Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers

by John R. Rice

Three controversial subjects indeed! Many preachers and teachers avoid such subjects as these because they are so controversial. However, Dr. John R. Rice felt that these topics were dealt with so specifically in the Bible, that we find out what is wrong with some homes, churches and individuals. This little but powerful book is six chapters in length with a definiteness of purpose that is unmatched and typical of Dr. Rice.

Genres: Religion

91 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

John R. Rice was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper.

Reviews

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I collect legalistic, fundamentalist Christian literature. Yeah, we all have our hobbies. :-)

My latest acquisition is an old, musty, hardback copy of Baptist evangelist John R. Rice's 1941 book "Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers: Significant Questions for Honest Christian Women Settled by the Word of God". In it, he answers three questions (from P7): "(1) Is it a sin for women to cut their hair? (2) Must a wife be subject to, obedient to her husband, ruled by him? (3) Does God ever call or consent for women to be preachers, pastors or evangelists?". His answers are as chock-full o' fundy as I could have hoped for.

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1) Rice explains God's requirement for women to have long hair:

- P8: "Literally hundreds of women now have long hair as a result of hearing me teach and preach what God's Word says on that subject. Broken homes have been reunited as rebellious wives learned what God's Word has to say about a woman's submission to her husband and surrender to the will of God."

- P71: "God does not say how many inches long hair should be, but simply indicates that it should be left uncut, the symbol of a devout Christian woman who is not in rebellion against God and against her husband."

- P72-73: "For the sake of angels who hover near always, Christian women should especially be careful to have long hair, 'because of the angels,' the Scriptures says.
How are angels concerned about a woman's hair? I think that not only would angels be grieved by this mark of rebellion against husband or father and against God, but angels would be tempted, likewise, to rebel."
. . .
"Thus, when a woman with bobbed hair and a rebellious heart comes to pray, angels who hover near and see her head and see her heart are tempted to sin; are tempted to commit the sin which such women commit, then sin of rebellion against authority. Because of the angels, every woman should wear long hair and be careful that she does not have a rebellious heart lest she should be a curse to the angels God has sent to be our ministers and guardians."

- P76: "How Jesus seems to have delighted in having His feet wiped with the long hair of this woman's head. The Lord Jesus forgave and saved this woman, but she could never have given this beautiful mark of her devotion and surrender and love, drying her tears from His feet with her hair, if she had been a modern woman with bobbed hair. Don't you think this story shows the Saviour was pleased with her long hair?"

- P78-79: "Oh, women, what you have lost when you lost your femininity! When you bobbed your hair, your bobbed your character, too. Your rebellion against God's authority as exercised by husband and father, has a tendency, at least, to lose you all the things that women value most. If you want reverence and respect from good men, if you want protection and a good home and love and steadfast devotion, then I beg you to take a woman's place! Dress like a woman, not like a man. Have habits like a woman."

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2) Rice explains God's requirement that women be ruled by men:

- P18: " 'Thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee.' Wives must be subject to the rule of their husbands if they fit into God's order of things. Does some wife who reads this find her heart rebellious against her husband? You do not want him to rule you? You do not want to obey? Then you feel just like all the criminals in the penitentiaries and jails feel. They, too, are rebels against God-given authority."

- P19-20: "Servants should obey their masters even if they are sometimes unkind. Citizens should obey the laws of their country even though they be administered by wicked and corrupt men. Likewise, God expects women to feel their duty to obey their husbands, good, or bad, saved or unsaved. Nowhere in the Bible is a wife's duty to her husband conditioned on the kind of character he has or the way he treats her."

- P22: "How many Christian women have learned that the way to the greatest freedom and joy in the home is found in surrendering to obey the husband in everything!"

- P35: "Wives sometimes say, 'But I have a better education than my husband. I am a better manager. I have better judgment in many matters. Why shouldn't I have the deciding voice? I think the wiser of the two should have the authority in the home.'
Well, no doubt children often think they are wiser than their parents. Laborers are generally wiser, in their own sight, than their bosses. And no doubt the devil thinks himself wiser than God. That does not prove it is true."

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And 3) Rice explains God's requirement that women do not teach and remain silent in church:

- P41: "And again Paul says that the weakness of a woman and her aptness to be misled is shown because 'Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.' Satan found he could deceive Eve easier than he could deceive Adam. God made a woman after such a fashion that she should be a comfortable and obedient helpmeet, a mate who would fit to his will and plans. So, in the nature of the case, women are not as well fitted for executive authority. If women are more easily led, they are not as good leaders. Every pastor knows that women are easier to enlist in good work. But careful observers must admit that women are also easier led into false doctrines and into errors of various kinds. But the argument here in I Timothy 2:14 is that Satan was able to deceive Eve when he could not deceive Adam, and that this is an evidence that women should not be placed in authority in churches and in Christian work. If he could deceive Eve easier in the Garden of Eden, he could deceive women easier now. This means that women leaders are more likely to lead into heresy in doctrine and unscriptural practice than men."

- P58-59: "Women preachers have given the world an impression that Christians are emotionally unstable, that preaching is a racket."
. . .
"I have no doubt that millions will go to Hell because of the unscriptural practice of women preachers."

- P65: "There are women doctors, and any woman who can pass the medical course is permitted to be a doctor; yet how few men will call a woman doctor! How few businessmen on a board of directors would elect a woman as general manager of a big company. How few men would hire a women boss over other men. The truth is that men know that which is so plain in all nature, that God did not intend a woman to be in authority over men. It is unnatural and inefficient. Then do you wonder that in the modern sissyfied churches the average he-man will have no part?"

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As out of date as these arguments sound to some modern fundies, they are still the natural conclusions of present day fundamentalist interpretive approaches to the scriptures. Contemporary Biblicists reason in the same ways, but simply choose to look the other way on certain topics.

Here's how Rice lays out some of his scriptural interpretive approaches …

1) Distrust reason:

- P38: "The matter cannot be settled by opinion. It cannot be settled by observation. It cannot be settled by logic. There is only one place to settle this question on whether God wants a woman to preach or not. That is by the World of God itself! The Bible is the place to find what God wants people to do. The Bible is to tell us how the Lord's work is to be conducted."

- P56: "It is noteworthy that very few people try to prove from the Bible that women ought to preach. The Bible has no command for women to preach. So when women want to preach, they usually get their reasons outside the Bible and bring arguments from human observation or reason."

- P59: "If you would rather believe your reason than the Bible, you may believe in women preachers. But some day you will find out that your poor, fallible, human reason is not as wise as the wisdom of God revealed in His Word."

2) Disallow consideration of culture and circumstance and insist on universal applicability:

- P14: "Notice carefully the divine order of rule and submission, the order of authority as given in verse 3: 'The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.' God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman. The teaching about bobbed hair was not based on the custom of the times as many suppose."

- P39: "The Bible is the Word of God; no passage of Scripture will contradict any other passage. And since man and women and God have not changed, we will find that what God intended women to do in Bible times He intends them to do now, also."

- P44-45: "Again, the Scripture expressly commands that women are to keep silence in the churches, that it is not permitted unto them to speak, but they are to be under obedience, just as they were to be according to the Old Testament.
Someone may say that this rule was only for the church at Corinth. But that is not true. This epistle is not only written to the Christians at Corinth, but also to 'all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both their's and our's,' as you see from the second verse of the first chapter. The instructions of I Corinthians were given by the Holy Spirit to all Christians everywhere."

3) By asserting that scripture is always in complete harmony with itself, Rice can emphasize any chosen part as if it were the whole (e.g., Paul's views on women's roles). This also gives him license to de-emphasize or misrepresent passages that conflict with this talking points:

- P52: "Deborah, the prophetess in the Old Testament, did not preach and she took no authority over men."

- P53: "There was no government in the land. When two neighbors had a dispute and could not come to an agreement, they said, 'We will go and ask Deborah to decide.' So they came to Deborah and she would advise, possibly by divine revelation, how to settle the difference. And those who wished would take her decision. She had no authority."

4) Assume that there is not a valid interpretation / application of the scriptures apart from his fundamentalist approach:

- P8: "Those who do not believe the Bible or will not accept its authority might as well mark the Scripture passages given herein and cut them out of their Bibles."

- P9: "These are controversial matters. But note this, that the controversy is never about what the Bible says on these questions. There is no controversy there, for the Bible is so plain that there can be no dispute."

5) Constrain the work of the Holy Spirit to only what is only allowed by fundy hermeneutics:

- P39: "Women sometimes say that they feel called to preach. They say sometimes that the Holy Spirit has told them plainly they should preach. But we must remember that every false doctrine in the world is supported by the same argument. A mother who killed her afflicted child said that God told her to do it."
. . .
"But the answer to all this is very simple. The Holy Spirit of God dictated the Bible. . . . The Holy Spirit will never contradict His own Word. Any leading that is thought to be of the Holy Spirit should be checked by the Bible. Any leading that does not coincide with the plain teaching of the Word of God is false, and is not from God's Spirit."

[Tom Brennan · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fundamentalist, how you can you help but love John Rice? Controversial, starting fights left and right, tied to Scripture, fearless, studious, soul-conscious, and yet warm and compassionate. This book, published in 1941, has been sitting on my shelf for a very long time. For whatever reason, it worked its way onto my reading list lately. At 91 pages, it isn't overly long. It reads as a book, an organized discussion and explanation of these related topics.

...and ...wait for it... mostly, he is right. He isn't always right, particularly in his blanket assertion that a woman should always obey her husband. His rationale is the same as that offered by the Germans at Nuremburg, and Rice really needs some balance here. The work also contains some rather blatant cultural positions masquerading as biblical ones. But having said that, Rice's fearlessness and carefulness combine to speak the truth no one wants to hear anymore. He launches it into the world boldly. And I commend him for it, though now four decades gone.

There was steel in his backbone, steel it will be helpful for all of God's people to borrow for what we will face in the decades to come.

[Nehemiah · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you want a clear look at the independent fundamental baptist movement and why they view women the way they do, then read this. If you are looking for a well rounded view on biblical roles in household and in society please look elsewhere. The author postulates that women must be submissive to men in all ways - both in the house and outside of their households. And he doesn't allow for any exceptions to that rule. This book was dated and misogynistic in the 1940s, and it just drips of hatred towards women at this point in history.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book that tells practical and biblical reasons why it is wrong for women to preach, cut hair short, and bossy to husbands

[F · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I have always liked about this author is his ability to cut through the various opinions of men and concentrate on "what saith the Scripture?" about any given subject. Here are, as the title indicates, subjects bound to arouse the passions of people on both sides of the proverbial fence, and yet Dr. Rice takes to the task with the unerring accuracy of the Word of God. The root of the problem is exposed and each person is challenged to deal with it- after that, the rest is a moot point. As usual for this author, highly recommended.

[W. Austin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The way we used to do it

[Joshua]

the title says it all