Why: Chapel Veils

One thing that set Bishop Lawson's new organization apart early on was the wearing of hats by women as a part of their participation in service. This practice is based on 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul taught that women should cover their heads (and that men should not cover theirs) when they pray or prophesy.

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.

Women Preachers: Future Projections

Someone once asked Bishop Lawson if prophetesses still existed. He answered,

I do not know of any. However, the Bible says, "Your sons and daughters shall prophesy." (Defense, p. 441)

One would not expect such an open-ended answer from a man who was so clearly opposed to women in positions of ecclesiastical authority. Yet this response reveals much about Lawson. His ability to envision a hypothetical modern-day prophetess while he condemned the female pastors he could see is paradoxical, to say the least. However, Lawson's sense of divine economy (how God handles things), ecclesiastical economy (how he felt the church should best be run,) and his insight concerning the issues of the Body of Christ at large are what formed his understanding of what ministry was and how women could operate in the church.

Never once did Bishop Lawson fail to remind his parishioners of the scriptures that limit women's authority in the church. He never ordained women as ministers (though there were several women he oversaw who might have qualified). When women presented their visions and callings to him, he licensed those whom he felt were sincere, trustworthy, mature, and of sufficient spiritual depth, but he did not turn churches over to them or install them into ecclesiastical offices (bishops, deacons). He encouraged and laid hands of blessing on the women, but never intimated that he would ever support, personally, hermeneutically, or otherwise, female pastoral ambitions.

However, as far as spiritual giftings go, Lawson was open God's sovereignty in choosing and using whom He will. Even though he preached that female pastors and bishops would be "lost unless they repent on their dying beds, because they have done things that God did not give them authority to do," he in the same sentence declares, "Yes, women can preach and get people saved" (Defense, p. 287). In other words, as long as women did not usurp authority over men, they could be used in myriad ways to the glory of God and the benefit of the church.

To give another example, in the article "Divine Healing" (1960), Lawson wrote that "gifts of healing are in God's hand and he gives to male and female as He wishes. No woman, however, should anoint with oil ... [or lay] hands on the sick anywhere except in her home" (Defense, p. 415; nor did Lawson condone individuals anointing themselves with oil, though he allowed that any saint could be called on for prayer). Paul's prohibitions for women, he reckoned, were not limits but parameters.

A careful scholar of scripture will note that Paul is speaking of himself when he writes, "But I suffer not a woman to teach" (1 Tim. 2:12). He appeals to the law in 1 Cor. 14:34 when he writes, "It is not permitted to them to speak." Not once from Paul, or from scripture in general, is there a direct and final 'thus saith the Lord' limiting women. To the contrary, scripture has shown that, in absence of a male, women were able to execute a variety of family, social, and religious roles with some success. Though the Bible unquestionably favors male headship, it is safe to say that the patriarchal fabric of the scriptural testimony is decorated here and there with precious stones, tried stones: women.

Not only does scripture present us with both the pattern and the exception, but rabbinical Judaism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, early Protestantism, and American revivalism all have examples of women who were exceptional in their ability to fill a void in the story of human spirituality and to sustain the support and interest of men, whether as Doctors of the Church or rebbes or, yes, Pentecostal pastors.

We have already established the fact, too, that Lawson came into Pentecost at a time when women Pentecostal preachers were common. Even though he didn't endorse the practice as scriptural, he did acknowledge it. And even though he didn't permit it in his organization, it has already been mentioned that the birth and growth of churches depended largely on the spiritual efforts of women. So Lawson, true to his intention (Defense, p. 282) was like Paul: he himself didn't suffer a woman to preach, but he also knew many Priscillas and Phoebes and could hypothesize God using women in amazing ways outside of a sacerdotal calling.

Outside of a few conservative Pentecostal organizations, the question of women in ministry has found most Pentecostal, neo-Pentecostal (e.g., AME, FGBC), and charismatic organizations affirming the right of women to preach and lead congregations. Even in conservative organizations, like Way of the Cross Church of Christ, women that come ordained are recognized as such during their stay with the organization. The Church of God in Christ does not ordain women, but missionaries who start or lead congregations have gained substantial recognition as pastors or "shepherd mothers" or some parts of the United States. The influence of Bishops Lawson and Mason cannot be underestimated: The influence they were able to exert on the Pentecostal movement in respect to church polity during the first half of the 20th century still informs 21st century Black America's foreseeable religious future.

It is therefore a matter of of no little importance that organizations like International Bible Way, Free Gospel, and Scripture Cathedral have begun to endorse (license and/or ordain) female ministers. The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ has become a refuge for those classical Pentecostals that long for the comfort to continue the holiness praxis that Pentecostalism inherited in its beginning: conservative, but also fairly flexible, as classical Pentecostal organizations go. Lawson's vision for his Pentecostal organization included room for both the folksy and the urbane, the rustic and the refined.

Unfortunately, today those two sides of Pentecost seem to be in competition with each other. The question becomes, "Will I be old-fashioned or up-to-date, traditional or progressive? will I stay true to the charted path or find new scriptural solutions to the problems of the day?" In general, those leaders who most want to identify with and show loyalty their respective founders tend to be traditional to a degree that they become fixated on a few salient doctrinal points and rigid in their stance. For instance, while Bishop Lawson apparently knew of and tolerated "Mother [Mary] Wilson," Bishop S.E. Williams' mother, running "a revival for him once a year" at Bible Way Temple in Washington, D.C. (Defense, p. 275), but the movement against women preachers in the 1990s by Bishop W.L. Bonner and the apostles indicated anything but toleration of women attempting to execute rhetorical techniques most readily identifiable with male preachers, drawing on some of Lawson's more incendiary (and thus more memorable) indictments against women preachers (e.g., Defense, p. 288) rather than on his catechismal teaching of the preacher as a sacerdotal functionary.

One of the sad side effects of this situation is that many women, potential spiritual matriarchs with strong speaking ministries, are often discouraged from "preaching," with the reasoning following a variety of paths, even when these women have no intention on pursuing a pastoral ministry. The sum effect of this discouragement is that many women expect little of themselves and become lukewarm, and therefore congregations entire become lukewarm, including the men. As Bishop Lawson's own life shows us, spiritual women can turn spiritual apathy into interest or even enthusiasm in the lives of the men they encounter.

Also, the history of the church shows us that many (if not most) churches were founded by women. Unlike non-clergy working men, who were generally the breadwinners, lay women and missionaries had ample time and opportunity to evangelize, disciple new converts, and nurture young ministries. Past articles in this series demonstrate how women were able to augment the work of pastors, or even serve as substitutes when male clergy were not available. Therefore, a categorical disallowance of women as ministers could conceivably spell the stagnation for an organization that has experienced a lack of male ministers throughout its history. It is not our opinion that the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ should follow the model of any other organization, but that there was sufficient room for women in ministry under the missionary model that was enacted long ago. However, you must have a missionary society on spiritual fire, not on doctrinal ice.

All that notwithstanding, Bishop Lawson's conservation of the pastor as a patriarchal community figure has proved prophetic. Many parishioners come to see their church as an extended family, with the pastor and his wife being more than preacher and first lady, but father and mother raising spiritual sons and daughters. The black community in the U.S. has not yet recovered the sense of familial stability that it knew in generations past, so the pastor's role as the father-figure will not cease to be valuable in the foreseeable future. An organization with a spiritual stake in male ministers can thus be seen as an organization committed to strengthening the family wherever it sets up shop. Perhaps Bishop Lawson saw this day when he preached on so many of the social ills of his time.

With Bishop Bonner being the last (active) of the great Lawsonites, the future of the Lawson's legacy, the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, hangs in the balance. In allowing his late daughter to address the international planning session, and in having installation services for his 12-member mother board in Detroit, Bonner has shown some of the same lenient economy that Lawson did: endorsing women's gifting, but rejecting women's ordination. The question is this: Will the Lawsonite praxis concerning women in ministry be retained (and possibly expanded), or will it be done away with altogether with as the organization transitions in the near future? If retained and expanded, there will be organizational growth and emulation by other likeminded organizations. If done away with in favor of some other church's model, then there will likely be controversy, schism, and parishioner migration to and from other organizations, all of which will lead to the compromise of the organization's original platform.

In any event, COOLJC is just one segment of the literal church of our Lord Jesus Christ. While we ponder the issues of this now concluded series, the reality is that no one yet has had a premium on interpreting scripture for Pentecostals.