A Year of Biblical Womanhood

by Rachel Held Evans

  This is why, when Glenn Beck gets on TV and tells Christians to leave churches that advocate social justice, I slap the screen with the backside of my sandal. Justice is one of the most consistent and clear teachings of Scripture, and traditionally, a crucial function of the Church.1 A recent study found that Americans who read their Bibles regularly are 35 percent more likely to say it is important to “actively seek social and economic justice” than those who own a Bible but don’t bother to open it too often.2

  So what did all of this mean for my year of biblical womanhood?

  I noticed right away that women in Scripture seem particularly concerned with justice. King Lemuel’s mother reminded her son to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8–9). The “woman of valor” of Proverbs 31 “opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy” (V. 20). Hannah praises a God who “raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap” (1 Samuel 2:8), and in the Magnificat, Mary vows to serve the God who “has lifted up the humble” and “filled the hungry with good things” (Luke 1:52–53). Women like Tabitha are praised in the Bible, while Amos compares women who “oppress the poor and crush the needy” to cows who will be “taken away with hooks” (4:1–2).

  I didn’t want to be taken away with meat hooks, or worse yet, compared to a cow, so I dedicated the month of July to practicing justice.

  Dan and I already gave to several charities, and we even volunteered from time to time, but these were acts of mercy that had little effect on our day-to-day lives. For the project, I wanted to focus on where the bulk of our money actually went by examining our habits as consumers, particularly what came into the house each week and what left the house each week. This meant taking a hard look at what we ate and what we threw away to see how those habits affected other people and the planet. I also wanted to learn more about the ways women across the world are affected by injustice, so I committed to reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s highly acclaimed book, Half the Sky, which describes how empowering women can lift entire communities out of poverty and suffering.

  This was all I had planned for the month in my initial outline, but things got a lot more interesting when, in June, I got a call from World Vision inviting me to travel with a team of bloggers to Bolivia for a week.

  Bolivia. Like, in South America.

  The trip was scheduled for the end of July, and the purpose was to give me a firsthand look at how the organization—one of the largest charities in the world—operates on the ground, and to raise funds for World Vision’s child sponsorship program by sharing my experience on the blog.

  Opportunities like this one don’t come around that often, especially in years in which you are attempting to obey the Bible literally, so in addition to studying up on ethical consumption and reading Half the Sky, I found myself prepping for my month of justice by getting vaccinated for yellow fever.

  “They’re suggesting I get a typhoid shot too,” I told Dan over my cell phone from the health clinic. “It’s not required for the visa; just a precaution.”

  “Well, sure, sweetie. Whatever you think.”

  “It costs ninety-five bucks.”

  Dan was quiet for a few seconds. Then, “You can recover from typhoid, right?”

  It was a low point in our personal finance history, but the beginning of my biggest adventure in biblical womanhood yet.

  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?

  —1 JOHN 3:17 NRSV

  The cool washcloth over my eyes did little to dull the relentless pulses of pain assaulting my sinuses, head, and shoulders. I’d slept for eleven hours straight, and still no relief. When I tried to sit up, it was as though a magnetic pull forced me back down into the damp, twisted sheets. I was too tired to throw up again, too nauseated to move. My limbs felt heavy. The room spun around. So I lay in the fetal position for hours more, listening to the gentle swoosh of the ceiling fan and praying for death.

  No, I didn’t get typhoid.

  I quit coffee, cold turkey.

  There were several reasons for doing so. First, Dan had been pestering me about kicking my caffeine habit for years, and now, with the power invested in him by Commandment #1, he’d become insistent.

  “You going to quit caffeine this week?” he kept asking throughout the year.

  I managed to put him off for ten months by laughing like he’d just told a good joke, but with Bolivia approaching, I’d been entertaining the notion of quitting anyway. My experience with international travel, particularly in the third world, had taught me that a dependency on two to three cups of coffee each morning can swiftly turn into a liability when you’re staying with a family without a microwave or dishwasher, much less a coffeemaker, or when you’re on a train from Rishikesh to Delhi and everything you’ve ingested so far has resulted in explosive diarrhea. I didn’t want to experience South America in a fog because of a missed cup of coffee . . . even though South America seemed like just about the best place in the world to find one.

  More important, my research into consumerism and trade practices had revealed that little to none of the money I shelled out to the big coffee companies each month actually reached the farmers who grew the beans. While demand for coffee has surged over the past twenty years, the price per pound paid to growers has plummeted. Consumers want cheap coffee, and corporations want to keeping posting record profits, and as a result, many of the 25 million farmers who grow coffee for a living are forced to sell their coffee at prices far below the cost of production. Despite long hours in the fields, they struggle to earn a living wage that can support their families.3

  The good news is that there are simple ways to ensure that, in the words of activist Deborah James, you “never have to voluntarily put someone in a situation of poverty, exploitation and debt just to enjoy a cup of joe.”4 These days, you can find an array of fair trade coffee products online, at most grocery stores, and even at Starbucks. You just have to look for the black-and-white “fair trade certified” symbol on the package, which ensures that farmers received a guaranteed minimum price for what they produced, that working conditions were safe and ethical, that no child labor was employed, and that workers have a say in the functioning of the farming cooperative.

  The bad news, at least for me, is that fair trade coffee is more expensive than what I’d grown accustomed to buying (as it should be, in order for farmers to actually earn a profit), and grocery stores in Dayton aren’t always stocked with the fair trade options. In order to stick to my resolution to only drink fair trade coffee, I had to reduce my dependency, so that my coffee consumption wouldn’t break the bank and so that, in the event that fair trade options weren’t available, I wouldn’t be tempted to settle for my old plastic canister brands. My three-cup addiction was unhealthy enough as it was. I hated the idea of remaining addicted to a product that, when mindlessly consumed, keeps millions of people in poverty. I wanted to get back to the point that coffee was something I enjoyed, not something I needed, so on the morning of July 3, I declared my independence from caffeine and refused to turn on the coffeepot.

  The migraine arrived at about three that afternoon.

  I went to bed around seven.

  The next morning I woke up at eleven, threw up, and immediately crawled back into bed. My state resembled that which theologian C. S. Lewis imagined for the willfully damned: “shrunk and shut up in themselves . . . Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut.”5

  Dan poked his head in at around four that afternoon to see if I was still alive.

  I rose a few hours later to eat, shower, and curse the day I was born.

  Then I spent another feverish night curled up in the fetal position, as a bunch of kids down the road set off fireworks like they had some sort o
f right to do so.

  The cycle repeated itself for two more days.

  Through it all, I discovered yet another advantage to working from home: you can successfully undergo detox without a whole lot of people noticing. Readers assumed I’d taken a long weekend for the holiday. Friends figured their Fourth of July cookouts included some kind of food that for biblical reasons I couldn’t consume. My family was used to me being distant and crabby. I suffered alone . . . which is exactly how someone who hasn’t washed her hair or put on a bra for three days wants it to be.

  Finally, after a week, the headache went away, and I began thinking clearly again, clearly enough to wonder what the heck had convinced my caffeinated self to follow all the Bible’s commandments for women as literally as possible for a year. I found a nice array of fair trade coffee shops online as well as a fair trade, naturally decaffeinated, organic coffee brand at BI-LO that will probably cost my future children their college tuition, but which gives me access to good coffee whenever I get a craving.6 The next task in my month of justice proved a lot less traumatic, even though it involved reexamining a staple product in the Evans household: chocolate.

  As it turns out, the majority of the world’s cocoa beans come from West Africa, where farmers sell to major chocolate companies like Hershey’s, Nestlé, and Mars. For the last decade, media reports have detailed horrific working conditions on these cocoa farms, including what can only be described as child slavery. According to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, there are around 285,000 children working on African cocoa farms. Many of these children have been trafficked from neighboring countries, kidnapped from their families and forced to work without pay on the cocoa farms. The BBC reports that the going rate for a young boy in Mali is around thirty dollars.7 Conditions are hazardous, and child workers are often abused. In fact, the International Labor Rights Fund recently sued the U.S. for failing to enforce laws prohibiting the import of products made with child labor, but the big chocolate companies continue to dodge the numerous deadlines set by Congress to regulate their trade practices.8 A quick survey of the chocolate on our snack shelf revealed that all of it came from chocolate companies associated with child slavery.

  I’d love to say I suffered for Jesus on this one, but let me tell you, fair trade chocolate is spectacularly delicious. I asked friends for recommendations, then purchased four chocolate bars from three different fair trade retailers to see which ones Dan and I liked the best. The official taste test, accompanied by a tall glass of milk for Dan and a bottle of rosé for me, began with Green & Black’s Dark 70%, the only fair trade bar I could find in Dayton. I broke off two squares, and together we indulged in one minute of cool, bittersweet chocolate ecstasy. I gave the Green & Black’s a 4.5 out of 5. Dan gave it a 4.

  Next we tried the Divine Milk Chocolate bar, which we didn’t like as much, just because we generally preferred dark. Then came the Equal Exchange Organic Dark Chocolate with Almonds, which I officially declared the most wonderful thing I’d ever put in my mouth. I gave it a 5. Dan gave it a 3. We finished with Divine 70% Dark Chocolate with Raspberries, a rich and tart little bite of heaven that we both agreed deserved a 4.

  Who knew justice could be so delicious?

  While buying and eating fair trade chocolate bars was easy enough, eliminating every trace of big-brand chocolate from our pantry proved a lot more challenging. From the chocolate chunks in our granola bars to baking chips to hot chocolate mix, I found the stuff everywhere, and alternatives were expensive and hard to come by. But knowing what I did about the modern-day slave trade, I couldn’t just shrug it off, not anymore.

  The coffee-and-chocolate experiment forced me to confront an uncomfortable fact to which I suspect most Americans can relate: I had absolutely no idea where the majority of my food came from. I didn’t know how much it should actually cost, how it affected the people who harvested and prepared it, or what sort of toll its production took on the planet. I never thought to question the fact that I could purchase a plump red tomato in the middle of January or ask myself why I was willing to regularly ingest a product we call “cheese food.”

  So I dedicated the rest of the week, and indeed the rest of the year, to learning more about our habits as consumers. The results were shocking and in some cases disturbing. I’d never realized the degree to which big corporations rely on the mindless habits of consumers to get away with exploitation and neglect. We started to make adjustments here and there, sometimes paying a little extra for items that were fairly traded and, as far as we could tell, ethically produced. It wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t cheap, but it would be one of the most important long-term changes to come out of the project. In a small but daily way we were doing our part to repair the world.

  Dan’s Journal

  July 15, 2011

  This month Rachel has been focusing on charity and justice. This includes learning more about where the things we consume come from and how our actions can affect the lives of those living thousands of miles away. We’ve started recycling, which is a bit of a feat in Dayton since the city doesn’t offer recycling services. The nearest place to recycle glass and plastic is about a half hour away. So far, “recycling” has meant piling pizza boxes, milk cartons, paper, plastic, and glass containers in various places around the kitchen and laundry room with the expectation that, at some point, we’ll try to bring it down to Soddy-Daisy, (yes, that’s the name of the town), where we can recycle them. While living in New Jersey, I got into the habit of recycling, so it was strange to throw everything away when I moved to Dayton. If we could just throw all the recycling into one container and all the trash into the other, life would be a lot easier. But maybe life isn’t supposed to be easy. And how hard is my life, really, when I consider it a bother to sort materials into separate disposal units?

  Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.

  “It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century,” wrote Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. “In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world.”9

  So begins the book that forever enlarged my view of what it means to fight for women’s equality. In Half the Sky, Kristof and WuDunn, the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their international reporting for the New York Times, explore the worldwide scourges of sex trafficking, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality and explain in vivid detail how investing in the health and autonomy of women can lift millions out of poverty.

  They share the stories of women like Meena Hasina, a young Indian woman who was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery when she was nine years old. When she escaped and contacted the police, the police only laughed at her, for they were regular customers at the brothel in which she was enslaved. There are at least 3 million women and girls like Meena enslaved in the sex trade.

  And the story of Dina, a seventeen-year-old Congolese girl who was gang-raped by five men on her way home from working in the fields. The men shoved a large stick through Dina’s vagina, creating a debilitating fistula—a common ailment among rural African women who have been raped or who suffered through traumatic childbirth without medical attention. Women ages fifteen to forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

  And the story of Prudence Lemokouno, a twenty-four-year-old mother of three from Cameroon who went into labor seventy miles from the nearest hospital without any prenatal care. After three days of labor, her untrained birth attendant sat on Prudence’s stomach and bounced up and down to try to get the baby out, rupturing Prudence’s uterus. She d
ied a few days later. A woman like Prudence dies in childbirth every minute.

  In addition to excruciating stories like these, Kristoff and WuDunn share the stories of women like Sunitha Krishnan, a tiny but spry Hindu woman from Hyderabad, India, who, after being gang-raped as a young woman, devoted her life to fighting sex trafficking. And Catherine Hamlin, a gynecologist who has presided over more than twenty-five thousand fistula surgeries in Ethiopia. And Sakena Yacoobi, who even under the oppressive rule of the Taliban, opened eighty secret schools for girls.

  “Women aren’t the problem,” wrote Kristoff and WuDunn, “but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.”10

  Indeed, UNICEF reports that the ripple effects of empowering women can change the future of a society. It raises economic productivity, reduces infant mortality, contributes to overall improved health and nutrition, and increases the chances of education for the next generation.11 Several studies suggest that when women are given control over the family spending, more of the money gets devoted to education, medical care, and small business endeavors than when men control the purse strings.12 Similarly, when women vote and hold political office, public spending on health increases and child mortality rate declines.13 Many counterterrorist strategists see women’s empowerment as key to quelling violence and oppression in the Middle East, and women entering the workforce in East Asia generated economic booms in Malaysia, Thailand, and China.14