A Year of Biblical Womanhood

A Year of Biblical Womanhood
http://rachelheldevans.com/womanhood-project

by Rachel Held Evans
September 25, 2011

 

On October 1, 2010, I committed one year of my life to following all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible—from the Old Testament to the New Testament, from Genesis to Revelation, from the Levitical purity codes to the letters of Paul.

This meant, among other things, submitting to my husband (Colossians 3:18), growing out my hair (1 Corinthians 11:15), making my own clothes, (Proverbs 31:22), learning how to cook (Titus 2:3-5), praising my husband at the city gate (Proverbs 31:23), covering my head when in prayer (1 Corinthians 11:5), calling Dan “master” (1 Peter 3:5-6), caring for the poor (Proverbs 31:25), nurturing a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:4), abstaining from gossip (Proverbs 20:19), and camping out in the front yard for the duration of my period (Leviticus 15:19-33).

The project brought me to Amish country in Pennsylvania, to a Benedictine monastery in Alabama, and to rural villages in Bolivia. I found myself making Thanksgiving dinner for eight, caring for a Baby-Think-It-Over, serving homemade matzah toffee at Passover, wrestling with some troubling passages of Scripture, perching on my rooftop, and sitting silently among the Quakers.

Each month I focused on a different virtue celebrated in the Bible: gentleness, domesticity, obedience, valor, beauty, modesty, purity, fertility, submission, charity, silence, and faith. Some practices I observed just once. Others I observed all year. Throughout the experiment, the Biblical Woman’s Ten Commandments served as a guide for daily living.

In addition to my own experiences, I interviewed modern-day women incorporating ancient practices into their own lives—a polygamist, an Orthodox Jew, an Amish family, a Quiverfull mom, and more. I’ve spent hours conducting research, combing through feminist, complementarian, and egalitarian commentaries, and actively seeking out Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on each issue. And of course I’ve read the Bible, cover to cover, isolating and examining every verse I can find about mothers, daughters, sisters wives, widows, queens, and prophetesses.

My purpose in embarking on this project is not to belittle or make fun of the Bible, nor is it to glorify its patriarchal elements. It is simply to start a conversation about how we interpret and apply the Bible to our lives. (See Frequently Asked Questions to learn more.) In the end, I hope my misadventures inspire women to cut themselves and one another some slack…because the truth is, we all do a little “picking and choosing” when it comes to biblical womanhood!

(A book about the project will be published by Thomas Nelson in 2012, but you can keep up with my progress here on the blog as I post updates, photos, reflections, and videos.)