Is Cutting Your Hair a Sin? For Most Christians, No

For most Christians, cutting your hair is not a sin, though some Pentecostal and conservative Mennonite churches teach that women should not cut theirs. The Catholic and Orthodox churches and most Protestant churches set no rule on haircuts. The passages people raise are Leviticus 19:27, the Nazirite vow in Numbers 6 and 1 Corinthians 11.

What does the Bible say about cutting hair?

The Bible has only a handful of passages that set rules for hair, and each was written to particular people in a particular setting.

The last two passages are about display, not length. Paul asks women to dress modestly, “not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array,” and Peter warns against “that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold.” Whether that rules out braids today is a question of its own.

Is shaving the sides of your head a sin?

Not for most Christians. The question comes from Leviticus 19:27: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” The command is one of the laws given to Israel in Leviticus.

Jewish law still keeps the command. Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin of Chabad.org explains that the Talmud takes the “edges” of the head to mean “the hair between the ears and the temples,” and that the rule “applies only to males.” The Torah gives no reason. Some Jewish commentators connect it with idol-worshippers who “used to cut off the hair on the sides of their heads while leaving the hair on top to grow”; others count it among the decrees whose reason has not been revealed. This is the origin of the sidelocks, called peyot, that Jewish law requires men to leave at the temples. The Code of Jewish Law allows them to be trimmed with scissors, though not too close to the skin, and in some Hasidic communities men never cut them at all.

Most Christians do not keep this command. When some believers in Jerusalem insisted that Gentile converts must “keep the law of Moses,” the apostles and elders met and wrote that “it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things” (Acts 15:5, 15:28). The list that follows says nothing about hair. The Church of England’s Articles of Religion put the principle this way: “the Law given from God by Moses, as touching Ceremonies and Rites, do not bind Christian men,” though every Christian remains bound by “the Commandments which are called Moral.” Christians ask the same question about the food laws of Leviticus. On this reading, a haircut that shortens or shaves the sides is a matter of taste.

Some Christians still draw on the verse. The Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, an Anabaptist church, cites Leviticus 19:27 and 21:5 in its statement of beliefs on the beard: “We believe that men grow beards by order of creation. Wearing a beard indicates respect for God’s order.”

Why did Nazirites let their hair grow?

Because it was part of a vow. A Nazirite (the King James Version spells it Nazarite) was an Israelite, “either man or woman,” who chose “to separate themselves unto the Lord” for a time (Numbers 6:2). The vow had three marks: no wine or anything from the vine, no coming near a dead body, and no haircut. “All the days of the vow of his separation there shall no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled … he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow” (Numbers 6:5).

The vow ended with a haircut, and the cut hair became part of the offering. When the days were complete, “the Nazarite shall shave the head of his separation at the door of the tabernacle … and put it in the fire which is under the sacrifice of the peace offerings” (Numbers 6:18). Vows that ended in a haircut still appear in the New Testament. Acts records that Paul sailed from Cenchrea “having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow” (Acts 18:18), and in Jerusalem James and the elders asked Paul to pay the costs of four men who had a vow, “that they may shave their heads” (Acts 21:24).

A few people were dedicated for life. An angel told Samson’s mother that “no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb” (Judges 13:5), and Hannah promised that if God gave her a son, “there shall no razor come upon his head” (1 Samuel 1:11). Samson’s strength was bound up with his vow, as he told Delilah: “if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me” (Judges 16:17).

Is it a sin for a woman to cut her hair?

For Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant Christians, no; some Pentecostal and conservative Mennonite churches ask women to leave their hair uncut. Both answers come from 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul writes to the church at Corinth about women and men who pray or prophesy in worship. A woman who prays with her head uncovered dishonors her head, he says, “for that is even all one as if she were shaven,” and he adds: “if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered” (1 Corinthians 11:5–6). Then he appeals to nature:

Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.

1 Corinthians 11:14–16

Christians read what Paul meant by “nature” and by “long” in three main ways. Whether women should also wear a cloth covering in worship is a related question with its own answer.

Reading Paul as appealing to the custom of his day

John Calvin, the Reformer of Geneva, read “nature” as the settled custom of Paul’s world. Paul, he wrote, “reckons as nature a custom that had come to be confirmed,” and he pointed out that “it was not always reckoned a disgrace for men to have long hair.” The Catholic Church reads the same chapter’s rule on veils in a similar way. In 1976 the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith counted “the obligation imposed upon women to wear a veil on their head (1 Cor 11:2-16)” among Paul’s ordinances “probably inspired by the customs of the period,” and said that “such requirements no longer have a normative value.” Churches that read the passage this way set no rule for the length of a woman’s hair.

Reading Paul as a lasting difference between men and women

Other commentators take “nature” to mean the difference God made between men and women, which hair should show in every age. Matthew Poole’s Commentary weighs several meanings of the word and settles on this one: “the distinction of the sexes teacheth us this.” As men and women are told apart by their clothes, it reasons, “so they should also be distinguished by the wearing of their hair; and it was no less shame for a man to wear his hair like a woman, than to wear garments like a woman.” Long hair cannot be wrong in itself, it adds, “for then neither must the Nazarites have used it.” On this reading, hair should mark the difference between men and women, but it has no set length.

Reading “long” as uncut

The United Pentecostal Church International reads the passage as a standing rule. Its position paper on gender distinction, adopted by its General Board in 2014, says Paul “wrote of definite distinctions between men and women in I Corinthians 11 as is reflected by their hair: long, uncut hair for women and short hair for men.”

David K. Bernard, now the church’s general superintendent, sets out the reasoning in his book Practical Holiness: A Second Look. Because Paul “based his teaching on nature itself,” Bernard holds that it was “not merely a local custom.” He draws seven reasons from the passage, among them that the practice is “one of God’s methods for maintaining a clear distinction between male and female,” that it “demonstrates the wife’s submission to the husband,” and that it is “a sign to angels of the Christian woman’s obedience to God.” He argues: “Since nature teaches that women should have long hair, we should let nature determine the length, by allowing the hair to grow freely.” He concludes, “So, long hair for a woman must mean uncut hair.” To a woman whose hair will not grow long, he answers that “I Corinthians 11 does not specify any dimensions for hair length,” and that “If she lets her hair grow freely, as the Nazarites did, then God considers her hair to be long.”

Bernard also warns against treating the hair as the whole matter: “The long hair itself will not make her holy in God’s sight. She must have the proper attitude of which the long hair is a symbol.”

Which churches teach that women should not cut their hair?

The Articles of Faith of the United Pentecostal Church International list women cutting their hair among the practices the church disapproves of. The 2023 edition says: “We wholeheartedly disapprove of our people indulging in any activities which are not conducive to good Christianity and godly living, such as theaters, dances, mixed bathing or swimming, women cutting their hair, make-up, any apparel that immodestly exposes the body …” Its website said, when read in October 2026, that the church has 6 million constituents in 203 nations.

Among Mennonites the practice has narrowed. Third Way, a site that MennoMedia produces “on behalf of the Mennonite Churches of the U.S. and Canada,” says: “At an earlier time in Mennonite history, Mennonite women did not cut their hair. This is no longer the case for modern Mennonites. Only the more conservative Mennonite groups still follow this practice.” It traces the practice to 1 Corinthians 11. One of those conservative groups is the Church of God in Christ, Mennonite, also called the Holdeman Mennonites, which its founder formed after leaving the Mennonite Church in 1859. Writing from outside that church, MennoMedia describes its women’s hair as “uncut, pinned under a small black fitted bonnet.” The church’s own statement of beliefs does not mention women’s hair. It asks that “A Christian woman should have her head veiled with a devotional covering for prayer and as a sign of submission.”

Is it a sin for a man to have long hair?

Paul’s words are the reason for the question: “if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him” (1 Corinthians 11:14). Yet God required uncut hair of Nazirites, and Samson and Samuel were dedicated that way for life. Christians have reconciled the two in different ways. Calvin took Paul’s “nature” to mean the custom of the Greeks, and noted that “in all countries in ancient times” men wore their hair long. Bernard treats the Nazirites as exceptions: “In view of the exceptional nature of these cases, we cannot use them to justify a violation of I Corinthians 11:14.” He advises that “it behooves Christian men today to wear their hair noticeably and unquestionably short.”

In the Orthodox Church, the clergy took up long hair after “the Christian empire was captured by the Turks in the fifteenth century,” when bishops began to dress as Christian rulers had dressed. Fr. Thomas Hopko, writing for the Orthodox Church in America, explains that at that time “the clergy began to grow long hair which was also a sign of earthly rule in former times.”

Is it a sin to trim or shave your head?

The Bible tells one group of priests to trim their hair. In Ezekiel’s vision of the temple, the priests are told: “Neither shall they shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long; they shall only poll their heads” (Ezekiel 44:20). To poll is an old English word for cutting the hair; Webster’s dictionary of 1828 defines it as “to clip; to cut off the ends; to cut off hair or wool.”

Shaving the head appears in Scripture as a sign of grief and as the end of a vow. When Job heard that his children had been killed, he “arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped” (Job 1:20). Of his whole response to that loss, the book says, “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:22). Nazirites shaved their heads when their vows were complete (Numbers 6:18). For a woman, Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 11:6 about being “shorn or shaven” are read as custom by some churches and as a lasting rule by others.

In the Orthodox Church, cutting hair is part of the baptismal service. Hopko writes that after the baptism and chrismation, “the person newly-received into God’s family is tonsured,” and explains: “The tonsure, which is the cutting of hair from the head in the sign of the cross, is the sign that the person completely offers himself to God.”

Do other religions forbid cutting hair?

Sikhs keep their hair uncut. The Sikh Coalition describes five articles of faith worn by those who have committed to the faith by accepting initiation: “kesh (unshorn hair), kanga (small comb), kara (steel bracelet), kirpan (religious article resembling a knife), and kachera (soldier-shorts).” Sikhs cherish them, it explains, “primarily because they see them as a gift from their beloved Guru.” Jewish law, from Leviticus 19:27, forbids men to shave the hair at the temples, but its rule covers the sidelocks, not the rest of the head.

Did Jesus say anything about cutting hair?

No. The Gospels record no teaching of Jesus about haircuts or hair length, and none of them describes how he wore his hair. Jesus was not a Nazirite either. Matthew calls him a Nazarene because of his home town: “he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:23). A Nazirite drank no wine during his vow (Numbers 6:3), while Jesus said, “The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber” (Matthew 11:19).

He mentioned hair only in passing. Warning against oaths, he said, “Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black” (Matthew 5:36). Telling his disciples not to fear those who could kill the body, he said, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30).

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• Why do United Pentecostals prefer dresses and skirts?
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