Lawson began his ministry in a time when men and women normally wore hats when they left home. Inside buildings, men showed respect by removing their hats, while women donned or doffed their hats according to context. Church services were traditionally times when men took off their hats. A good many established traditions, like Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and many Protestant groups, taught that women should have some sort of covering on their heads in church.
Refuge Temple being situated in Manhattan, it would have been easy for Lawson and the people who joined his movement to observe the veiling traditions of other Christian communities. Of the churches that practiced veiling, the Roman Catholic would have been by far the largest and most pronounced in New York City.
Veiling traditions from Europe included hats and cloth coverings. One covering in particular, the mantilla, found widespread usage in the Americas. Originally from Spain (and perhaps ultimately from the Middle East), the mantilla was a lace-trimmed, light-weight, often decorative headdress. It was used primarily for covering the head during worship, or even as a part of daily wear for the very religious or very traditional. The mantilla took many forms: it could be large or small; triangular, rectangular, or circular; and could cover just the top of the head or extend as far as the shoulders. Some women veiled themselves in lace scarves, wrapped loosely around the neck like a normal scarf and then pulled to conceal one's hair.
It is clear that, long before coming to New York, Lawson taught that women ought to cover their heads in church, be it a gathering for prayer or when in the church building itself. This was not a firm teaching in the Pentecostal movement, but the practice of women's headcovering has surfaced among several different Pentecostal groups. Moreover, precursors to Pentecostalism had also practiced women's headcovering, including segments of the Holiness movement, Methodism, and Anabaptist fellowships. Thus, the doctrine of women's headcovering was not an idiosyncrasy of Lawson's doctrine, but it did become characteristic of his movement.
Traditional Lawsonites women were hat-wearers. They did not feel that the head was truly covered with a veil. In some of the more traditional branches of the Lawsonite Apostolics, even little girls are expected to wear hats, not veils, in services. In Lawson's organization proper, chapel veils (also known as prayer scarves, prayer caps, prayer veils, or chaplets) are normally worn by girls as they come into their preteen years and are normally worn well into young adulthood (or beyond). Hats are associated with age, not altogether negatively; like reaching a marriageable age, young women are known to (avoid or) think carefully about hatwearing, finding the kind of hat that fits one's personality and compliments one's face.
The hat, with its sturdiness and fixed shape, becomes a symbol of maturity and authority, both socially and spiritually. Missionaries are supposed to wear hats, not veils, when in uniform; the same goes for the wives of ministers and deacons. Pastors' wives are presented with an assortment of hats at pastoral appreciation ceremonies; mothers of the church are blessed with hats for their birthdays. Moreover, even though early Pentecostals had strict rules about the plainness of hats (no feathers, no flowers), even in the Church of Lord Jesus Christ, in addition to their primary spiritual significance, hats have become (secondarily) fashion statements and (tertiarily) adumbrations of financial status.
That said, there was a less well known headcovering tradition in the African American community during Lawson's lifetime. Women of African descent practiced a variety of headcovering and hairwrapping practices that were only tangentially religious, if at all, but nonetheless widespread. The most pronounced one was probably the head kerchief (also known as a head scarf or head rag). It was common for tradition black Southern women to cover (or "tie up") their heads before going out. The practice, as the writer has read on it and observed it, seemed to center around modesty at times (mainly not showing the hair), but even then was optional, both in the home and abroad. (Read more about this tradition here.)
Lawson founded Refuge Temple near the beginning of the first wave of the Great Migration, when many women would have been bringing their Southern ways with them, including the head kerchief. Longtime Northerners abhorred the backward look of the kerchief, and it became both a bone of contention between them and the newcomers as well as a telltale sign of a Southerner just come up. The traditional headcovering would never thrive in Harlem, much less in a church like Lawson's. Author Cheryl Wills describes the Refuge Temple scene in her family memoirs Die Free:
Lawson's faithful members were not low-key rural folks... These were Southern-born, fast-paced city slickers, who had fled the oppressive South during the so-called Great Migration, and prided themselves on being one of Harlem's own. Many acted as though as they were born and bred New Yorkers, and the South no longer existed in their minds.(Die Free, 51)Kerchiefs just did not fit in a "big-time city church with fancy pews, polished floors, bright lights, and sparkling silver communion serviceware" (Die Free, 51). In fact, the head kercheif eventually became associated with the occult: voodoo, hoodoo, root, and conjure. Traditional headcoverings--head kerchiefs, turbans, bandanas, straw hats--were acceptable where traditional culture thrived (i.e., the South), but were too exotic for the North. For this reason, traditional headcoverings never found a formal integration into Lawson's (nor most other) holiness praxis.
Eventually, even hats went out of fashion as daily wear. Today, hatwearing is a matter of personal preference. Also, it is not convenient to carry around a hat solely to accommodate headcovering practices. Enter the chapel veil: conveniently portable; nonostentatious for prayer in public (think street ministry or workplace prayer); inexpensive and simple to make; and a way of celebrating and affirming the disciplines of prayer and practical holiness.
The chapel veil as worn by Lawsonite women is normally circular, made of embroidered tulle, with lace trimming sewn around it.
Chapel veils are not doilies, though a doily could certainly serve as a headcovering if needed. Technically, anything could be a headcovering, if it reasonably covers the head. In the 1980s, young women wore pillbox hats, which only really covered a small section of the head. Some organizations use the most minimal headcoverings. Some have even adopted the teaching that the hair is the covering, or that women ought not cover. In the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, there has been an abrogation of this teaching in some, particularly urban, areas. Admittedly, some Lawsonites organizations, like the Progressive Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, have never been extremely strict about this teaching. At any rate, chapel veils are a matter of religious discipline, not intended to suborn women in particular, but to instill a sense of decorum and obedience to scripture in the church at large.
This article will end with a little irony. The same scriptural passage that calls for women's headcovering also calls for men's uncovering. While men are expected to remove their hats indoors and during prayers, speeches, and special observances, there is little spiritual teaching about men not covering. Prayer outdoors may find men covered; graduation ceremonies indoors also finds men covered, sometimes even during prayer. After Bishop Smallwood Williams established the Bible Way Churches of Our Lord Jesus Christ, he adopted the biretta. In his old age, Bishop William L Bonner is known to wear a small skullcap in service, even while preaching (perhaps to guard against hypothermia). These small exceptions granted, rare would be the man caught preaching, teaching or praying with a hat on, indoors or out.
