April Cassidy runs a blog called “Peaceful Wife” where she writes encouragement to women on biblical womanhood. She’s also practices headcovering and shared her testimony with us here. I got an e-mail from April in August 2014 telling me that she had been picked up by a Christian literary agent . Shortly after I heard the great news that her book was going to be published through Kregel Publications. It’s almost a year later now, and her book “The Peaceful Wife” is about to release on January 27th.
Here’s the book description and cover:
What happens when a woman becomes the wife God desires her to be?
In today’s world, women are often rewarded for having type A personalities. Driven, demanding women achieve higher positions, better salaries, and praise for their ambition. They learn to be confident, take-charge leaders who can handle anything on their own. Yet when it comes to their marriages, those same traits can backfire. After all, no one goes into marriage hoping for a promotion. What is a wife to do?
April Cassidy knows this struggle firsthand. She thought she was a great Christian wife and begged God to make her passive husband into a more loving, involved, godly leader. Instead, God opened her eyes to changes that she needed to make, such as laying down her desire for control and offering genuine, unconditional respect–not just love–to her husband. The Peaceful Wife focuses on Cassidy’s experience and its life-changing properties, providing a template for others to follow.
Cassidy’s conclusions may be as shocking to readers as they were to her, but she backs up her own tale with stories from her blog readers, and also includes recommendations for further study. She walks through baby steps on how to change, addressing questions such as:
What is respect?
How can you show respect?
How is being respectful different from being loving?
In the end, The Peaceful Wife is a powerful path to God’s design for women to live in full submission to Christ as Lord.
One of the things we’re really excited about is that on page 171 she gives positive attestation to head covering. Here’s what she says: Read more
Modesty according to one biblical lexicon is “the state of being appropriate for display”. 1) εὐσχημοσύνη, Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
This is propriety in clothing where our “unpresentable parts are [covered], which our more presentable parts do not require” (1 Cor 12:23-24). It is a command of Scripture to dress modestly (1 TIm 2:9-10). Sexual temptation is a real concern and while Jesus acknowledges that “it is necessary that temptations come” he warns “woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!” (Matt 18:7 ESV). So if by your dress you’re tempting people to lust, Jesus has strong words for you. Since we are all committed to dressing modestly we must ask is our hair an “unpresentable part” (1 Cor 12:23) and is that why women are to wear a covering over it (1 Cor 11:4-6)? I’d like to argue that Christian head covering is not commanded for modesty’s sake. Here are my reasons why: Read more
References
1.
↑ εὐσχημοσύνη, Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dr. Leslie McFall [1944-2015] was a British scholar who was formerly a lecturer in Hebrew and the Old Testament before becoming a full time researcher. Much of his research was done at Tyndale House, Cambridge, where he had been a Research Fellow. He is best known for his works on chronology, in which he further refined the groundbreaking work of Edwin Thiele. His refinements to Thiele’s chronology are accepted as the most satisfactory explanation of the chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period in Jack Finegan’s influential Handbook of Biblical Chronology, by virtue of which it may be said that he is one of the most significant living authorities, if not the most significant, in the field of the Biblical chronology for the kingdom period. 1) Bio taken from Creation Wiki.
Earlier this month Dr. McFall went home to be with the Lord. As Tyndale House announced in their bulletin:
[Leslie McFall] died at home and had been carrying out research the day before. Leslie was a long-term member of the Fellowship and friend of the House. After the death of his wife Barbara in 1991 he devoted himself undistractedly to scholarship and his purpose, in his own words, was ‘to restore faith in the Word of God’…He will be remembered as a doughty defender of the faith, general handyman at Tyndale House, and good friend to many characterized by an admirable work ethic and personal frugality.
Dr. McFall was a believer in the symbol of headcovering and had been working on a book for over a decade in which he had included a defense of this practice. On Dr. McFall’s website he had posted the contents of this unfinished book “Good Order in the Church” which he invited everyone to browse freely. The first version of this book appeared on the web in 2002 and it appears on his website in its unfinished state. I corresponded with him by e-mail in November 2014 to encourage him to complete his book and to seek publishing for it. Two weeks later he e-mailed me back and said that he had finalized it. He sent me the complete e-book and gave me permission to link to it.
I’m not sure if anyone other than me has the finalized e-book in their hands. Since I possess it I want to ensure it’s not lost so that his research and teaching is not forgotten. I will include a link to the full version below. The most relevant section to the readers of this site will start at page 181 which is titled “Surely You Are Not Asking Women To Go Back To Covering Their Heads In Church, Are You?” Here is a snippet from that section:
Should women have their heads covered when they are “praying or prophesying”? The succinct answer is, Yes. At the theological level, the one thing that most evangelical scholars are agreed on is that according to the teaching of the New Testament, women in New Testament times had a covering on their heads when they prayed and prophesied. What has happened in the pew, however, is that women have gone with the prevailing fashion of the secular world and the covering slowly but surely slipped out of sight. Nothing was done about it at the leadership level (because the church lost its authoritative voice in the early part of the twentieth century, if not earlier) and this gave the practice the green light. Today it is a rare sight indeed to find a covered head in the mainline denominations, despite the knowledge at the scholarly level that the practice does not conform to the apostolic tradition that Paul handed on to all the churches he founded.
The rest of the book has many other relevant sections as well on Complementarianism and 1 Corinthians 11. Though I personally don’t agree with everything he says on the topic, we do end up at the same conclusion that the headcovering is a symbol for the church today. For that, I am grateful. Thank you to Dr. McFall for your faithful service to the church.
Our family moved cross-country to Edmonton, Alberta and thus were in need of finding a good local church in our new city. Being a part of a local church is assumed throughout the New Testament and many commands cannot be fulfilled1) Believers cannot be disciplined unless they are actually committed to a local body (Matt 18:17, 1 Cor 5:2). Likewise, believers cannot submit to the elders who would be giving an account to God for you (Heb 13:17). Here’s a short video by John Macarthur on the importance of a local church.
unless believers are a part of one. Not being part of a local church is like being without a Bible–your growth will be severely stunted without it. So we visited a few churches but ultimately settled at Fellowship Baptist Church. The preaching and doctrine is solid, the fellowship amongst believers is great and there are many other positives as well. After a few months of attending we made the commitment to become a member of this congregation.
Fellowship Baptist isn’t a “head covering church”. That’s likely surprising to you since I founded the Head Covering Movement and have spent the last 6 years defending this practice. It’s obviously a very important topic to me. But the church’s view on this symbol was not even on our radar as far as issues to consider before joining. We assumed they weren’t practicing it before we ever stepped foot in the building (safe assumption today) and we were okay with that. There are too many issues that are far more important than head covering and those are the issues that we wanted to have unity on. What kind of issues am I talking about? Well this church preaches the gospel, clearly. They’re evangelistic. They love the Bible and know it well. The congregation loves one-another and is involved in each other’s lives. They will carry out church discipline if necessary. They’re complementarian in their view of gender and reformed in their soteriology2) Though not agreeing with everything listed, here is a brief description of reformed theology. For more depth you can watch this series by R.C. Sproul.
(two important distinctives for us). So for us the positives significantly outweighed the negatives. We don’t need to be in a head covering church: we just need the freedom to act on our conviction to practice it. This church allows freedom of conscience on such issues which makes it a church where we can thrive spiritually. While it would be nice if they agreed with our understanding, that shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for joining. We should never expect perfect agreement, but rather, we should seek unity on the most important issues. If we appreciate freedom of conscience to practice covering (even though its not their belief), how could we then turn around and say you must believe as I do on the same issue or we’re leaving/not joining? Read more
References
1.
↑ Believers cannot be disciplined unless they are actually committed to a local body (Matt 18:17, 1 Cor 5:2). Likewise, believers cannot submit to the elders who would be giving an account to God for you (Heb 13:17). Here’s a short video by John Macarthur on the importance of a local church.
2.
↑ Though not agreeing with everything listed, here is a brief description of reformed theology. For more depth you can watch this series by R.C. Sproul.
In 1 Corinthians 11, women are told that they are to pray or prophesy in the assembly with a head covering. However, later on in the letter Paul says that women are forbidden to speak and must stay silent in the same context. How do we harmonize these two passages?
First, let’s read the two verses in question:
But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head… Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? (1 Cor 11:5,13)
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church meeting. (1 Cor 14:33a-35 HCSB)
The first thing we must note is that both passages are timeless. Paul says that the practice of head covering and the silence of women in the assembly are held by all the churches (1 Cor 11:16, 1 Cor 14:33-34 HCSB) and both issues are grounded in proper biblical authority (1 Cor 11:3, 1 Cor 14:34). So both must be taken seriously and have application to the church today.
There are three main ways to harmonize these passages. We’ll go over each of these one by one and then we’ll give our take on which one we find most compelling. Read more
In this video we compare 1 Corinthians 11 with 1 Timothy 2 to show that both headcovering and male eldership are grounded in the creation order. We also show how Complementarians who hold to the cultural view of head covering inconsistently interpret these two Scriptures. We share our concern of how this undermines Biblical manhood and womanhood.
