular until the twentieth century. In my experience it now seems to be the most popular interpretation, held even by women who are in churches where officially the cultural interpretation is held. I'm very glad to see that he's done this research as I had also wondered where it began. As I recall, Calvin also referred to this interpretation to dismiss it, which at least shows it had been proposed in his day as well. In any case the fact that this view is so very recent and overthrows centuries of unified understanding by the churches that a cloth covering was required ought to be seriously considered as evidence against it.