A Year of Biblical Womanhood Read online

  Praise for

  A Year of Biblical Womanhood

  “Funny and fearless, Rachel Held Evans is twice the woman I’ll ever be.”

  — Daniel Radosh, writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and author of Rapture Ready!

  “A bittersweet cocktail of wisdom and absurdity that will charm you, entertain you, seduce you and, finally, instruct you! A Year of Biblical Womanhood is funny, droll, charming, and deadly serious, all in one set of covers.”

  — Phyllis Tickle, author and lecturer

  “Because I first heard Rachel’s voice in reaction to public tomfoolery about women’s roles in the church and society, I half-expected A Year of Biblical Womanhood to be sort of . . . reactionary. After all, how could a liberated woman covering her head and bowing in reverence to her liberated husband be anything else? Yet with her signature wit, Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood offers a disarming treatment—aka ‘fair and balanced’!—of biblical womanhood. Specifically, readers will be equipped to read the texts more faithfully and to discern what faithfulness looks like for women and men today. Modestly cloaked in starched apron garb, Rachel Held Evans serves a feast to thoughtful men and women who are hungry for insight.”

  — Margot Starbuck, author and speaker

  “A Year of Biblical Womanhood will instruct as it delights, and delight as it instructs. Of course it’s about womanhood, an incredibly important subject for 100% of the population. But it’s about a lot more too—how we read and interpret the Bible, for starters, and how we—both men and women—grapple with issues like justice, charity, silence, and grace in today’s frenetic world. On top of that, Rachel is such a gifted writer . . . you’ll be warmed by her good sense, good humor, and keen eye for beauty and insight on every page.”

  — Brian D. McLaren, author, speaker, activist, brianmclaren.net

  “A triumph! Rachel Held Evans has written a comprehensive, impeccably researched, heartfelt, whimsical, scripture honoring book about the role and experience of women in Christian society. This magnificent achievement should be required reading in every church, home, student ministry, college, and seminary in the world. Eshet Chayil!”

  — Ian Morgan Cron, author, Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir of Sorts and Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale

  “Rachel Held Evans is my kind of woman, Christian, and writer. She cares too much about the Bible to read what it says without wrestling with what it means. Rachel’s new book is full of humor, humility, and truth.”

  — Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Momastery.com and Carry On, Warrior

  “A Year of Biblical Womanhood will challenge, amuse, inspire and entertain you. I applaud Rachel’s sharp sense of humor as she attempted the near impossible. I also appreciate her gut-honesty, willingness to try crazy things, and ability to admit when she didn’t have all the answers. A compelling story told brilliantly.”

  — Mary DeMuth, author of Everything: What You Gain and What You Give to Become like Jesus

  “With curiosity, honesty, and humor, Rachel Held Evans takes readers along on her year-long adventure in Biblical womanhood that manages to be both hilarious and thought-provoking.”

  — Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

  “An unexpected, laugh-out-loud then turn the page and tear up, enjoyable and poignant read. By following Evan’s journey, you’ll see yourself and the women of the Bible in deeper and nuanced ways.”

  — Shayne Moore, author and activist

  “Rachel’s disarming and inviting sense of storytelling coupled with her sharp wit makes for delightful retellings of biblical stories. This peek into her courageous venture into a year of “biblical womanhood” ought to be required reading for all thoughtful evangelicals—male or female—whose response to Scripture is usually an unqualified nod of approval.”

  — Jennifer Bird, associate professor of religion, Greensboro College

  “When Christians allude to “biblical womanhood,” they seem to mean someone safely feminine and clad in floral prints. In her project, Rachel Held Evans uncovers something far more mysterious, a picture by turns glorious and disturbing. Blending laugh-out-loud moments with serious cultural critique, Evans discovers that living the actual teachings of the Bible means surrendering idealized role-playing in favor of becoming an eshet chayil—a woman of strength and wisdom.”

  — Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray, and Still Loving My Neighbor

  “Rachel Held Evans is smart and funny and gutsy, willing to tackle the most sacred cows, willing to ask the trickiest questions. For all of us who have found the term “biblical womanhood” somewhere between confusing and crazy-making, her voice is one of intelligence and courage.”

  — Shauna Niequist, author of Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet, www.shaunaniequist.com

  “A Year of Biblical Womanhood is thoughtful, witty, and eye-opening, one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time. In detailing her “Old Testament” adventure, the always earnest Rachel Held Evans flexes her writing muscle by painting vivid scenes, inspiring prose, and offering well-played opinions doused with persuasive theology. A Year of Biblical Womanhood is a brave book, proving Evans’ knack for packing a powerful punch while still managing to remain devout, humble, full of grace.”

  — Matthew Paul Turner, author of Churched

  A YEAR OF

  BIBLICAL

  WOMANHOOD

  A YEAR OF

  BIBLICAL

  WOMANHOOD

  How a Liberated Woman Found Herself

  Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and

  Calling Her Husband “Master”

  RACHEL HELD EVANS

  COVER PHOTO BY MAKI GARCIA EVANS

  MAKIMAKEUP.COM

  © 2012 by Rachel Held Evans

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd., 10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, Colorado 80130.

  Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  Scripture quotations marked DRB are taken from the Douay-Rheims Bible (public domain).

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version (public domain).

  Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

  Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked UPDATED NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  Other versions briefly quoted include: the American Standard Version (public domain). Common English Bible (CEB)
, © 2011. THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. THE GOOD NEWS TRANSLATION. © 1976, 1992 by The American Bible Society. The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved. Used by permission. All rights reserved. New Century Version®. © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Holy Bible, New Living Translation. © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible. © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved. REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible. © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Evans, Rachel Held, 1981–

  A year of Biblical womanhood : how a liberated woman found herself sitting on her roof, covering her head, and calling her husband “master”? / Rachel Held Evans.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-1-59555-367-6

  1. Women—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Women—Biblical teaching. 3. Christian women— Religious life. 4. Sex role—Religious aspects—Christianity. 5. Sex role—Biblical teaching. 6. Evans, Rachel Held, 1981– I. Title.

  BT704.E925 2012

  277.3'083092—dc23

  [B]

  2012014499

  Printed in the United States of America

  12 13 14 15 QGF 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Dan, for making every year an adventure, and to all the women of valor whose stories have yet to be told.

  Contents

  * * *

  Introduction

  October: Gentleness—Girl Gone Mild

  November: Domesticity—Martha, Martha

  December: Obedience—My Husband, My Master

  January: Valor—Will the Real Proverbs 31 Woman Please Stand Up?

  February: Beauty—My Breasts Are Like Towers

  March: Modesty—Hula-Hooping with the Amish

  April: Purity—The Worst Time of the Month to Go Camping

  May: Fertility—Quivers Full of Arrows and Sippy Cups

  June: Submission—A Disposition to Yield

  July: Justice—Eat More Guinea Pig

  August: Silence—I Am Woman, Hear Me No More

  September: Grace—Days of Awe

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  About the Author

  Consider the lilies—is the only commandment I ever obeyed.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  Introduction

  * * *

  Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?

  1 CORINTHIANS 11:14–15

  I STARED BACK AT MYSELF IN THE SALON MIRROR, WONDERing whatever happened to the woman who sat in this same hydraulic chair just a year ago.

  After 368 days without a haircut, I looked like a character from Willow, or more precisely, a character from Willow in the process of getting eaten by a character from Spinal Tap.

  I’d also gained thirteen pounds, developed a mild addiction to unleavened bread, turned thirty, and settled far too comfortably into a dress code of oversized T-shirts and peasant skirts.

  A pretty, blond stylist stood over me, running her fingers through my monster hair, her nails catching in its mousy-brown tangles. “And what can I do for you today?” she asked with a sweet, East Tennessee twang that I could only assume masked her abject horror at the scene.

  “Well, it’s been a year since my last haircut,” I said. “And as you can see, my hair’s a little too thick to grow out without some . . . consequences. So, I guess I just want you to, you know, fix it. Maybe take five or six inches off?”

  “Now, why in the world would you go a year without cutting your hair?” the stylist asked with a playful laugh, totally unfazed.

  “Why?”

  It was the question people asked each time I pulled a scarf over my head to pray or addressed my husband as “master,” the question they asked after I spent an afternoon perched on my rooftop, adopted a computer-baby, camped out in my front yard during my period, and left eight pounds of dough to rise in my bathroom. It was the question they asked when they wondered what brought me to an Amish schoolhouse in Gap, Pennsylvania; a pig farm in Cochabamba, Bolivia; and a Benedictine monastery in Cullman, Alabama; or what inspired a thoroughly liberated and domestically challenged woman like me to suddenly take up baking and knitting and needlework.

  I wasn’t sure how to explain to my unsuspecting hairstylist that the reason I hadn’t cut my hair in a year was because two thousand years ago, a Jewish tentmaker wrote a letter to his friends in the city of Corinth in which he mentioned that “if a woman has long hair, it is her glory” (1 Corinthians 11:15).

  But because small-town hair salons represent the last remaining vestiges of a storytelling culture, and because you can’t exactly make a run for it once someone’s wrapped you in a plastic cape and clamped a dozen butterfly clips in your hair, I figured I might as well start from the beginning.

  So, over the roar of hair dryers and the prattle of gossip, as little clumps of my “glory” fell to the floor, I told her about my year of biblical womanhood . . .

  My husband, Dan, and I had a long-standing agreement that we would start a family as soon as we became independently wealthy or I turned thirty, whichever happened first. This arrangement suited me just fine until my twenty-ninth birthday, which happened on June 8, 2010, four months before this experiment of mine began.

  It was a few days after my birthday that I sat on a living room floor crowded with toddlers, wrapping paper, inflated balloons, and deflated moms, wondering to myself if this was it—my last year of freedom. A teary young mom had just recounted in excruciating detail the suspicious contents of her two-year-old’s diaper, when, as always seems to happen after a group of moms exchanges horror stories about parenting, someone asked in that familiar, cajoling voice, “So when can we expect a baby from you, Rachel?”

  I’ve come to welcome this question as a compliment, an invitation of sorts. But pushing thirty left me with fewer acceptable responses, and the truth—that I’m absolutely, inexplicably terrified of motherhood—was too embarrassing to speak aloud. It crossed my mind that I could get away with a lie. You know: shrug my shoulders, conjure up some tears, and say something about God’s perfect timing to imply that we were trying, because, really, who’s going to conduct a thorough investigation into that? But instead I found myself saying, “I think I’d like to write another book first,” which came across a lot more smugly than I intended.

  Dan certainly wasn’t pushing parenthood. He’s the kind of guy who values efficiency above all else, and after seven years of marriage, our two-person family unit moved through the world like a SWAT team. We communicated mostly in code and with hand motions, tackling everything from chores to road trips to our two home businesses as a highly organized team. Tasks were silently assigned to whoever could finish them first, so we wasted little time talking about division of labor or “roles.” When it was time for dinner, someone made it. When the money dried up, someone took on another client. When the sponge next to the kitchen sink started to smell like death, Dan threw it out.

  We’d seen what a few diaper bags and car seats could do to this situation, so whenever I brought up the issue of children, Dan shrugged his shoulders and said, “We’re in no hurry.” I’d quickly agree and then change the subject, pretending that the rhythmic gonging reverberating throughout my entire body was something other than my biological clock going ballistic on me.

  But it wasn’t just my friends pushing procreation; it was my church.

  I was raised evangelical, which means I
spent a good part of my life feeling sorry for the rest of humanity on account of its certain destiny in hell. This was not something my parents taught me directly, just something I picked up from preachers, Sunday school teachers, and Christian playmates along the way. After hearing time and again that “wide is the path that leads to destruction,” I just assumed that Buddhists went to hell for worshipping Buddha, Catholics went to hell for worshipping Mary, and Al Gore went to hell for worshipping nature. I didn’t even think to have a faith crisis about it until college.

  The first time I saw Joyce Meyer preaching on TV, I figured she was going to hell too. I was about nine years old at the time, and I remember she wore a fuchsia suit, a short haircut, and massive gold earrings. Pacing back and forth on the stage, with a microphone in one hand and a Bible in the other, Joyce spoke with a conviction and urgency I’d never witnessed before. Her confidence frightened me. I wondered how she could be so brazen in the midst of her sin, how she could go on speaking about “the favor of our Lord,” when everyone knows ladies aren’t supposed to preach from the Word of God. According to my Sunday school teacher, that was a job the Bible reserved for men.

  By that time, I’d received a lot of mixed messages about the appropriate roles of women in the home, the church, and society, each punctuated with the claim that it was God’s perfect will that all women everywhere do this or that. In my world, women like Joyce Meyer were considered heretics for preaching from the pulpit in violation of the apostle Paul’s restriction in 1 Timothy 2:12 (“I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent”), while conservative Mennonites were considered legalistic for covering their heads in compliance with his instructions in 1 Corinthians 11:5 (“Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head”). Pastors told wives to submit to their husbands as the apostle Peter instructed in 1 Peter 3:1, but rarely told them to refer to their husbands as “master” as he instructed just three sentences later in 1 Peter 3:6. By the time I was twelve, I learned I could single-handedly ruin a boy’s relationship with God by the length of my skirt or the cut of my blouse (Matthew 5:27–28), but that good looks and pretty clothes weren’t all bad, because that’s how Queen Esther saved the Jews.