SHOULD WOMEN BE REQUIRED TO WEAR HATS IN CHURCH?
Rev. Dr. Kathy Fuson Hurt
FBC, October 19, 2008
Scripture: I Thessalonians 1:1-10
Before they became stooped and slowed with age, my parents were accomplished jitterbug dancers. Given the culture in which they grew up, the decades between World Wars, this is not particularly surprising. For a time during their teenage years, the jitterbug was the hottest dance craze.
Yet the parents I knew who could entertain us wonderfully by dipping, kicking, and twirling around the living room floor are also committed Southern Baptists: they tithe scrupulously, seldom miss a Sunday service, volunteer their time for church tasks. My father is a church deacon, the highest position a layman can hold. And if you know nothing else about Southern Baptists, you are likely to know that in the Baptist world of the south, dancing is considered sinful, clearly prohibited by God’s Biblical words.
Jitterbugging Baptist parents are thus a spiritual oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, representing a stark discrepancy between belief and action, values consented to and values actually lived. One day I boldly remarked on this discrepancy after a particularly energetic round of jitterbugging: was it not wrong for my parents to dance, given what our church taught about dancing? Once they caught their breath, my parents replied, “We don’t always believe everything we hear in church.”
My mouth hung open at this heresy. Not only did my parents flout Baptist teaching by dancing, they also seemed to approve of applying reason to matters of belief, of testing church teaching instead of accepting it at face value, and of discarding beliefs that made no sense. While I know now that such practices are part of Baptist tradition, summed up in the commitment to soul freedom, I never heard such an idea among the fundamentalist Christians of my childhood, where church teaching was not open to question. In fact, my parents’ position sounds strikingly liberal, even progressive, something I noted years later in explaining how I had come to my own progressive spiritual path. I intended to compliment my parents with this observation of their liberal mindedness; unfortunately, I only succeeded in eliciting discomfort.
From the time I initially learned about the First Baptist Church of Granville up to the present, I have consistently heard us described by persons within and outside the congregation as diverse. We are a diverse group. Diversity, in fact, may be the one thread that holds us together. Diverse in faith perspective is what I believe is usually meant by this observation about us: our church includes traditional Christians, progressive Christians, people who are explicit about being non-Christian, atheists, recovering Catholics, recovering fundamentalists, pagans, Unitarians, humanists, theists, practitioners of Wiccan, folks with Buddhist leanings, folks with a fondness for New Age ideas, spiritual eclectics who fall into several faith categories at once. We are not, unfortunately, ethnically diverse, still a mirror of the community in which our church stands-- though in the time I have been your pastor all but one new church member has lived outside Granville, so we are gradually becoming less a reflection of this particular community. We have not been very diverse socioeconomically, having been primarily an academic congregation almost since our founding—but this characteristic, too, is increasingly in transition, as more and more members come from varied backgrounds. We do not seem to be particularly diverse politically (unless those who are more Republican in their views are keeping such a fact a secret).
But the theological diversity, the diversity of faith perspectives: that is an aspect of our diversity that is everywhere in evidence all the time, alternately a cause for delight, for amazement, for consternation, for frustration, for anger, for despair. Seldom do I see any sort of church gathering unfold where our diversity is not only in plain view but is also being remarked upon. Some of you believe it is what holds us together; others of you worry that it is what will ultimately break us into pieces. I believe our diversity is both our greatest strength, our most wonderful gift—and our greatest challenge, our greatest danger. Shadows tend to be deepest where the light shines brightest.
The history of religions, from one vantage point, is a history moving towards an ever-increasing degree of uniformity. Repeatedly, varied spiritual paths and perspectives are consolidated, blended, superimposed, moving always from many to fewer to one. Sometimes this merging of religions came about peacefully, a natural result of cultural processes or simply recognition that the correspondences between two religious perspectives were more compelling than the differences. More often, sadly, religions have been consolidated through force, when politics and power decreed that there was only room for one belief system in a society or a denomination or a church (or, as our own congregation bitterly experienced, in a local Baptist association). With such a decision any differences between religions, or even within one larger religious grouping, become threatening; uniformity of belief and practice becomes the order of the day; and divergence from the single belief system is grounds for punishment, disfellowshipping, sometimes death. “One way” becomes the mantra: one way of being, one way of believing, one way to God.
Such was the issue when Paul wrote the first of all the New Testament books to be composed, his first letter to the church in Thessalonica. Church members were struggling with persecution, as early Christians often did—but the persecution that was taking the greatest toll was that coming from within the congregation itself in the form of Jewish-Gentile conflict. Who were the real Christians in the church, those who came by way of Judaism, or those who had never been part of the Jewish tradition? Was it even possible to be both Jewish and Christian, or must a choice be made between the two?
And while it might seem that such struggles would never unfold in an open and inclusive congregations such as ours, I tell you today that they are very much alive in our church, coming in the form of questions about our church identity, concerns about how “Christian” a church we are, or whether we even can justifiably claim such a definition for ourselves. Sadly, even a kind of persecution can accompany such exchanges—not the physical cruelties that Paul saw in the Thessalonian church, but verbal, social, and political kinds of persecution, veiled threats to become an exclusionary church, ultimatums that warn of quitting if we become “that” kind of church, whatever “that” kind of church may be. One person describes what he or she wishes our values might be, and another person responds with the fear that “it sounds like there would be no room for a person like me in the church you’re seeking.” Some members believe that each worship service, each Sunday school lesson, should include talk of Jesus and Bible readings in order for us to be an authentic Christian community; others associate the constant mention of Jesus and the Bible with the sorts of conservative churches they want to leave behind. Some claim to be Christian means to talk about certain subjects more than others; some counter that being Christian comes from a lifestyle that reflects certain values. And as these conversations unfold, the anxiety level in the room rises, for it seems that only one perspective can prevail, so contradictory are the views being expressed. Our choices appear equally unappealing: either become a “one way” church in order to resolve the tensions and develop a clear identity, or allow the multiple perspectives to remain in force and end up tiptoeing around any substantive discussion of faith in order to avoid offending anybody.
Paul writes his letter to the Thessalonian congregation in the form of a paranesis, a rhetorical style that involves encouragement and reminding the audience of what it already knows. He urges church members to recall their own experience of hearing the Christian message, the hope it brought them, the changed life it challenged them to take on. No one escapes his criticism for being intolerant of others, as he reminds them of what it felt like to be the one on the other end, subjected to that intolerance for not having the “right” beliefs as traditional Jews or as Gentiles. Just as everyone is welcome to come into the Christian church, everyone is also welcome to stay in the church, with all their differences and idiosyncrasies intact. A Christian church in Paul’s time will necessarily include both Jews and Gentiles—and nobody gets to claim having the one right way to God.
Baptists at their best have tried to live out Paul’s inclusive teaching, though we have also at times been drawn into the “one way” religious movements. Even when threatened by death, our Baptist ancestors refused to embrace a “one way” system of faith, for they had latched onto a fundamental, rock-solid truth that no dogma could erase: our Baptist forebears saw a world alive with freedom and diversity, multi-faceted, plural, a symphony rather than a monotone, a rich chorus of people and ways of being and paths that gave God joy because it mirrored the freedom and variety that characterized Divine Being itself. God gifts us with soul freedom and the competence to discern truth and develop a meaningful relationship with the Holy. With that freedom necessarily will come diversity, not uniformity—and also a high degree of chaos. In the spiritual parade of churches we Baptists can readily be spotted as the rowdy and ragtag bunch, marching to a different drummer, teetering on the edge of anarchy. We win no awards for our precision, our straight lines, our flawless execution. But no one, no one, can surpass us for creativity, for complexity, for discovery, for possibility, for welcoming in the stranger, the one who has no home and fits nowhere else.
In my childhood Baptist church—a perfect example of a “one way” spiritual path, my dancing parents notwithstanding—success was measured by sameness. The greater the degree of uniformity in belief and practice, the better job the church was doing in its work. “One way” spirituality rates its success in terms of sameness. By contrast, a spirituality of diversity looks at success in terms of differences. The more diversity in our congregation, the more different lifestyles and theological perspectives and ethnic backgrounds that can be counted in the membership, the more successful, the more faithful to our values, our church can be judged to be.
“Should women be required to wear hats in church?” The question posed in the title of this sermon represented the crucial concern in one of the earliest discussions about diversity versus sameness in religious practice. Once traditions had decided that men and women might worship together, that gender diversity was desirable in a congregation, anxiety erupted over the consequences of the decision. The previously unique and authoritative position of men in the congregation seemed endangered by the introduction of women. So a compromise was reached: women could participate in worship life, be present at sacred rituals, but only if they were contained and controlled in some way. The method of control would be some sort of distinguishing dress, like a burka or a veil or a hat (and if the woman had no hat, she could place a handkerchief or Kleenex on her head).
And though hats and veils are no longer required, and burkas are even sometimes lifted, we still tend to want those controls—not literally, but symbolically—whenever we come face to face with the diversity in our congregation. Conversations implying that to be a “real” church or an authentically “Christian” church, or threats that seek to enforce a certain uniformity by leaving if we do this or don’t do that, say this or don’t say that, represent an effort to regain some degree of control by moving us away from diversity and in the direction of “one way” spirituality—and not surprisingly, anyone desiring a “one way” spirituality always assumes the one way will be identical to his or her way. I understand that longing for “one way.” Diversity is exhausting, frustrating, irritating. Crafting a vision and mission, creating a worship service, choosing a Sunday school curriculum, settling on an outreach project, even writing materials that would introduce our church to newcomers: all such work becomes infinitely more difficult in a diverse congregation. I often envy my pastoral colleagues who serve any kind of “one way” church for the ease of their jobs, the efficiency with which church work can get done when everybody thinks alike.
So here we are, a motley collection of religious progressives, our women not usually wearing hats (except today, when all were specifically invited to do so). Look around at those hats, at the variety and color and creativity: would you honestly prefer that everyone’s hat be identical? So much in our surrounding culture conspires to undermine our commitment to a spirituality of diversity, insisting that we would do well to stay the same, look the same, do the same, become a larger and more prosperous church by imitating, becoming the same, as our neighbors on the other corners of town. Though the odds are weighted against us, may we care enough to stay open, to listen when a different view from ours is espoused, to hear in it not threat but God’s amazing creativity. To fence the Spirit is to lose so much of life.
An old story tells of a rabbi who was revered by the people as a person of God. Not a day went by when a crowd of people wasn’t standing at his door seeking advice or healing or a blessing. And each time the rabbi spoke, the people would hang on his lips, drinking in his every word.
The audience included a disagreeable fellow who never missed a chance to contradict the rabbi. He would observe the rabbi’s weaknesses and make fun of his defects to the dismay of the disciples, who began to look on him as the devil incarnate.
One day the “devil” took ill and died. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Outwardly they looked appropriately solemn but in their hearts they were glad, for no longer would the rabbi’s inspiring talks be interrupted or his behavior criticized by this disrespectful heretic.
So the people were surprised to see the rabbi overcome with grief at the funeral. When asked by a disciple later if he was mourning over the eternal damnation of the dead man, the rabbi replied, “No, no. I believe our friend is now in heaven. No, it was for myself that I was grieving. That man was the only friend I had. Here I am now, surrounded by people who agree with me and revere me. He was the only one who challenged me. I fear that with him gone, I shall stop growing.” And as he said these words, the rabbi burst into tears. (from Anthony de Mello)
