I'll try to answer your long post now.

I did too.

Just that others chimed in after it was supposedly closed and I was caught off guard, couldn't resist the challenge I guess, though I think now it would have been much better if I had.

Do I really "lecture?" Any more than anybody else does here? I THINK I'm trying to give evidence to support my view, since it's been challenged so strenuously by others. But perhaps my tone is lecturing and I will consider that you might be right about that.

I won't let go of it, I'm strongly committed to it, until somebody possibly shows me where my error is. But I don't have to continue to argue it here. It will simply take prayer and determination to leave it alone when others challenge me on it.

Yes, I'm sorry for that burst of ill will, George. It was not aimed at you, however, but at those who have been giving hit and run answers to me, a line or two utterly dismissing my position even though I may have just finished giving a lengthy post arguing my case. I would agree that holding my peace even then would be the right thing to do, dying to self, bearing the cross, and I'm sorry I fail at that as often as I do.

It isn't about anybody's conviction, however, it's about the casual, almost flippant way it is thrown at me, as if they had some inside track on the meaning of the passage they could just toss out without a second thought although it took me a lot of prayer and study to understand it. HOWEVER, again, I shouldn't react angrily. Very bad of me.

So you wouldn't even give careful thought to anything a woman had to say I guess. So I shouldn't even have spent the time I did trying to understand this passage. I don't think it's a personal thing, like sabbaths and holidays and eating and drinking, I think it's something the churches should have a firm position on. But maybe the Lord is trying to teach me submissiveness.

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No, I'm not assuming that. All I know is what is posted, and some have said only a line or two basically pronouncing themselves right and me wrong without a shred of an attempt to address any of the issues I raised about it. If anybody's studied it in any depth, it doesn't show in their way of answering me. It looks like the shallowest possible off-the-cuff thought. LOOKS like that, I could be wrong.

Yes, that is your appeal but I don't think your view IS the plain sense of that passage. I think your reading of it is completely wrong, the result of not thinking through the whole passage as a unit. And I think that's because the passage is NOT easy to understand. Not all of scripture is plain. Some is, this isn't. There was contention about it in Paul's day and it's even harder to grasp after nearly 2000 years.

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I would think it would matter to a man of God what other men of God have had to say about a Biblical passage. You may still disagree with them, and I ended up disagreeing with most of them myself. But it seems to me to be quite significant that the interpretation of long hair appears to be a very recent thing, while two millennia of all the different churches understood it to be about a covering. Seems to me that a "private interpretation" is exactly what you all here are doing, simply taking your own reading is the standard and dismissing what so many others throughout history had to say about it. Even if some teachers are regarded as "heretics" on some point or other, even heretics are usually right about many things so it's plain irresponsible to say that if they are wrong about one thing then they MUST be wrong about this thing. Tertullian is considered by some to have heretical views about some things, but since he lived in the second century and knew firsthand of the practices in the churches in his day, it seems significant that he reported that they ALL required a headcovering for women, and the Corinthian church the most ample headcovering of them all.

You may well be right about this since I was more focused on answering the "cultural" interpretation than the long hair interpretation. I was very impressed with David Cloud's discussion of pentecostalism, and credit his study with contributing a lot to setting me free from it. His was the only pro-hair interpretation I found online that gave quite a bit of thought to it. The only other one I found was one guy who gave his opinion in huge screaming multicolored typeface. If you know of pre-20th-century supporters of long hair as the interpretation, especially those who influenced whole congregations, THAT would be very significant.

Well, I'm not sure who you are talking about. Begg is Reformed/Calvinist. and MacArthur sometimes speaks at their groups but I don't think he considers himself one of them exactly, I could be wrong. But Chuck Smith is certainly no Calvinist, and I don't know about Stedman, but as far as I know NONE of them is a "baby sprinkler." My own pastor who shares their interpretation of 1 Cor 11:2-16 is a Reformed Baptist, no babysprinkling there. MacArthur doesn't equate Israel with the Church. I don't know about the others. I tried to hear sermons from different denominations but I was limited to what I was able to find, and I wanted to cover the big names because they needed to be answered.

Sorry you think that of what I consider to be significant points with good evidence supporting them.

I was angry when I said that, BUT if I'm right in my interpretation then that explanation for why the churches no longer practice it seems the most likely, wouldn't you say?

Yes, I've acted badly. It's because I have ended up agreeing with OTHER men, pastors and elders and teachers, than those at this board. I wonder how you'd respond to them if they came here and argued the same case.

YES, I think that is what the whole passage is about. Some contention people were raising against women covering their heads in worship. Paul was answering some problem the church leaders raised to him, a practical problem, the covering of the head in worship. In the process he delineated many important theological points as reasons why women should cover their heads. Yes, that is how I read it, and how the vast majority of pastors, elders and teachers I consulted on the subject read it. Of course you have every right to disagree with them, and you may well be right that I've overlooked the best arguments for the hair interpretation.

ALL ARGUMENTS FOR THE HEAD COVERING. That is the context, that is why Paul put all those arguments in one place. They are instructive points in their own right, but he didn't just string them there without a purpose and that purpose was to get across the significance of the HEAD in the expression of male headship as defined by God in the Creation. Again, of course you are free to disagree with the majority of the sources I consulted.

The contentiousness was coming from those who did not want women to have to cover their heads. That's how I read it and how the majority of my sources read it.

Because I see all those other things as being offered by Paul as arguments for why women should cover their heads, one argument after another all to this purpose.

I'm sorry I lost my temper at a person who entered the thread late and didn't bother to read what I'd written.

That's OK George, I forgive you, I hope you will forgive me.

I think this issue is important for the church, but if I can't persuade anyone of it, then of course I should back off. I'm sorry I get bullheaded at times and push a point way farther than I ought to because I'm so committed to it myself.