7. Champion women leaders in the Church. Whatever small influence I may have over the Christian community, I will use to advocate on behalf of my talented sisters who long to use their gifts to benefit the Church and the world. I will share my platform with women writers. I will lend my support to women leaders. I will cheer on women scholars and teachers. And I will speak out against those who try to silence them with patriarchal readings of Scripture that idolize the culture and context in which the Bible was written over the equality and freedom granted to each of us in Christ.
8. Partner with World Vision to work for the education and empowerment of women around the world. In addition to devoting more of my own resources to assisting my struggling sisters around the world, I will partner with World Vision to launch several annual advocacy and fund-raising initiatives on the blog that focus on women’s education and job training.
9. Honor Dan. It may not always be at the city gates, but Dan deserves my thanks and praise. He is patient. He is kind. He treats me with respect and is the biggest champion of my success. This project would have been miserable in the company of a lesser man, but he made it a joy. The gift of a true partner is one I should never take for granted. I need to thank him more often.
10. Keep loving, studying, and struggling with the Bible—because no matter how hard I fight it, it will always call me back.
That last one surprised me a little. I figured I’d be so sick of the Bible after this project was over that I’d have to take a break and start reading the Bhagavad Gita for a while. But somewhere between the rooftop and the red tent, I’d learned to love the Bible again—for what it is, not what I want it to be.
The Bible isn’t an answer book. It isn’t a self-help manual. It isn’t a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives.
The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God’s interaction with humanity.
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.
So after twelve months of “biblical womanhood,” I’d arrived at the rather unconventional conclusion that that there is no such thing. The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth.
Among the women praised in Scripture are warriors, widows, slaves, sister wives, apostles, teachers, concubines, queens, foreigners, prostitutes, prophets, mothers, and martyrs. What makes these women’s stories leap from the page is not the fact that they all conform to some kind of universal ideal, but that, regardless of the culture or context in which they found themselves, they lived their lives with valor. They lived their lives with faith. As much as we may long for the simplicity of a single definition of “biblical womanhood,” there is no one right way to be a woman, no mold into which we must each cram ourselves—not if Deborah, Ruth, Rachel, Tamar, Vashti, Esther, Priscilla, Mary Magdalene, and Tabitha have anything to say about it.
Far too many church leaders have glossed over these stories and attempted to define womanhood by a list of rigid roles. But roles are not fixed. They are not static. Roles come and go; they shift and they change. They are relative to our culture and subject to changing circumstances. It’s not our roles that define us, but our character.
A calling, on the other hand, when rooted deep in the soil of one’s soul, transcends roles. And I believe that my calling, as a Christian, is the same as that of any other follower of Jesus. My calling is to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. Jesus himself said that the rest of Scripture can be rendered down into these two commands. If love was Jesus’ definition of “biblical,” then perhaps it should be mine.
Philosopher Peter Rollins has said, “By acknowledging that all our readings [of Scripture] are located in a cultural context and have certain prejudices, we understand that engaging with the Bible can never mean that we simply extract meaning from it, but also that we read meaning into it. In being faithful to the text we must move away from the naïve attempt to read it from some neutral, heavenly height and we must attempt to read it as one who has been born of God and thus born of love: for that is the prejudice of God. Here the ideal of scripture reading as a type of scientific objectivity is replaced by an approach that creatively interprets with love.”3
For those who count the Bible as sacred, interpretation is not a matter of whether to pick and choose, but how to pick and choose. We are all selective. We all wrestle with how to interpret and apply the Bible to our lives. We all go to the text looking for something, and we all have a tendency to find it. So the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we reading with the prejudice of love or are we reading with the prejudices of judgment and power, self-interest and greed?
If you are looking for Bible verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate and honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an outdated and irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.
This is why 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? I suspect Jesus knew this when he said, “ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.
So what was I looking for when I started this project?
I think, at the surface, I was looking for a good story. And I certainly found one.
But further down, in the deeper recesses of my heart and mind, I think I was looking for permission—permission to lead, permission to speak, permission to find my identity in something other than my roles, permission to be myself, permission to be a woman.
What a surprise to reach the end of the year with the quiet and liberating certainty that I never had to ask for it. It had already been given.
“What shall I compare the kingdom of God to? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
—LUKE 13:20–21 UPDATED NIV
I tossed and turned the night before Rosh Hashanah, worried that I’d awake to find a massive glob of dough oozing out from under the bathroom door. But when I stumbled out of bed at 5 a.m. to check on the progress of my challah, I found it had risen impressively, yet within the bounds of my 18-quart container. Success!
“The dough has risen!” I shouted at Dan when he walked into the dining room a few hours later, rubbing his eyes and looking for cereal. “It has risen indeed!”
“Sweet. Go, Team Dan and Rachel,” he replied, still only half-awake.
As the blue light of morning lit the windows, I turned to Ahava’s instructions.
“Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface, separate the challah with a bracha (a blessing), and burn the portion,” they said.
This was the important part.
>
I dumped the dough out onto the table, removed a small piece with a carving knife, cupped the warm mound of dough in my hands, and whispered, “Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, who has blessed us with his commandments and commanded us regarding the separation of challah.”
At this point, most Jews burn the challah portion as a sacrifice, but I decided instead to save it for the tashlich ceremony I’d planned for the final day of Rosh Hashanah. In a tashlich, the repentant gather before a river or stream and cast bread crumbs and pebbles into the water to be swept away by the current. This symbolic casting away of sins is meant to remind them of the forgiveness of God, who “will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:20 NASB). This seemed like a more fitting sacrifice for me, so I wrapped the portion in aluminum foil and set it aside.
“Cut the dough into the desired number of loaves,” the directions continued. “Then cut the loaf section into pieces and braid. For Rosh Hashanah, consider rolling the challah into a circular shape to symbolize the cycle of the year.”
Ahava sent me a link to the Challah Blog, which included directions and pictures for braiding challah into the shape of a Croatian Star—perfect for Rosh Hashanah!4 Dan helped me separate the dough into six relatively even sections. We rolled each one into a long, snakelike shape, which we then cut into quarters. The quarters were rolled out, laced over one another in a star pattern, then coiled. They looked like doughy little pinwheels.
I found this part of the process to be great fun, much like messing around with Play-Doh as a kid. Dan left after I’d finished braiding three of the six loaves, confident that I could handle things from here on out.
“Place braided loaves on flat pans lined with parchment paper,” the directions continued, “cover with plastic wrap or a towel and place in a warm spot for 40–60 minutes until the loaves have approximately doubled in size.”
The warm bathroom worked before, so I placed the braided loaves, two to a pan, on the floor, on top of the sink, and in the bathtub, and closed the door. Sure enough, they doubled in size.
As per Ahava’s directions, I preheated the oven, made an egg wash, and brushed each loaf before sprinkling them with sesame seeds.
You know that scene in Castaway where Tom Hanks finally gets a fire started, and as it roars on the beach that night, he stands before it with his chest puffed out, his arms raised triumphantly, and in a deep, godlike voice shouts to the heavens, “Look what I have created!” Well, that’s exactly what I did when I pulled my first two challah loaves out of the oven to find them all soft and golden and brown. I, Rachel Grace Held Evans, had just created bread . . . basically ex nihilo.
The house smelled heavenly as, over the course of the morning, I baked four more loaves of challah. When Dan came home, he took a bite, said the challah tasted a little dense, and blamed himself for letting me knead it too long. But I didn’t care. The challah looked pretty and it was edible—tasty, even—an outcome that far exceeded my expectations.
Rosh Hashanah officially began at sunset, so at seven, just before the light went all blue again, I went out on the back deck to welcome the High Holy Days with the sounding of my dad’s shofar.
To blow a shofar, you’ve got to form an embouchure, like you’re blowing into a trumpet, and you’ve got to blow really, really hard. The idea is to call forth the faithful, to remind them of the mighty deeds of God. It was the shofar that was heard when the Ten Commandments were given, the shofar that brought down the city of Jericho, the shofar that for centuries has marked the beginning of a new year.
“Listening to the primitive wail of the ancient musical instrument, not only reminds worshippers of Judaism’s beginnings in a long ago, far-away desert,” wrote Rabbi Dosik, “but also touches the deepest and most basic places in the human soul—those places where each human being searches for and finds primordial beginnings and the mysteries of existence.”5
Unfortunately, what issued from my dad’s twelve-inch, lacquered, authentic ram’s horn that evening sounded more like a cross between a party horn and an elephant’s sneeze—the party horn being exceptionally loud and the elephant being especially congested.
Perhaps the residents of Jericho fled voluntarily.
Dan came out to see what on earth was happening on his back porch, and I tried again.
Another shrill honk echoed through the neighborhood, where a bunch of unsuspecting white Protestants sat at their dinner tables, wholly unaware that they were supposed to be celebrating the new year. It sounded even worse the second time because, with Dan watching, I started to giggle.
“I think you need a bigger shofar,” Dan said, “or more air.”
Then he gave it a try, with the same result.
Undeterred, I fumbled my way through the four distinct sounds to be produced during Rosh Hashanah: teki’ah, one long blast; shevarim, three short blasts; teru’ah, nine staccato blasts; and teki’ah gedolah, a final sustained blast. After I finished, and Dan uncovered his ears, I heard in the distance what sounded like an echo, a second plaintive wail issued as if in response. Was I not alone? Could it be that here, in East Tennessee, a Jew was greeting the New Year in this ancient, primordial expression of hope?
As it turns out, the shofar has the same effect as an ambulance and had excited some of the neighborhood dogs. Dan encouraged me to come back inside before we started getting phone calls.
The next night, we threw a little party to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and the end of my year of biblical womanhood. Tony, Dayna, and the girls came, and my parents, and Kristine, and some neighbors. Chris and Tiffany called to say that Early was sick and offered their congratulations. I sounded the shofar at each person’s arrival, scaring poor Aury half to death.
At sunset we gathered around the table, and I lit the holiday candles with a prayer:
“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
Who has sanctified us with His commandments
And commanded us to light candles of the holiday.”
Then I broke the challah and recited the blessing:
“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
Who brings forth bread from the earth.”
Next I poured glasses of cranberry pomegranate juice (because we were out of wine, and I didn’t have the heart to serve the leftover Mogen David we still had sitting in our refrigerator), and said the kiddush, accompanied by a special blessing for Rosh Hashanah:
“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe,
Who creates fruit of the vine,
Who made all things exist through His word.
You gave us, Lord our God, with love, this day of remembrance,
A day of shofar blowing,
A holy convocation,
A memorial of the exodus from Egypt
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King over all the world,
Who sanctifies the Day of Remembrance.”
As I explained to everyone the significance of the food on the table, I was surprised to feel tears gathering in my eyes. The round challah represented the cycle of life, but it also reminded me of my dear friend Ahava and the prayer she left in the Western Wall. The traditional apples and honey, meant to signify a sweet new year, reminded me of St. Bernard’s, for the honey was made by the beekeepers at the monastery. A pomegranate, broken in two so that seeds spilled out, symbolized good deeds for the year to come; the black-eyed pea dip represented good luck. A bowl of pretzels recalled the snacks that Mary served in Amish country, and the fair trade chocolate bars, my hope for a more just world. The only thing missing was some roasted guinea pig.
After we ate, I concluded with a final prayer for Rosh Hashanah:
“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.”
Dan’s Journal
September 30, 2011
Recently my mom said she was proud that
I’m able to support Rachel in her successful career. She said that was something that “many men couldn’t do.”
The comment revealed a strange absurdity about this “year of biblical womanhood.” For the past 365 days, I’ve embraced the role as the hierarchical leader of our relationship, yet at the same time, by doing so, I’m playing a supporting role in Rachel’s career. I didn’t know how to respond to the compliment until it hit me: Our roles change depending on context.
At its core, our relationship isn’t a hierarchy; it’s a partnership. What kind of person doesn’t want success for their partner? A weak, insecure, person. What kind of man doesn’t want success for his wife? A weak, insecure man. I’m not supporting Rachel like a passive piling supports a dock. I’m supporting her like the Saturn V supported Apollo 11. I want her to succeed in her pursuits, and will do everything in my power to make it happen. She wants the same for me. When I’m working on a film project, who’s taking the supporting role and feeding the crew? Rachel. When I took a year to buy, renovate and sell an investment property, who supported me throughout the project? Rachel. Our life decisions are made in partnership. We’re the ones leading our lives.
To be “a leader” is meaningless without context. A leader of what? Too many of us have succumbed to the idea that “leaders” are a specific type of people or that “leadership” is a character quality to be obtained like political capital—the more the better. But I view leadership differently. Leadership isn’t a goal. Leadership is a role. Wisdom and strength are what we should pursue. Not leadership. Wisdom is discerning when to lead. Strength comes from practicing wisdom. Leadership is a role that changes hands depending on context. In that light, it is important to learn how to lead not because you want to be “a leader” but because when your wisdom and strength have placed you in a position of leadership, you don’t want to screw it up.
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 30