I haven’t had much time to read a lot of books lately with all the other research I’ve been doing for school, but when I kept seeing people smearing Rachel Held Evans and her book via Twitter and Facebook, I couldn’t help but take notice and finally order her book, ‘A Year of Biblical Womanhood‘. I figured it couldn’t be all that bad since it made the New York Times’ Best Seller list. She’s garnered intensely critical reviews on her book and there’s one thing we know for certain; when the fringe groups gnash their teeth and wag their tongues at something, it must be worthy of our attention.

For the record, I no longer consider myself an evangelical or complimentarian in the way those groups define the terms, but I once was among them for nearly 15 years. I believe in the evangel of God reconciling the world to himself through his son and I believe in a married couple living in a way that compliments one another, just not to the extreme of the fringe groups. I don’t think all complimentarian or evangelical groups are fringe, but of the ones who criticize a book over helping to raise awareness of ‘weightier matters’ she discusses in her book most certainly fall into the fringe, in my mind.

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” Matthew 23:23 KJV

In my opinion, these so called mainstream groups really are fringe groups who have become successful through their theological pledges of allegiance or else be turned away from their communities. God is not the God of theological pledges (nor of shunning). I believe this is just a small part of the problem in Christianity that Rachel Held Evans has brought forth through this creative and agonizing project.

Rachel has used a creative venue for raising awareness of a much bigger problem. Our current Christian Culture is drowning in their self righteous debates over theological boxes that, quite frankly, God doesn’t reside in. The frigid waters of snooty idealism has plagued our faith communities to the point of children dying at the hands of abusive parenting theology to a teen girl in the youth group being raped by a deacon and forced to publicly apologize for getting pregnant. And just so you know, these aren’t rare occurrences. The list of molesters and abusers in the Baptist realm is growing at an alarming rate.

Some critics are upset about Rachel’s method of interpreting scripture, as if they have the corner market on truth (which is laughable since there are over 35,000 denominations of Christianity today). Mary Kassain wrote her concern over how the book ‘misrepresented’ the complemantarian view, but I wondered if she even read the book;  she didn’t mention Rachel’s  month of July in her review at all. Mary proclaims she coined the term ‘complimentarian’ and rejects Rachel’s use of sources that pre-date Mary’s claim to the term. As if complementarianism was a practice that never existed before the 21st century.

“Someone alerted me to Rachel’s Year of Biblical Womanhood early on in the project. Since I’ve been associated with the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) in one way or another since the early 1990s, since I helped coin the term complementarian, since I’ve written and spoken extensively on the topic of biblical womanhood, have taught courses on biblical womanhood at evangelical seminaries across North America, have blogged and written books about biblical womanhood, have published a resource entitled, True Woman 101: Divine Design – An eight week study on biblical womanhood, and since I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of women about biblical womanhood, I figured I was in a unique position to help Rachel understand what complementarians mean by the term “biblical womanhood.”” (source)

Well, maybe Mary has the corner market on complimentary marriage theology afterall. At least, that’s what she’s claiming. In an effort to be fair, she asks why Rachel didn’t interview her for a complimentarian view of ‘biblical womanhood’. I can see why she asks this, since she claims to be an authority on such a lifestyle, yet there are many others who seem to think they’re the authority on it too. There just isn’t enough room in the book to write about all of them. While I can’t answer Mary’s question on Rachel’s behalf, I do feel it’s appropriate to remind Mary of a couple of things. Even though she claims to be the one woman Rachel should have interviewed, the fact remains that there are so many that feel the same way. She thinks Rachel misrepresented ‘biblical womanhood’, but I can testify that of the many church communities I have had experience with, Rachel’s literalist view is a popular one that IS being taught in churches all over the world. Since Mary thinks those church communities are fringe groups, then she should take up her complaint with them for perpetuating Mary’s beloved complimentarian lifestyle as a mockery. Rachel simply showed how ridiculous those fringe groups really are.

We also have to contend with further so called reviews that have totally missed the point of the book. Honestly, it’s not surprising since many of them miss the entire point of the Bible too.

There are many reviews out there that make her book out to be some sort of wolf in sheep’s clothing and quite frankly I doubt they read past the month of June (the months are the chapters in this book). Either they stopped reading at June or they are clueless and calloused to have not raised hell about the content of the month of July.

While Rachel leads the first several chapters of her book with the atrocities of the ‘doctrine of biblical womanhood’, the main message I see is how the oppression of women in the Body of Christ and in church ministry leads to the oppression, and often times physical and sexual abuse, of women. Rachel courageously examines this historical tradition and emphatically puts her foot down about the true nature of the Proverbs 31 woman. A woman of valor who extends her hand to the needy.

The notion of LifeWay rejecting her book for using the word ‘vagina’ is a disgrace to women. For a company that claims to be pro-woman, their stance over that term is a joke. Allow me to share with you how the word ‘vagina’ was used in Rachel’s book.

“So I used the back of my metal chair to scribble my name across the dotted line before marching to the front of the room to pin my promise to God and my vagina onto a giant cork board for all to see.” ~Rachel Held Evans

This is a very important topic since so many teen girls are manipulated into public pledges about their reproductive organs. Have we ever stopped to think of how humiliating that might be for them? Rachel goes on to describe one more issue regarding the word ‘vagina’;

“And the story of Dina, a seventeen-year-old Congolese girl who was gang-raped by five men on her way home from working in the fields. The men shoved a large stick through Dina’s vagina, creating a debilitating fistula…” ~Rachel Held Evans

This is just one of the stories Rachel shares in her book that caused me to be even more angry with the critical reviews out there. Did they not read about her month of July? 

Although the topic of equality among women in the Body of Christ is a truly powerful and noteworthy cause to write about, even more important is the safety of our very own sisters (and their children) in countries where these atrocities are happening. The antics of sitting on a housetop, living in a tent during her period, and wearing a head covering wasn’t the ‘weightier matters’. While Rachel learned a great deal about her own spiritual journey with God through the practice of silence, baking challah bread, and blowing the shofar we have a great calling to be supportive to our sisters. Of the critical remarks the ‘reviewers’ have made, Rachel freely admits to in the closing of her book as she transparently confesses her own hypocrisy, judgementalism, and so much more.

Rachel’s year of biblical womanhood taught her many valuable lessons that we can all glean from. 

Regardless of the theological disagreements, I wonder if we might put those things aside and ponder how our words can be better used for the benefit of the women and children served by World Vision. How can we possibly attack Rachel for her witty (and sometimes sarcastic) approach to wrestling with female roles in the faith community, when the true message of the book was about BEING the Body of Christ to hurting women and children across the world?

I think she has been quite clever to use a hot topic that is a much needed conversation to have and coupling it with the true essence of the Proverbs 31 woman. You see, the ‘P31′ woman isn’t about one literal woman who can accomplish all those things on her own. King Lemuel’s mother PROPHESIED about this “Proverbs 31 woman”. This woman is a collective woman comprised of many across the world. This prophecy is about the Bride of Christ and how she (both male and female), reach out to  a needy world with kindness in her tongue and helpfulness in her outstretched hands. Will you be a part of the solution?

If you can put aside the theological box in order to do something greater, please consider making a donation to World Vision for the benefit of the hurting sisters and their children. God isn’t impressed with our theological debates when there are hurting people needing to be helped.

‘A Year of Biblical Womanhood’ will drastically affect our vaginas (and those in third world countries) if we don’t do something about it.

SisterLisa

Related Articles:

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6 Things to Expect When You Start Studying the Bible on Your Own (What your pastor won’t tell you!)

American Christians Can’t Claim Persecution

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