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I love Rachel Held Evans. I still mourn her untimely passing. Her books that I've read so far are great. I just wish that I had read this book sooner. For one thing, it feels a little dated throughout. but I could have overlooked that if not for "Ahava".
Ahava introduces herself to Rachel via email, during the events of this book. She introduces herself as a returning Jew who is married to a rabbi and living in Israel. She offers to serve as Rachel's source for all things Jewish/ Old Testament. Here's the thing. Ahava's real name was Amanda Elk. She wasn't Jewish, or was her husband, Michael Elk, known as Michael Elkohen. They were undercover Christian missionaries posing as Jewish to gain entrance into Israel, where Elk functioned as a rabbi. Amanda, or "Ahava" was apparently an enthusiastic participant in the deception. So reading this book, and realizing who this Ahava actually was, was staggering. I am angry for Rachel, who accepted Ahava's identity in good faith, even becoming friends with her, and was deceived by her throughout. I'm also angry at people who take on marginalized identities for their own personal gain (in this case, perceived spiritual gain, but whatever). I had hoped that Rachel's interaction with "Ahava" would be limited to the chapter she was introduced, but following chapters showed that not to be the case. Rachel unwitting built much of this book based on someone else's lies, and it taints the entire reading experience for me.
If you are interested in more on this bonkers story, you can check out https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/undercover-christian-missionary-unmasked-gk89t8h1 or do an online search for Michael Elk/ Elkohen, Israel. in those articles, you'll see photos of Amanda with her family, which you can match to photos Rachel shared of her as "Ahava" in multiple blog posts. ex: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-an-orthodox-jew-response
Rachel passed away in 2019, so I can't reach out to her with my concerns, and Amanda passed a year later of cancer, so she can't defend herself. Grudges help no one, but I just don't want to read a book accidentally predicated on lies. I'll stick to the rest of Rachel's books and cherish her memory instead.
Ahava introduces herself to Rachel via email, during the events of this book. She introduces herself as a returning Jew who is married to a rabbi and living in Israel. She offers to serve as Rachel's source for all things Jewish/ Old Testament. Here's the thing. Ahava's real name was Amanda Elk. She wasn't Jewish, or was her husband, Michael Elk, known as Michael Elkohen. They were undercover Christian missionaries posing as Jewish to gain entrance into Israel, where Elk functioned as a rabbi. Amanda, or "Ahava" was apparently an enthusiastic participant in the deception. So reading this book, and realizing who this Ahava actually was, was staggering. I am angry for Rachel, who accepted Ahava's identity in good faith, even becoming friends with her, and was deceived by her throughout. I'm also angry at people who take on marginalized identities for their own personal gain (in this case, perceived spiritual gain, but whatever). I had hoped that Rachel's interaction with "Ahava" would be limited to the chapter she was introduced, but following chapters showed that not to be the case. Rachel unwitting built much of this book based on someone else's lies, and it taints the entire reading experience for me.
If you are interested in more on this bonkers story, you can check out https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/undercover-christian-missionary-unmasked-gk89t8h1 or do an online search for Michael Elk/ Elkohen, Israel. in those articles, you'll see photos of Amanda with her family, which you can match to photos Rachel shared of her as "Ahava" in multiple blog posts. ex: https://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-an-orthodox-jew-response
Rachel passed away in 2019, so I can't reach out to her with my concerns, and Amanda passed a year later of cancer, so she can't defend herself. Grudges help no one, but I just don't want to read a book accidentally predicated on lies. I'll stick to the rest of Rachel's books and cherish her memory instead.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism
In this book, Rachel Held Evans does three things: She looks at the myths and traditions of evangelical Christians surrounding women, she looks at what the Bible says about women, and she shows how the two of them usually have nothing to do with each other. And in the process, she sits in a tent during her period, calls her husband "master," tries to get through the entire Martha Stewart cookbook, and generally makes me laugh.
I, as an Episcopalian, found this book easier and harder than most. Easier, because I already agree with most of what Evans says. I have discovered as an adult that even the most conservative Episcopal church is more liberal than the average evangelical church. (To make sure of this -- that I didn't just zone out during Sunday school as a kid or something -- I asked my Episcopalian parents 2 things: 1 - had they heard of "complementarianism" as a philosophy of marriage/women's roles? Blank stares. 2 - I read out a passage about evangelical pastors calling women preaching "a virus" and protesting. Blank, horrified stares. Good. It's not just me.) It was harder because, as I just showed, I don't really KNOW a lot of the rules that are ingrained in evangelical thinking because I was never around it.
I would say this is a good book for liberal Christians to read so we can fist-pump, and for conservative Christians to read about things from another perspective. I never know how/when/why/whether to recommend Christian books to non-Christians...all I'll say is, if you get through the first 30 pages or so and you don't find it funny, only annoying/frustrating, it's probably not a good fit.
I, as an Episcopalian, found this book easier and harder than most. Easier, because I already agree with most of what Evans says. I have discovered as an adult that even the most conservative Episcopal church is more liberal than the average evangelical church. (To make sure of this -- that I didn't just zone out during Sunday school as a kid or something -- I asked my Episcopalian parents 2 things: 1 - had they heard of "complementarianism" as a philosophy of marriage/women's roles? Blank stares. 2 - I read out a passage about evangelical pastors calling women preaching "a virus" and protesting. Blank, horrified stares. Good. It's not just me.) It was harder because, as I just showed, I don't really KNOW a lot of the rules that are ingrained in evangelical thinking because I was never around it.
I would say this is a good book for liberal Christians to read so we can fist-pump, and for conservative Christians to read about things from another perspective. I never know how/when/why/whether to recommend Christian books to non-Christians...all I'll say is, if you get through the first 30 pages or so and you don't find it funny, only annoying/frustrating, it's probably not a good fit.
Like The Cross In The Closet, this book represents an experiment. For Timothy Kurek, that was consciously pretending to be something he wasn’t in order to better understand. That’s a version of what happens in A Year Of Biblical Womanhood, but it’s not the whole story.
The author – Rachel Held Evans, a blogger, evangelical in the Dayton, Tennessee and author of this and Evolving In Monkey Town - is a woman who takes on a year-long project to take what the Bible says to and about women as literally as possible. She does this as one who is happy to wear the feminist label, so this was always going to be an uncomfortable journey, if one that naturally fits a book. All of this presupposes that it’s possible to distill what the Bible says to and out women into list of things to do and be. Which is, to a certain extent the point of the project.
The sometimes bizarre sub-sub-culture of evangelical Christianity is not short of opinion when it comes to gender. We’ll be tackling different aspects of that opinion on the blog over the next while. Gender and sexuality are increasingly issues of fracture for churches and individuals – they are straws which break the proverbial camels’ backs. This is the stuff which causes people to leave churches; it’s important, and goes to the core of our personal identity. Books like this and The Cross In The Closet represent, for me, an inevitably imperfect but ultimately hopeful attempt to reframe the debate and provide something solid to stand on for those of us who feel increasingly alienated by each wing of the arguments.
In the case of Rachel Held Evans her project has her focus on a different theme every month: October (month 1) is gentleness, November is domesticity, March is modesty, June is submission. Naturally division by title makes things seems more tidy than they are in reality; there’s overflow and blurred edges all the way. Rachel is married to Dan, and they are people who approach marriage as a mutual, equal partnership; so inevitably there’s going to be some bumpy places along the way. There’s also a good deal of interesting conversation with people and exploration of texts to discover what the Bible may actually be saying or not saying. Take, for instance, Proverbs chapter 31:10-31, a section often titled ‘A Wife Of Noble Character’. So often this has been seen as a list of what women in general should aspire to be as wives, or should be working towards. Held Evans, tellingly, suggests that Jewish tradition sees the passage in a quite different way: it’s aimed at husbands, as a list of general strengths and achievements to honour and celebrate when they are seen and demonstrated in a woman. She reframes this as, for her culture, ‘woman of valour’, a blessing for a man or woman to speak over a woman. A throw-away example: her husband Dan greeting her tired arrival home, bearing take-away having not been able to cook that day, with ‘Pizza? Woman Of Valour!’. Burden becomes blessing. Who could possibly thought men could have got it so (wilfully?) wrong?
It’s at moments like that, and in describing the unlikely friendships she forms over year, that the book is at its strongest points. I got a little frustrated by not hearing more from her husband – there are excerpts from his journal, but for me not enough. I’d love to hear his view of his wife’s journey in parallel detail. Necessarily it’s a personal book, but given the profound impact such a journey is likely to have on a significant relationship, it would have been instructive to hear more from him. None of us, ever, exist in a vacuum; the conclusion of the book handles this well. I just would have liked a little more from Dan peppered throughout. Bizarrely, I was also a little annoyed by the photographs. Rachel’s usually pictured holding something she’s just described herself making; often that process has featured frustration, tears, anger. Yet in the photos she’s almost always smiling. Maybe there’s a cultural thing going on here, but to me the photos of a smiling Rachel near a passage where she describes sobbing on the kitchen floor seem a little incongruous.
I and my wife Bev have long been people who have held ‘traditional’ Christian interpretations of gender roles and characteristics at arm’s length. We don’t find ourselves as isolated from the evangelical community as Rachel Held Evans does, but we do often feel like we’re swimming upstream. Books like this give people like me hope .I don’t agree with everything she writes, but certainly I do with most of it. It’s oxygen - proof that we’re not mad, that there are other people who want to be faithful to the Bible but don’t want to assume that a ‘Biblical’ view of some issues is always what the vocally dominant say it is. The book shed light on some things and confirmed as viable what I had often suspected may be the case but hadn’t gone to the trouble of exploring. I’m humbled by Held Evans reaching the end of her year and finding herself confronting her sense of judgement and grudge-holding against those who feel differently. Given how suffocating it can be to hold views which aren’t recognised by the majority, that’s admirable. Experience suggests that the majority may not always be the majority – that when oxygen is offered, there are plenty there ready to breathe more deeply. May we do so – and speak. There’s more to people than a 2,000+ year-old list culled from carelessly applied texts.
The author – Rachel Held Evans, a blogger, evangelical in the Dayton, Tennessee and author of this and Evolving In Monkey Town - is a woman who takes on a year-long project to take what the Bible says to and about women as literally as possible. She does this as one who is happy to wear the feminist label, so this was always going to be an uncomfortable journey, if one that naturally fits a book. All of this presupposes that it’s possible to distill what the Bible says to and out women into list of things to do and be. Which is, to a certain extent the point of the project.
The sometimes bizarre sub-sub-culture of evangelical Christianity is not short of opinion when it comes to gender. We’ll be tackling different aspects of that opinion on the blog over the next while. Gender and sexuality are increasingly issues of fracture for churches and individuals – they are straws which break the proverbial camels’ backs. This is the stuff which causes people to leave churches; it’s important, and goes to the core of our personal identity. Books like this and The Cross In The Closet represent, for me, an inevitably imperfect but ultimately hopeful attempt to reframe the debate and provide something solid to stand on for those of us who feel increasingly alienated by each wing of the arguments.
In the case of Rachel Held Evans her project has her focus on a different theme every month: October (month 1) is gentleness, November is domesticity, March is modesty, June is submission. Naturally division by title makes things seems more tidy than they are in reality; there’s overflow and blurred edges all the way. Rachel is married to Dan, and they are people who approach marriage as a mutual, equal partnership; so inevitably there’s going to be some bumpy places along the way. There’s also a good deal of interesting conversation with people and exploration of texts to discover what the Bible may actually be saying or not saying. Take, for instance, Proverbs chapter 31:10-31, a section often titled ‘A Wife Of Noble Character’. So often this has been seen as a list of what women in general should aspire to be as wives, or should be working towards. Held Evans, tellingly, suggests that Jewish tradition sees the passage in a quite different way: it’s aimed at husbands, as a list of general strengths and achievements to honour and celebrate when they are seen and demonstrated in a woman. She reframes this as, for her culture, ‘woman of valour’, a blessing for a man or woman to speak over a woman. A throw-away example: her husband Dan greeting her tired arrival home, bearing take-away having not been able to cook that day, with ‘Pizza? Woman Of Valour!’. Burden becomes blessing. Who could possibly thought men could have got it so (wilfully?) wrong?
It’s at moments like that, and in describing the unlikely friendships she forms over year, that the book is at its strongest points. I got a little frustrated by not hearing more from her husband – there are excerpts from his journal, but for me not enough. I’d love to hear his view of his wife’s journey in parallel detail. Necessarily it’s a personal book, but given the profound impact such a journey is likely to have on a significant relationship, it would have been instructive to hear more from him. None of us, ever, exist in a vacuum; the conclusion of the book handles this well. I just would have liked a little more from Dan peppered throughout. Bizarrely, I was also a little annoyed by the photographs. Rachel’s usually pictured holding something she’s just described herself making; often that process has featured frustration, tears, anger. Yet in the photos she’s almost always smiling. Maybe there’s a cultural thing going on here, but to me the photos of a smiling Rachel near a passage where she describes sobbing on the kitchen floor seem a little incongruous.
I and my wife Bev have long been people who have held ‘traditional’ Christian interpretations of gender roles and characteristics at arm’s length. We don’t find ourselves as isolated from the evangelical community as Rachel Held Evans does, but we do often feel like we’re swimming upstream. Books like this give people like me hope .I don’t agree with everything she writes, but certainly I do with most of it. It’s oxygen - proof that we’re not mad, that there are other people who want to be faithful to the Bible but don’t want to assume that a ‘Biblical’ view of some issues is always what the vocally dominant say it is. The book shed light on some things and confirmed as viable what I had often suspected may be the case but hadn’t gone to the trouble of exploring. I’m humbled by Held Evans reaching the end of her year and finding herself confronting her sense of judgement and grudge-holding against those who feel differently. Given how suffocating it can be to hold views which aren’t recognised by the majority, that’s admirable. Experience suggests that the majority may not always be the majority – that when oxygen is offered, there are plenty there ready to breathe more deeply. May we do so – and speak. There’s more to people than a 2,000+ year-old list culled from carelessly applied texts.
challenging
informative
reflective
Parts make me cringe for a variety of reasons, but I’m glad I read it.
Rachel is becoming one of my favorite writers. She can be both serious and very funny at the same time. In preparing this book she tried to do all the things that Bible says women must do. In the process she found that the perceived limits on women, such as obeying husbands and not talking in church, are not what so many say. The not talking in church admonition from St. Paul was a direction for a specific group of women in a certain time and place, it was not a universal law. So too was the statement that women could not lead in church. Rachel found many opposing citations in scripture that showed women had been leaders, prophets and apostles. The parts where she tried to defer to her husband were very amusing. Her husband, Dan , finally asked her to stop. Visits to women in Amish, Quaker and fundamentalist traditions were included. The author also spent a week in a monastic retreat to explore silence. She began an online friendship with an Orthodox Jewish woman in Israel which contributed to understanding how some people follow the Biblical laws. In a trip to Bolivia she met very poor women.
The trip to Bolivia inspired her to change her shopping habits and find ways to avoid supporting slavery, child labor and exploitation of poor farmers. Fair trade coffee and chocolate is more expensive but the right thing to do. This book was written in 2012 and her latter works are getting even better but this is certainly worth a read.
The trip to Bolivia inspired her to change her shopping habits and find ways to avoid supporting slavery, child labor and exploitation of poor farmers. Fair trade coffee and chocolate is more expensive but the right thing to do. This book was written in 2012 and her latter works are getting even better but this is certainly worth a read.
Rachel Held Evans is a superb writer and speaker - she is actually a better speaker than writer, if I may say so. She has a way of being simultaneously provocative, subversive, and gracious even to ridiculous beliefs. What she points out is that there is no "Biblical" idea of womanhood, and that the various viewpoints taken by conservative Christians in particular are absurd, even if the only source we are using is the Bible.
Along the way, she shares tons of funny anecdotes.
Along the way, she shares tons of funny anecdotes.
Rachel's books are always good for a re-read. Always.
10 literal interpretations out of 10
10 literal interpretations out of 10
The reviews on this are a wild place to spend an hour. I didn't like this book not because of theological gripes with the author, but because it's my least favorite literary trope: white Christian (usually evangelical) women "experiencing" the "other."
Interesting topic and approach. I like the research that was put into it, not that I can say how accurate it was though which seems to be part of the contention around it. It was fun to read and see how she would do with the challenges she chose for herself and would make you think and reflect along with her.
I absolutely loved this book and would recommended to anyone Christian or not!