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funny
slow-paced
Wow! I could say so many things about this one! It was silly and lighthearted and at the same time profound and sacred all rolled into a memoir style as only Rachel Held Evans can accomplish. It made me think, it made me laugh, and it will stick with me for a long time to come!
I'm a huge fan of Rachel Held Evans and this book does not disappoint. Well-written and humorous, she takes tough passages in the Bible, related to women, and explores what modern life might look like if we lived those passages literally. I know there's been a lot of hoopla about how she misconstrues the Bible, but I didn't find that to be the case at all. She has done solid research and simply lays out a different way to view Biblical passages.
This book would be a fantastic small group study for so many different reasons. You could decide to talk about the things she experienced, you could reflect on the Bible passages she includes, or - perhaps my favorite part of the book - you could look simply at the stories of overlooked women in the Bible included before each chapter.
Whether or not you agree with what she has to say, this book DOES make you want to dive into your Bible and really look at what it says about being a woman. There aren't enough books out there that do that. That alone makes this book worth buying and reading.
Well done Rachel ... well done!
This book would be a fantastic small group study for so many different reasons. You could decide to talk about the things she experienced, you could reflect on the Bible passages she includes, or - perhaps my favorite part of the book - you could look simply at the stories of overlooked women in the Bible included before each chapter.
Whether or not you agree with what she has to say, this book DOES make you want to dive into your Bible and really look at what it says about being a woman. There aren't enough books out there that do that. That alone makes this book worth buying and reading.
Well done Rachel ... well done!
I’ve been meaning to read this book for some time and I’m so glad I finally have...Rachel is amazing...she is smart..well researched and humerus and I am so sad that she is no longer on this side of Heaven....she made room for me to have faith by actually being intelligent in her own dissection of faith and in this book she shares so many stories of her year that I can relate to...and shows her great care in actually understanding the context of the Bible rather than to sit back and silently let so many use it as a weapon. I wish I could have gone to one of the evolving faith conferences and met her in person.
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This was a wonderful book— RHE in full humor and honesty mode, struggling with the Bible, asking big questions, learning so much about women and the church and herself. She made me laugh and made me tear up, too.
This book was everything I needed and more. Evans was speaking right to me, filling me up, helping me discover how I could continue to pursue my goal of being a "Woman of Valor."
I recently got a tattoo that reads "Eshet Chayil." I feel the importance of that tattoo even more now.
I recently got a tattoo that reads "Eshet Chayil." I feel the importance of that tattoo even more now.
It's an interesting premise for a book, but I don't think it worked. One main reason: RHE is a blogger, not a scholar. On the flip side, I don't think this book would've worked if it was a biblical (or Jewish) scholar either because it wouldn't have existed. (Christian denominations and Jewish sects have all decided what is and is not mandatory to follow in the Bible's commands towards women. In the more orthodox Jewish circles, more is taken literally.)
As it was, it was a humorous but not serious look at the commands given for women in the Old Testament and New Testament. I enjoyed the vignettes of biblical women, and some of the applications given. These were the strongest parts of the book.
However, RHE realizes she doesn't have a definitive answer, and the book suffers for that. Because without a definitive answer, it's just one woman doing some things that people have recommended her to do (and sometimes not doing the things and having her friends do it for her).
I loved a few of her quotes, though:
"As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ. And following Christ is something a woman can do whether she is married, or single, rich or poor, sick or healthy, childless or Michelle Duggar."
"When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our tastes. In an attempt to simplify, we try to force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated and at times troubling holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says."
As it was, it was a humorous but not serious look at the commands given for women in the Old Testament and New Testament. I enjoyed the vignettes of biblical women, and some of the applications given. These were the strongest parts of the book.
However, RHE realizes she doesn't have a definitive answer, and the book suffers for that. Because without a definitive answer, it's just one woman doing some things that people have recommended her to do (and sometimes not doing the things and having her friends do it for her).
I loved a few of her quotes, though:
"As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ. And following Christ is something a woman can do whether she is married, or single, rich or poor, sick or healthy, childless or Michelle Duggar."
"When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our tastes. In an attempt to simplify, we try to force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated and at times troubling holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says."
A beautiful memoir that challenged me on my journey out of fundamentalism. I have reread portions of it several times and always find something to laugh, cry, be angry about, and to celebrate. Must-read if you've been on a journey to figure out what it means to a woman in American fundamentalism/evangelicalism.
Evans decides to live "biblically" for a year, according to what the Bible says about women. She spend each month focusing on a different virtue (homemaking, prayer, silence, etc.). This is a very telling commentary about how church's treat women in the name of Christ and where that treatment comes from