Doug Van Dorn- Razing Hair: A Sarcastic Reimagining of 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

For over twenty years, I have avoided preaching 1 Corinthians—its conundrums, factionalism, and bizarre debates made it feel inexplicable. Then a single verse in Acts (18:18) began to change all that: Paul cuts his hair right after leaving Corinth, where he had worn it long during his entire ministry there. This glaring contradiction with 1 Cor 11:14 (“long hair… a disgrace”) cracked open the passage.

In Razing Hair, I argues that Paul is not delivering transcendent rules about head coverings, hair length, or gender hierarchy. Those are issues of "disputable matters" and Christian liberty. He is being sarcastic—mocking the Corinthians’ obsession with outward appearances, cultural propriety, and contentious debates while their church is imploding morally. Only the core theological affirmations (Christ as head, mutual interdependence, God as ultimate covering) are spoken straight-faced; the rest skewers the vanity of these Christians with biting irony.