Meet the Author
Rachel Held Evans is a popular author and speaker. After working for a few newspapers, she began writing on her own. Her blog has won numerous awards and is consistently ranked among the most popular Christian blogs. Held Evans has written two books: Evolving in Monkey Town (2010) and A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012). Her work has been featured on NPR, Slate, The BBC, The Washington Post, The Guardian(UK), The Times London, The Huffington Post, and Oprah.com, and she was recently named one of Christianity Today’s “50 Women to Watch. ”
Book Basics
Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood is a refreshingly authentic story of how one woman set aside a year of her life to seek to understand and live by many of the Bible’s instructions for women. Rather than approach the biblical text from cover to cover, she devoted herself to a new topic each month. As she researched each topic, she crafted a to do list that guided her efforts. Held Evans’ honesty about her Evangelical upbringing, conversational tone, willingness to take many of the Biblical guidelines to their literal extreme, and inclusion of how she and her husband felt about many of the experiences invites the reader to enter into the story both to observe her actions and explore one’s own views on what it means to be a “biblical woman.” Ultimately, her experiences lead her to a new respect for the Bible, an increased openness to considering motherhood, and an understanding that the idea of a “one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth” (p.291-295).
So What?
The Bible offers an incredible number of gender specific counsel. Unfortunately, such has been used by far too many for far too long to make women into something less than men. Given this history, it is incredibly important for individual followers of Jesus and communities of faith with similar dispositions to move beyond this in intentional ways.
- Do you feel most Americans still believe most Christians live by rules that make women functionally less than men? If so, how can you help overcome this? your local congregation?
- Share one or more ways your own view of “Biblical womanhood” has changed over the years.
Rachel Held Evans. A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master.” (Thomas Nelson, 2012). ISBN: 9781595553676.