'Biblical Womanhood': A Year Of Living By The Book
by NPR Staff
September 25, 2011
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| In deference to Titus 2:3-5 and 1 Timothy 5:14, Rachel Held Evans tried to stay "busy in the home," honing her cooking, cleaning and hospitality skills. She is seen here with homemade matzah toffee for Passover. |
As an evangelical Christian, Rachel Held Evans often heard about the importance of practicing "biblical womanhood," but she didn't quite know what that meant. Everyone she asked seemed to have a different definition.
Evans decided to embark on a quest to figure out how to be a woman by the Bible's standards. For one year, she has followed every rule in the Old and New Testaments. Her project will end next Saturday.
Throughout the year, she kept a blog about the experience; it's going to be made into a book that will be published in 2012.
One of Evans' tasks was to submit to her husband, Dan. The need for women to submit to their husbands is repeated multiple times in the letters of Paul and Peter, she tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.
"That was a challenge because my husband and I have a very egalitarian relationship," Evans says, "so it was kind of weird trying to impose a hierarchy onto that relationship."
Evans made a flow chart that had an arrow pointing from God to her husband and down to her; she posted it on their refrigerator.
"We tried to stick by that, and it would be little things like if I wanted to watch one movie from Netflix, but he wanted another one, we would defer to his," she says.
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| Proverbs 31:23 says that a virtuous woman's husband is "respected at the city gate," so Evans made a poster that said "Dan is Awesome" and stood in front of the "Welcome to Dayton" sign for 30 minutes one afternoon. |
In Proverbs 31, a husband is praised at the city gates. Evans attempted to do the equivalent by standing outside the "Welcome to Dayton" sign in Tennessee with a poster board that read, "Dan is Awesome."
"People thought I'd lost a bet," she says.
Evans says she'd hated Proverbs 31 for years "because in the evangelical culture, it's lifted up as sort of like the model for all women everywhere, and it talks about a woman who sews from morning till night and provides food for her family and clothing."
Her perspective shifted, however, after talking to a friend about the Jewish culture's interpretation of the passage. Her friend said men were the ones who memorized the passage as a way of praising women — her friend's husband sings it to his wife at every Sabbath meal.
"That whole passage got turned around for me when I started looking at it from a more Jewish perspective and seeing it less as something that God expects all women to do and more as a way of praising what women have already accomplished," she says.
Also as part of her project, Evans spent all year growing out her hair.
"Basically, Paul says that it is a woman's glory to have long hair, which basically, I'm guessing, he wouldn't have said that if he'd met me because my hair just doesn't really look good long. It's really frizzy and poufy, and right now it is just absolutely out of control," she says. "The first thing I'm going to do on Oct. 1 when the project is over is schedule a hair appointment."
With the project drawing to a close, Evans hasn't uncovered a singular way to practice biblical womanhood.
"We're all selective in how we interpret and apply the Bible to our lives — even evangelical Christians, whether they like to admit it or not," she says. "So what I have found is that any time you think you have found a sort of blueprint or standard for biblical womanhood, a woman in scripture comes along and is praised for breaking it."
A Biblical Woman's Reading List
by Rachel Held Evans
I have just one week left in my year of biblical womanhood, which means I am days away from a much-needed haircut and the ceremonial packing-away of my many head coverings. In the spirit of Rosh Hashanah, I plan to spend the week reflecting on the past year and the year to come while snacking on apples and honey and attempting to track down a shofar.
In addition to accumulating a stash of head coverings, I’ve amassed quite a few books over the past year. Occasionally people ask me what sort of resources I used during the project, so today I thought I’d share the list.
All Year:
The Bible (There are many translations available at biblegateway.com)
- Anchor Bible Commentary Series
- The Women’s Bible Commentary, Edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe
- Living Judaism: The Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition, and Practice by Wayne D. Dosick
- Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books, and the New Testament, Edited by Carol Meyers, Toni Cravien, and Ross Shepard Kraemer
- Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Edited by John Piper and Wayne Grudem
- Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy, Edited by Ronald W. Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis and Gordon D. Fee
- Women in the World of the Earliest Christians: Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life by Lynn Cohick
- God’s Word to Women by Katharine C. Bushnell
- Don't Know Much About the Bible: Everything You Need to Know About the Good Book but Never Learned by Kenneth C. Davis
-"On The Dignity and Vocation of Women" by Pope John Paul II
- The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
October (Gentleness):
- Etiquette by Emily Post
- Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila
- The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux by John Beevers
November (Domesticity):
- Martha Stewart's Cooking School
- Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook
- The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work” by Kathleen Norris
- The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
- Passionate Housewives Desperate for God by Jennie Chancey and Stacy McDonald
- The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Shaeffer
- Next to Godliness: Finding the Sacred in Housekeeping by Alice Peck
December (Obedience):
- Created to Be His Helpmeet by Debi Pearl
- Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement by Kathryn Joyce
- Quivering Daughters: Hope and Healing for the Daughters of Patriarchy by Hillary McFarland
- Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives by Phyllis Trible
January (Valor - Proverbs 31):
- Sewing for Dummies by Janice Saunders Maresh
- The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace
- Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs by Ellen F. Davis
- The Book of Proverbs, Chapters 15-31 by Bruce K. Waltke
February (Beauty):
- Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs by Ellen F. Davis
- Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust
March (Modesty):
- A Return to Modesty by Wendy Shalit
- Amish Society by John Andrew Hostetler
April (Purity):
- The Red Tent by Anita Diamat
- Inside the Red Tent by Sandra Hack Polaski
- Living Judaism: The Guide to Jewish Belief, Tradition, and Practice by Wayne D. Dosick
- Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner
May (Fertility):
- What to Expect When You’re Expecting, 4th Edition by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel
- On Becoming Baby Wise by Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam
- The Baby Book: Everything You Need to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two by William Sears and Martha Sears
- Babyproofing Your Marriage by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O'neill, Julia Stone and Rosario Camacho-koppel
- How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
- Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay: And Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor
June (Submission):
- Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot
- Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian J. Walsh and Sylvia C. Keesmaat
- Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender by John Stackhouse
July (Charity):
- Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices by Julie Clawson
- Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDUnn
- The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns
August (Silence):
- I Suffer Not a Woman: Rethinking 1 Timothy 2:11-15 In Light of Ancient Evidence by Richard Clark Kroeger and Catherine Clark Kroeger
- The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight
- Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women by Carolyn Custis James
- Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and the Pauline Communities by Bruce Winter
- The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
- A Quaker Book of Wisdom by Robert Lawrence Smith
- Let Nothing Disturb You (30 Days with A Great Spiritual Teacher) by Teresa of Avila, with John Kirvan and Caroline Myss
- All Will Be Well (30 Days with A Great Spiritual Teacher) by Julian of Norwich
- The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle
September (Faith):
-Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle
-Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich
-No Greater Love by Mother Teresa
- Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day
- The Hospital By the River by Dr. Catherine Hamlin
…So what did I forget? :-)
Learn more about my year of biblical womanhood here.
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