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Fantastic!
I often feel like Rachel Held Evans is my long-lost sister. I found myself outraged in places, laughing aloud at others, and I tried to pronounce far too many Hebrew words aloud at the gym. I heartily recommend this book to all women (and men!) of valor!
I often feel like Rachel Held Evans is my long-lost sister. I found myself outraged in places, laughing aloud at others, and I tried to pronounce far too many Hebrew words aloud at the gym. I heartily recommend this book to all women (and men!) of valor!
Eshet chayil!
This was a great book. As Rachel worked her way through the year, she (and I) learned a lot about what the Bible really says about and to women. I'm grateful that she did the project so I don't have to! Rachel is definitely eshet chayil, a woman of valor. Highly recommended.
This was a great book. As Rachel worked her way through the year, she (and I) learned a lot about what the Bible really says about and to women. I'm grateful that she did the project so I don't have to! Rachel is definitely eshet chayil, a woman of valor. Highly recommended.
Last month I read A.J. Jacobs adventure of living biblically and this month I wanted to follow up with a woman's adventure through the scripture and what it has to say about, as Held Evans says, true biblical womanhood.
Yes, Held Evans knows, or knew, that Jacobs had already done his experiment. She wasn't necessarily trying to one-up him, she was just doing her own experiment. Unlike Jacobs, who grew up with no faith, Held Evans grew up in an evangelical church and spent her growing up years being told what biblical womanhood was. Held Evans had her faith "what?!" moment in college and by the time she was approaching 30 she had figured out a few things about her faith and while avoiding the idea of motherhood (of which she is terrified) she decided she would spend a year living out true biblical womanhood. So she did her research on what that was, composed a list she called "Biblical Woman's Ten Commandments", and dove in. She decided to devote one month for a year to different virtues: gentleness, domesticity, obedience, valor, beauty, modesty, purity, fertility, submission, justice, silence, and grace.
Unfortunately 14 pages in and I'm a little let down so far. Yes, she did her research, however, it was within the confines of traditional evangelical takes on scripture. It lacked a true study of the meanings of the scripture and instead she relied mostly on the already popular theories about the scriptures. I felt like it also lacked a true experiment of biblical womanhood. She spent a bunch of time cooking up Martha Stewart recipes and trying to clean like Martha Stewart. Her point was to keep the house but the point got lost in translation I think. Her other month long experiments felt the same way, honest in their intentions but really kind of missing the point and the application.Upon finishing Held Evans book I felt hat Jacobs execution of the experiment garnered better "results", or observations, because he committed to the practices for an entire year not just monthly "bites". In reality anyone can do anything for a month, but for a whole year? That's dedication. So that is where her adventure in a year of "biblical" living fell flat for me. Additionally, I wonder if the foundation of faith she already had in her life played into the lackluster experiments. (I say lackluster based on what she chose to publish from her experiments, maybe they weren't as lackluster as they come across in the book.)
I do thank Held Evans for the many books she had the gumption to read on behalf of the experiment and because of quotes she included to explain a "biblical" point from noted authors and Pastors I have now expanded my "authors I will never ever ever read" list a little more to include: Mark Driscoll, Debi Pearl, Dorothy Patterson, Martha Peace (whose book The Excellent Wife I was told I "had" to read once upon a time, I didn't and boy am I glad. She, along with the other women mentioned in this "I'm never going to read this author" list perpetuate the shame and guilt Christian women feel and live in when they can't be "perfect" according to some man-made standard, not a biblical one.)
Just as with Jacobs book I did come away with some points Held Evans made that were good to hang on to but for the sake of the length of this review here I have only included those points on my blog. (beththebookworm.blogspot.com)
All in all, Held Evans does a decent job but it fell flat for me in light of Jacobs own experiment. I really didn't want to set out to compare and contrast the two but it is what it is when *you* decide to do something almost identical to what someone else already did. The comparisons are going to happen.
Held Evans rose to her fame through a blog first and then a novel about evolution and her grappling with those beliefs in the the Christian circles of life. This is the first novel of hers I have read, I think I would like to give her first one a go, and rumor is (okay not rumor but fact as she's been writing and blogging about it) she's working on a third book. While she writes well I wonder if her writing well is limited to a blog format rather than a book format. This criticism I would apply to myself as well. I think I am a much better "blogger" than "book author". It is what it is, embrace it! But I follow Held Evans on Facebook so when a blog of hers pops up that seems interesting I can go link up. While we may disagree on some points of the Christian life and faith she still has those gems that pop through the rest of her writing and I appreciate gems. :) The phrase, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is more applicable to life than I ever thought and that would be the case with Held Evans.
Yes, Held Evans knows, or knew, that Jacobs had already done his experiment. She wasn't necessarily trying to one-up him, she was just doing her own experiment. Unlike Jacobs, who grew up with no faith, Held Evans grew up in an evangelical church and spent her growing up years being told what biblical womanhood was. Held Evans had her faith "what?!" moment in college and by the time she was approaching 30 she had figured out a few things about her faith and while avoiding the idea of motherhood (of which she is terrified) she decided she would spend a year living out true biblical womanhood. So she did her research on what that was, composed a list she called "Biblical Woman's Ten Commandments", and dove in. She decided to devote one month for a year to different virtues: gentleness, domesticity, obedience, valor, beauty, modesty, purity, fertility, submission, justice, silence, and grace.
Unfortunately 14 pages in and I'm a little let down so far. Yes, she did her research, however, it was within the confines of traditional evangelical takes on scripture. It lacked a true study of the meanings of the scripture and instead she relied mostly on the already popular theories about the scriptures. I felt like it also lacked a true experiment of biblical womanhood. She spent a bunch of time cooking up Martha Stewart recipes and trying to clean like Martha Stewart. Her point was to keep the house but the point got lost in translation I think. Her other month long experiments felt the same way, honest in their intentions but really kind of missing the point and the application.Upon finishing Held Evans book I felt hat Jacobs execution of the experiment garnered better "results", or observations, because he committed to the practices for an entire year not just monthly "bites". In reality anyone can do anything for a month, but for a whole year? That's dedication. So that is where her adventure in a year of "biblical" living fell flat for me. Additionally, I wonder if the foundation of faith she already had in her life played into the lackluster experiments. (I say lackluster based on what she chose to publish from her experiments, maybe they weren't as lackluster as they come across in the book.)
I do thank Held Evans for the many books she had the gumption to read on behalf of the experiment and because of quotes she included to explain a "biblical" point from noted authors and Pastors I have now expanded my "authors I will never ever ever read" list a little more to include: Mark Driscoll, Debi Pearl, Dorothy Patterson, Martha Peace (whose book The Excellent Wife I was told I "had" to read once upon a time, I didn't and boy am I glad. She, along with the other women mentioned in this "I'm never going to read this author" list perpetuate the shame and guilt Christian women feel and live in when they can't be "perfect" according to some man-made standard, not a biblical one.)
Just as with Jacobs book I did come away with some points Held Evans made that were good to hang on to but for the sake of the length of this review here I have only included those points on my blog. (beththebookworm.blogspot.com)
All in all, Held Evans does a decent job but it fell flat for me in light of Jacobs own experiment. I really didn't want to set out to compare and contrast the two but it is what it is when *you* decide to do something almost identical to what someone else already did. The comparisons are going to happen.
Held Evans rose to her fame through a blog first and then a novel about evolution and her grappling with those beliefs in the the Christian circles of life. This is the first novel of hers I have read, I think I would like to give her first one a go, and rumor is (okay not rumor but fact as she's been writing and blogging about it) she's working on a third book. While she writes well I wonder if her writing well is limited to a blog format rather than a book format. This criticism I would apply to myself as well. I think I am a much better "blogger" than "book author". It is what it is, embrace it! But I follow Held Evans on Facebook so when a blog of hers pops up that seems interesting I can go link up. While we may disagree on some points of the Christian life and faith she still has those gems that pop through the rest of her writing and I appreciate gems. :) The phrase, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" is more applicable to life than I ever thought and that would be the case with Held Evans.
While the arc of storyline gets weighed down, Rachel Held Evans kept me engaged with her side trips. All in all, this was a well explored topic, just a little slow-going at times.
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
I didn't enjoy this as much as her previous book, perhaps because I found the information kind of old-hat, and perhaps because the presentation felt more like a blog and less like a book. There are a number of important conclusions from Rachel's year, such as "...engaging with the Bible can never mean that we simply extract meaning from it, but also that we read meaning into it" and "...there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not what does it say? but what am I looking for?" If your interest lies in this area, I would suggest Scot McKnight's The Blue Parakeet instead of or in addition to this book.
I'm so grateful to have found Evans' blog and now this book. She is a wonderful, courageous, and often humorous writer. She isn't afraid to take on controversial topics (or at least she doesn't let the fear stop her from writing about them). She tells the story in this book of how she attempted to follow the bible's instructions to women, literally, over the course of a year. I walked away understanding more about scripture, as well as was given many opportunities to think deeply about what I believe God's word means regarding how women are supposedly instructed to act, think, or believe in various contexts.
I had not been interested enough to read any of Evans's books before her untimely passing earlier this year, but I wanted to do so now in her honor, especially as I had become more sympathetic to her views over the years. This book was not my first choice - in fact, I thought it sounded rather gimmicky - but it was the first I managed to come across at a library, so I gave it a shot, and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I expected.
Despite its premise, the book is not really about trying to literally follow Biblical rules for women for a year. The activities Evan undertakes throughout the book, while partially just fodder for good storytelling by a good writer, really serve as springboards to discuss various facets of living as a woman in modern American evangelical culture. Evans is at her best when she points out how even the most "literal" sub-groups of Christianity conveniently cherry-pick their tenants (Why, for instance, do those who use 1 Timothy 2:12 to silence women in church never also use 1 Timothy 2:8 to require men to always pray with lifted hands?), or when she brings fresh interpretations from Jewish culture (where the Proverbs 31 woman is not an impossible standard that makes women feel inadequate because they can't do all of them, but rather a symbol celebrated in every woman whenever she does any of them - eshet chayil!). I also enjoyed her highlighting of often overlooked or underappreciated women throughout the Scriptures.
More conservative readers may consider some of Evans's characterizations to be unfair representations of sinful excesses of fundamentalism, rather than underlying flaws in some theological paradigms she may appear to be critiquing. Yet I think a charitable reading can still find value in shining awareness on the tendencies of evangelical culture to go astray, and one needn't even become an unequivocal egalitarian or card-carrying feminist to acknowledge that much harm has been done to women via the Church and its teachings intermingled with our culture, and that much concern should be shown to prevent mistakes of the past from continuing into the future. Evans excels at pointing out the sorts of simple inconsistencies that you would never notice from your own inherited bias but become embarrassingly obvious once someone else exposes them.
The book has some shortcomings that may point to its blog-world origins; some monthly thematic chapters seem to end a little too conveniently tied-up, while other threads seem to leave the reader hanging too abruptly. And with as much ground as the book covers, the book is sure to unsatisfy, and maybe even offend, stripes of nearly every theological strain at some point. But if you try not to take it all too seriously (I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud at least once), I think Evans's sincere heart to understand the Bible, and live in a way that loves the Lord and loves the neighbor, shines through clearly.
Despite its premise, the book is not really about trying to literally follow Biblical rules for women for a year. The activities Evan undertakes throughout the book, while partially just fodder for good storytelling by a good writer, really serve as springboards to discuss various facets of living as a woman in modern American evangelical culture. Evans is at her best when she points out how even the most "literal" sub-groups of Christianity conveniently cherry-pick their tenants (Why, for instance, do those who use 1 Timothy 2:12 to silence women in church never also use 1 Timothy 2:8 to require men to always pray with lifted hands?), or when she brings fresh interpretations from Jewish culture (where the Proverbs 31 woman is not an impossible standard that makes women feel inadequate because they can't do all of them, but rather a symbol celebrated in every woman whenever she does any of them - eshet chayil!). I also enjoyed her highlighting of often overlooked or underappreciated women throughout the Scriptures.
More conservative readers may consider some of Evans's characterizations to be unfair representations of sinful excesses of fundamentalism, rather than underlying flaws in some theological paradigms she may appear to be critiquing. Yet I think a charitable reading can still find value in shining awareness on the tendencies of evangelical culture to go astray, and one needn't even become an unequivocal egalitarian or card-carrying feminist to acknowledge that much harm has been done to women via the Church and its teachings intermingled with our culture, and that much concern should be shown to prevent mistakes of the past from continuing into the future. Evans excels at pointing out the sorts of simple inconsistencies that you would never notice from your own inherited bias but become embarrassingly obvious once someone else exposes them.
The book has some shortcomings that may point to its blog-world origins; some monthly thematic chapters seem to end a little too conveniently tied-up, while other threads seem to leave the reader hanging too abruptly. And with as much ground as the book covers, the book is sure to unsatisfy, and maybe even offend, stripes of nearly every theological strain at some point. But if you try not to take it all too seriously (I'm pretty sure I laughed out loud at least once), I think Evans's sincere heart to understand the Bible, and live in a way that loves the Lord and loves the neighbor, shines through clearly.
Hard to Review
I find this book hard to review, because you inevitably review her project along with the book. So I'll keep it short. It read like a blog, by which I mean it was at times a little too light and fluffy and lacking in analysis, but overflowing with personal anecdotes. I liked her chapter on the Proverbs 31 Woman, but wished she had gone into more detail regarding monastery life and the Offices. The book seemed rushed in parts and a bit tedious in others. It's not bad, but I guess I was expecting something more.
I find this book hard to review, because you inevitably review her project along with the book. So I'll keep it short. It read like a blog, by which I mean it was at times a little too light and fluffy and lacking in analysis, but overflowing with personal anecdotes. I liked her chapter on the Proverbs 31 Woman, but wished she had gone into more detail regarding monastery life and the Offices. The book seemed rushed in parts and a bit tedious in others. It's not bad, but I guess I was expecting something more.
Funny AND thought provoking! The author tries hard for the book to be relatable to all Christian denominations, which I appreciated.