Head Coverings and Church Dress

St. Paul, writing to Corinth, expected women to pray with covered heads and men with bare ones (1 Corinthians 11:4-5), and for most of Christian history, in East and West alike, that was simply how people came to church — as it was, in fact, how respectable people dressed in public at all. The covered head was not invented as a church rule; the Church inherited a universal dress code and gave it meaning: reverence before God, and a certain freedom from display.

One half of the old custom remains effectively universal: men remove hats in an Orthodox church. The other half — women's head covering — has followed different paths in different places, which is why the question has no single answer.

In much of the Slavic tradition and in many old-country parishes — Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, the Middle East — a woman covering her head in church remains the ordinary expectation, and a basket of scarves often waits by the door for anyone who wants one. In Greece the custom largely faded in the twentieth century, and in most parishes in North America of every jurisdiction, covering is genuinely optional: in one congregation you may see a handful of scarves, in another a majority, and no one keeping score. Monasteries are generally more traditional — women visiting are usually asked to cover their heads and wear a skirt, and men to wear long trousers (more here) — and it is courteous to check a monastery's or parish's own guidance before visiting.

The tradition asks for charity in both directions. A woman who veils is not making a statement about anyone else; a woman who does not is not being irreverent — she is following the practice of her parish and her conscience. Judging either is a worse fault than any dress could be. (The variety runs in unexpected directions, too: in some American parishes full of converts, veiling has seen a modest revival, freely chosen — the same scarf that is simply traditional in Kyiv can be countercultural in Kansas, and the Church is at peace with both.) And nowhere in Orthodox practice is a head covering a door-check: no usher stands at the entrance measuring hemlines or scarves, and a visitor who walks in from the street exactly as she is will be welcomed.

The working rule for everyone is modest, clean, and unremarkable — dress that says the occasion matters without asking to be looked at. In practice that usually means covered shoulders, skirts or trousers rather than shorts, and nothing you would wear to the beach; many parishes are dressier than this, some are more relaxed, and standing through long services rewards comfortable shoes. Regulars often keep small habits of their own — a baptismal cross under the shirt, a particular scarf kept for church.

If you are coming for the first time, come as you are; the Church would rather have you present in jeans than absent in a suit. God "looketh on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7), and every custom in this entry exists to serve that truth, not to obscure it. Once a parish becomes your own, its etiquette is easy to absorb — mostly by quietly noticing what others do.