Last Monday, my husband and I had lunch with one of “our Sunday School girls”—although she is now a grown woman.
We knew her years ago, long before we moved away. She is smart, articulate and even in 5th grade asked lots of great questions. Our church hosted "summer theologians" and we had a group for 3-5 grade. Our young lady still remembers that summer.
Somewhere along the way, the little girl we remembered became a thoughtful young Christian woman willing to open her Bible, study a difficult passage, and consider whether it required something of her.
After studying 1 Corinthians 11, she began wearing a head covering for public prayer and worship.
I cannot express how encouraging that was to hear.
They Are Not Simply Inheriting the Practice
In most evangelical churches today, young women are not growing up surrounded by covered mothers and grandmothers. They usually have no denominational tradition telling them to cover. Their pastors may never mention the subject, and their friends may never have considered it.
Many first encounter 1 Corinthians 11 as a passage Christians explain away—or quietly pass over.
Yet some young women are stopping to ask:
What if Paul meant what he wrote?
They are reading the passage for themselves. They are examining Paul’s appeals to headship, creation order, glory, nature, apostolic practice, and the angels. They are discovering that Paul does not base his argument upon a passing fashion in Corinth alone.
These women are not merely preserving a custom handed down to them. In many cases, they are recovering something their churches and families had already set aside.
That makes their interest especially significant.
Young Women Are Willing to Reconsider What Seems Settled
Every generation inherits assumptions from the one before it.
For many women of my generation, head covering had already been placed in the category of things Christians no longer do. We may have been told that the covering was merely cultural, that a woman’s hair was the only covering Paul intended, or that the instruction applied only to women living in ancient Corinth.
Once an interpretation becomes familiar, it can begin to feel unquestionably biblical—even when we have never examined it closely.
Some younger women seem remarkably willing to reopen those questions. They are not automatically persuaded by the phrase “That was cultural.” They want to know where the passage itself says so.
They have access to sermons, articles, historical sources, old commentaries, and conversations with Christian women from many traditions. That access brings dangers, including unreliable teaching and extreme applications. But it also allows them to discover that Christian head covering is neither a new internet trend nor a peculiar practice invented by a tiny modern sect.
For most of church history, Christian women read 1 Corinthians 11 as requiring an actual covering.
Young women are encountering that history and asking whether the modern church may have dismissed the passage too quickly.
Their Obedience Is Visible
Head covering requires a particular kind of courage because it can be seen.
A woman can reconsider many theological questions without anyone noticing. A covering, however, sits upon her head. It may prompt questions. It may make her the only covered woman in her congregation. It may be misunderstood as legalism, cultural affectation, or membership in a religious group to which she does not belong.
A young woman who covers must therefore do more than reach an intellectual conclusion. She must decide whether she is willing to act upon it publicly.
That does not mean every young woman who studies the passage will reach the same conclusion. Nor does it mean a covered woman is more faithful than every uncovered woman around her.
It does mean that when a woman becomes convinced that Scripture calls her to cover, following that conviction requires quiet, visible obedience.
The Practice Is Being Recovered, Not Merely Preserved
I find something deeply hopeful in seeing younger women consider head covering.
They are not returning to it because someone has forced them into an inherited dress code. They are not necessarily rejecting modern life or trying to recreate another century. Many are ordinary young women wearing ordinary contemporary clothing, participating fully in their churches, families, education, and work.
They simply believe that modernity does not possess the authority to erase an apostolic instruction.
Their coverings may take different forms: a hat, scarf, veil, beret, bandana, or wide headband. They may cover only during gathered worship or extend the practice to other occasions of public prayer. They may still be working through exactly how to apply the passage.
The important point is not that they all make identical choices. It is that they are taking the text seriously enough to ask what faithful obedience looks like.
Passing the Conversation Forward
Sitting across the table from a woman we once knew as a Sunday School girl reminded me that we do not always know which lessons, conversations, or examples God will use years later.
My husband and I did not persuade her to cover. She studied the passage and reached her own conclusion. That makes her decision more encouraging, not less.
Christian women who cover should make room for these younger women. We can explain why we cover, answer questions honestly, share resources, and discuss practical concerns. We should also resist burdening them with rules Scripture does not give.
They do not need us to prescribe one approved style, dictate how many inches of hair may show, or turn a symbol of biblical order into an elaborate measure of spirituality.
They need sound teaching, patient conversation, and the freedom to work out their convictions before God.
Perhaps head covering will not disappear because a new generation is willing to look again at a passage an older generation thought it had settled.
That is encouraging indeed.
Questions for Reflection
- Am I willing to examine a familiar interpretation again when Scripture raises questions about it?
- How can older Christian women encourage younger women without binding their consciences with extra-biblical rules?
- If I become convinced that Scripture requires something visible and unfamiliar, am I willing to obey?
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