00:00:00.800 - 00:00:23.200

It is my pleasure to introduce today Rachel Held Evans as the Robert F. Jones Lecturer for 2014. The Jones Lectureship in Christian Education was established in 1949 by the women of the church of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Worth, in honor of their pastor of 34 years, Robert F. Jones.

00:00:23.680 - 00:00:56.000

The lectures continue to be financed by that congregation on an annual basis. Rachel Held Evans is a New York Times best-selling author of two books. The first is Evolving in Monkey Town, How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. Rachel says of this book, it's about the relationship between faith and doubt and the challenges of asking tough questions about Christianity in the Bible Belt.

00:00:57.480 - 00:01:32.920

Her second bestseller is A Year of Biblical Womanhood, how a liberated woman found herself sitting on her roof, covering her head, and calling her husband master. This work chronicles her attempt to follow all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible over the course of a year. I think she might have some more to say about this afternoon. Rachel is a popular Christian blogger who has been featured in many media outlets.

00:01:32.920 - 00:02:04.720

Those include NPR, Slate, the BBC, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Times London, the Huffington Post, Oprah.com, and the Today Show, among others. She is a highly sought-after speaker at colleges and universities, at conferences and retreats, and she was recently named one of Christianity Today's 50 Women to Watch. Rachel grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and Dayton, Tennessee.

00:02:05.280 - 00:02:27.600

She earned the Bachelor of Arts at Bryan College in Dayton, where she met and later married Dan Evans. Of Dan, she says, he is the best part of my life. The second best is Alabama football. We'll have to let that linger for a moment here in Central Texas.

00:02:29.760 - 00:02:58.880

After working as an intern for the Chattanooga Times Free Press after college, she returned to Dayton to work for the Herald News, writing as the paper's humor columnist. In 2007, she won an award for Best Personal Humor Column from the Tennessee Press Association. In 2010, she won an INSPE Award for creative nonfiction in her book, Evolving in Monkey Town. Rachel describes herself in this way.

00:02:59.680 - 00:03:28.280

I'm A skeptic, a creative, and a follower of Jesus, figuring out this journey of faith one shaky step at a time. Please join me in welcoming Rachel Held Evans as our Robert F. Jones lecturer. Thank you.

00:03:28.280 - 00:03:38.000

Thank you for the warm welcome. I didn't think about how the whole Alabama thing would land in this group. Sorry about that. I'm so grateful to be here with you all.

00:03:38.000 - 00:03:54.720

I confess it's a little intimidating reading when I read the bios for the other speakers and saw who they were going to be and what they were going to be lecturing on. I kind of wanted to call somebody up and be like, you know, I'm A blogger, right? Like that's what I do. That's what they put next to my byline.

00:03:55.120 - 00:04:14.240

So I'm definitely going to be doing more learning here than teaching. I already know that I'm definitely not a super sessionist. So that's one thing I've picked up on. And I've been like laughing along at all the theology jokes, everybody's in a group, haha, new perspectives, haha, and I'm just like, yeah, so funny.

00:04:17.120 - 00:04:30.400

So I'm just kind of learning as I'm going, but you all have been very great and so warm and so welcoming. And a shout out to the overflow room. I was in there this morning and it is the place to be. So just, you got to do that at least once during this series.

00:04:30.720 - 00:05:07.200

So today I'm going to talk about my year of biblical womanhood or why I camped out in a tent during my period. But more importantly, I'm going to be looking at how we might engage the Bible as a conversation starter rather than a conversation ender in our communities of faith and in some fun and creative ways, which is what I try to do with this project. So I grew up evangelical. And everyone knows you're not a real evangelical Christian until you've learned to give a good public testimony, right?

00:05:07.520 - 00:05:31.520

And in a good public testimony, you know, you got to take them from lost to found, blindness to sight, wretch to born again Christian, in about 10 minutes or less with just the right amount of passion and wit to win over a few converts to Christ. Well, that's exactly what I did when I was in high school. I was asked by my youth leader to give my testimony. in front of the whole youth group.

00:05:32.080 - 00:05:38.800

And I prepared for weeks. I wanted to make sure it was really good. And when the time came, I got up there. I gave my testimony.

00:05:39.480 - 00:05:52.000

And I'm not going to lie, I kind of hit it out of the park. It was, people were weeping and flooding the aisles. Hearts were strangely warmed. It was, it wasn't that great, but at least I didn't completely blow it, right?

00:05:52.000 - 00:06:07.920

I felt like I had done a pretty good job. So after I gave my testimony, I remember I sat down next to one of of my classmates, a guy I went to school with and I went to church with, and he turned to me and he said, wow, Rachel, you're a really good preacher. Too bad you're a girl.

00:06:10.960 - 00:06:34.800

And it stung, but when he said it, I knew exactly what he meant. because he and I were part of a church tradition that forbade women from teaching and leading in the church. So any gifts I might have in that regard would not be used much outside of this context. I would not be allowed to teach men who were older than me or who were older than 12 or 13 or 14.

00:06:35.200 - 00:06:55.040

And so it was kind of a rough introduction into those dynamics in my evangelical church, but it's not just in evangelical churches that this happens. Even in churches that are affirming and celebrate women in leadership, women face a lot of double standards. They still face a lot. I hear some amens out there.

00:06:55.440 - 00:07:09.200

Yeah, women. They face a lot of assumptions about what it means to be a woman in leadership. And so this is something that applies to everyone, really. And nowhere is this more evident than in the biblical womanhood movement.

00:07:09.840 - 00:07:35.640

Now, the biblical womanhood movement in the US really began as a reaction to second wave feminism. Now, if you walk into any Christian bookstore, and this is Texas, so they've got them here, you'll find a shelf full of books calling for a return to biblical womanhood. Now, as I said, this movement sort of generated out of as a reaction to second wave feminism. So what you see in these books is a big emphasis on

00:07:35.720 - 00:08:00.400

on what the Bible says and biblical teachings around domesticity, motherhood, nurturing that gentle and quiet spirit, and submission to male leadership in the home and church. I even went to a biblical womanhood conference once where the first picture put up on the PowerPoint presentation was of June Cleaver. And I thought to myself, this isn't right. Dorothy Patterson puts it this way.

00:08:00.400 - 00:08:16.800

She says, keeping the home is God's assignment to the wife, right down to changing the sheets, doing the laundry, and scrubbing the floors. This is God's design, she says. This is true biblical womanhood. And I grew up with these teachings.

00:08:17.440 - 00:08:32.320

But the whole idea of biblical womanhood had always sort of intrigued me. for a couple of reasons. The first was that nobody in my evangelical community could agree on exactly what biblical womanhood was, right? You ask for Christians, what's biblical womanhood?

00:08:32.320 - 00:08:45.520

You get 14 different answers. Even in evangelicalism, we have these two competing organizations. One is called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. And they're a complementarian organization.

00:08:45.760 - 00:09:05.920

And complementarians hold that men and women share equal value ontologically, but they're created for different roles. And those roles are that men always lead and women always follow. And then in contrast to that, there's another organization called Christians for Biblical Equality, and they're egalitarian.

00:09:05.920 - 00:09:19.840

So they teach that both men and women are gifted in leadership and should serve based on giftedness rather than gender. So we have these two competing organizations, right? But what word do each of them use to describe themselves? Biblical.

00:09:20.360 - 00:09:46.000

Both of them claim to have the biblical solution to manhood and womanhood. So that always intrigued me. A second thing that intrigued me was that any claim to a biblical lifestyle, particularly biblical womanhood, and dare I say it, biblical manhood, biblical marriage, is inherently selective. Technically speaking, it's biblical for a woman to be sold by her father to pay off debt.

00:09:46.760 - 00:10:01.520

It's biblical for her to be required to marry her rapist. It's biblical for her to remain silent in church, and that's in the New Testament. Biblical for her to cover her head when she prays. Biblical for her to be one of many wives.

00:10:02.000 - 00:10:22.800

It's not exactly June Cleaver, right? So why were some passages of scripture considered biblical while others weren't? So one person actually told me, he said, just because something's in the Bible doesn't make it biblical. Which I thought, that's about as clear as mud if you ask me.

00:10:23.920 - 00:10:57.200

And as a woman, of course, the big question I had was, can it be that the Bible, this collection of poetry and letters and laws, can it be that it has one thing to say about something as complex and layered and nuanced as womanhood? these were the questions that were rolling around my head when I basically went off the deep end. I decided I would commit one year of my life to following all of the Bible's instructions for women as literally as possible. I called it my year of biblical womanhood.

00:10:57.200 - 00:11:06.160

I was kind of taking a page from AJ Jacobs. Anybody familiar with that? with him, The Year of Living Biblically. Well, I remember when I was reading that, I thought, oh, it'd be so fascinating if a woman did this.

00:11:06.200 - 00:11:24.240

And so I decided to do it. And so I started by immersing myself in this idea of biblical womanhood. So I studied every passage of scripture that in any way related to women. I even made a spreadsheet out of every passage that spoke of wives, sisters, daughters, anything related to women.

00:11:24.640 - 00:11:57.920

I consulted commentaries from Jewish sources, from Catholic sources, from more evangelical sources, everything you could imagine to sort of see how different people have interpreted and applied these passages through the years. And then I consulted with real women and did interviews with women who maybe were practicing their idea of biblical womanhood a bit differently than I. So I went to Amish country and hung out with the Amish and asked those ladies what they thought biblical womanhood was. I got to know an Orthodox Jewish lady very well, who I'll talk about her in a little bit.

00:11:57.920 - 00:12:08.640

I even interviewed A polygamist family. And this was fascinating. I thought, well, it's going to be hard to find a polygamist. He's going to go on record on my book, but this is what the internet is for, people.

00:12:08.880 - 00:12:27.760

So I got on the internet, found this great organization, and it's fascinating. You think of polygamists, sometimes you tend to think of fundamentalist Mormons, but these were evangelicals. And they were part of an organization called Biblical Families, which totally proved my point. So I was

00:12:28.280 - 00:12:42.480

Swift to interview those folks. And they were actually quite helpful and really interesting and were very open with their story. It was a little creepy. The organization, you know those logos you see on the, or the decals you see on the back of vans that have like mom, dad, kids?

00:12:42.800 - 00:13:06.320

Well, their logo was like a dad, 2 moms, and then a bunch of kids, which is a little on the creepy side. But they, They were wonderful and very helpful in talking with me about this. So in addition to all the research and all the interviews, I wanted to try and follow all of the Bible's instructions for women, Old Testament, New Testament, as literally as possible, trying everything at least once.

00:13:06.720 - 00:13:19.840

So this meant I had to submit to my husband. even when it came to the Netflix queue, which was the hardest part. I had to cover my head when I prayed. I had to grow out my hair, abstain from gossip.

00:13:20.160 - 00:13:40.640

I even had to call my husband master for one week. I felt that a week was a reasonable limitation to put on that. So obviously I took some of these biblical instructions to their most literal extreme, but I wanted to play around with it in a lot of different ways. So I'm going to just show you some pictures from the crazy things I did.

00:13:41.360 - 00:14:00.560

So contrary to what a lot of these biblical womanhood books say, you know, the Bible doesn't have that much to say about women and domesticity, but that's kind of part of what has crept into this notion of biblical womanhood. So each month I focused on a different virtue. It might be domesticity, it was gentleness, motherhood.

00:14:00.640 - 00:14:21.840

And these are virtues that are either explicitly spoken of in Scripture or that we tend to assume the Bible says about women. And so I was kind of just looking at our notions of biblical womanhood and investigating each one of those one month at a time. So one month I decided to focus on domesticity. I mean, is this really something that we see in Scripture?

00:14:22.320 - 00:14:34.160

So during that month, I learned how to cook. I didn't know before. Martha Stewart helped me. And I was asked, I made, I finished the month by doing Thanksgiving dinner for the whole family.

00:14:34.560 - 00:14:53.120

If you're wondering if that was the perfect turkey, it was. It turned out perfectly. I didn't get a picture of the pie that caught on fire, but that was just a timing issue. The Apostle Paul says in Corinthians that it is a woman's glory if she has long hair.

00:14:53.480 - 00:15:15.200

I'm convinced he never would have written such a thing if he'd seen what happens to me when I go a year without a haircut. It just sort of goes out, not down, you know. Looks like a small animal died on my head, but that's just what happens when I go a year without a haircut. The Apostle Paul also says that a woman who prays without her head covered disgraces her head.

00:15:15.600 - 00:15:47.320

And so I always had a head covering on hand for being in church or anytime I might pray, which of course was without ceasing, so I wore it all the time. And this is always interesting to me because this is one of those, the apostle Paul and in the epistles we see, these instructions about women and teaching and having authority over men that tend to get emphasized in certain circles of Christianity. But you don't see a lot of folks emphasizing the thing about the head coverings. And yet the language that's used there is very strong.

00:15:47.320 - 00:15:58.640

A woman who prays without her head cover disgraces her head. So that was kind of an interesting thing. Whenever I'm in debates with folks about this stuff, it's really tempting when I'm getting, chewed out for supporting women in ministry.

00:15:58.840 - 00:16:18.400

I really want to ask, so does every woman in your church cover her head? But I don't, because Jesus, and I try to be nice. So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure I covered the head covering situation. Oh, there's a verse in Proverbs 31, 23 that says, a virtuous woman's husband is praised at the city gate.

00:16:18.720 - 00:16:41.120

So I made a sign. Quite literally praised my husband at the city gates. I think most people just figured I'd lost a bet or something. I made a sign that says, Dan is awesome, and I praise him at the welcome to Dayton sign.

00:16:41.120 - 00:17:14.880

It's still in the back of the closet, and Dan will break it out every now and then, just as a reminder. So the book of Leviticus lays out some very specific stipulations for how a woman is to conduct herself during that special time of the month, visit from Aunt Flo, whatever we want to call it. So, and in Leviticus 18, 19, 20, in that range, it speaks about this time in which a woman is considered ceremonially impure. And during that time, it's for the duration of her period and for seven days after, she can't touch any men at all.

00:17:15.520 - 00:17:29.040

No hugs, no handshakes, no high fives, obviously no sex. And so Orthodox Jewish women still observe this today. So before you think it's just kind of this random tucked away passage, this is still a part of a lot of women's lives.

00:17:29.360 - 00:17:42.720

So I tried to observe this one month where I went seven days without touching any men at all. Of course, this was a little bit awkward. Of course, we ended up going to a wedding right in the middle of this. And it's called your nadah, your time of impurity.

00:17:42.960 - 00:17:48.800

So I was right in the middle of my nadah. I couldn't touch any men. And we go to this wedding and everybody's out on the dance floor having a good time. time.

00:17:49.080 - 00:17:55.880

And they're like, Dan, Rachel, come up and join us. Are you going to come out? And I had to shout above the music, I can't. I'm on my period.

00:17:55.880 - 00:18:08.880

I'm impure. And of course, by the end, I'm like, why is nobody sitting with us anymore? I don't understand why we're all alone here. So that was a little bit awkward.

00:18:08.880 - 00:18:30.520

Has anybody read Anita De Monk's The Red Tent? it's a gorgeous, beautiful book. It's A fictional account of how this author, a Jewish author, sort of imagined women during the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, how they might have spent their time during their nadah, during their time of impurity. And she sort of imagines they all went out to this tent and hung out together, and it was like kumbaya.

00:18:31.040 - 00:18:52.360

Scholars Scholars suspect that probably wasn't the case. Women were pretty critical to the functioning of a household at that time, and imagining them gone for a few days like that is kind of hard to believe, but it's a really sort of beautiful story. And so as a nod to Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, I did camp out for the first three days in my own purple tent, but it counts.

00:18:52.360 - 00:19:18.240

So again, awkward conversations with neighbors, but. Dan felt really bad about the whole thing, because he just did not want to explain to the guy across the street that his wife was in a tent because she was on her period. So Dan and I don't have any children, but I wanted to practice some of what the Bible says about motherhood, so we ordered a child from the internet. This is Chip.

00:19:20.240 - 00:19:31.040

We named him Chip because of the little computer chip that runs his evil, evil soul. And Chimp is called a baby think it over. Have you ever heard of this?

00:19:31.680 - 00:19:51.520

Baby think it overs, they hand them out in high schools to sort of act as a deterrent. And let me tell you, it's a very effective deterrent. because it's this little doll and he has all these sensors on his body that will tell you if you're holding him right, if you're feeding him right, if you're burping him right. And he imitates the sleeping cycle of a newborn.

00:19:51.760 - 00:20:08.720

So he wakes up every few hours, it seems like every minute, crying. And Dan and I got a little tiny taste of what it's going to be like when we have a newborn in the house. We were very eager to pack him up and send him back to Virginia, where he came from. It was kind of funny, though.

00:20:08.720 - 00:20:31.080

I took a picture of myself with Chip feeding him, with a little bottle, and I put it up on Facebook. And this mom left this comment, and she was like, Rachel, I'm really disappointed to see that you're bottle feeding. My computer kid. So I got a little taste of the mommy wars, and I didn't like it much.

00:20:32.880 - 00:20:44.480

Yeah, so that's Chip. I thought about sending out a post, at Christmas time where everybody sends out the little postcard pictures. I was like, oh, we'll do one of you, me, and Chip with little candy cane border. And Dan was like, no, submit to this.

00:20:44.480 - 00:21:15.040

No, it's not going to happen. And then this is one that I just kind of wanted to take to its most extreme fun level. There's a verse in Proverbs that says it's better for a woman, it's better to live on the corner of a roof than to share a house with a contentious woman. So one month I decided to focus on kind of kicking all of my contentious habits, which we decided included gossiping, nagging, complaining, exaggerating, and being snarky, which is the one that really got me.

00:21:15.440 - 00:21:35.760

And each time I caught myself in one of these acts of contention, but a little penny in the jar, which we called the jar of contention. And each penny represented a minute I would have to spend at the end of the month sitting on my roof doing penance for being such a contentious woman. Because apparently it's easier to live like that than it is to live with me.

00:21:37.320 - 00:21:49.920

Of course, all my Old Testament scholar friends were like, well, roofs would have been flat at the time and much more hospitable. But I mean, it makes a better picture, right? And so Dan would like to say that we've since replaced the shingles.

00:21:49.920 - 00:22:03.680

He feels that it's important that I note that. Okay. And then, oh, in 1 Peter 3, the Apostle Peter says that encourages women to submit to their husbands. as Sarah did to Abraham and called her husband master.

00:22:03.920 - 00:22:22.960

So for a week, I called Dan master. It was right around Christmas and I put little tags on all the presents that said to master from Rachel. He was a little concerned that people would overhear and think negative things about me or about us. And he said, you'd think this would be a turn on, but really it's not.

00:22:22.960 - 00:22:41.880

So you'd be surprised. Dan did not enjoy being called master. Of course, I also got to do a bunch of interesting things throughout the year based on what I was studying each month. So one month I studied justice and I got to go to Bolivia to see what one of my favorite organizations, World Vision, was doing on the ground there.

00:22:41.880 - 00:22:55.680

And that was a really cool experience. Met a lot of neat women there. I went to Amish country, like I said, and I just spent days in these people's homes, and they fed me, and they spent hours talking with me, and that was really fascinating.

00:22:56.960 - 00:23:24.080

Oh, and one month I focused on silence. And I wanted to look at the ways in which the Bible has been used to silence women through the years and kind of investigate those passages and talk about them and unpack them. But I also wanted to look at what you might call the upside of silence, because it's one thing to be silenced by somebody else, quite another to silence yourself before God. And so this is what I would do kind of every chapter, look at, how these passages can be abused, but also how they might be used.

00:23:24.400 - 00:23:36.240

And so for that month, I went to a Benedictine monastery for a few days to study silence. Also spent some time with Quakers. And for an introvert, a Benedictine monastery is like Disneyland. It was amazing.

00:23:36.240 - 00:23:52.960

I had such a wonderful time. You know how they call midday prayers sext, S-E-X-T? I wanted to title the chapter Sexting with the Monks, which I thought was super clever. But that got, I got an override from the publisher on that one.

00:23:53.920 - 00:24:13.120

But that was a really cool experience. I also celebrated all of the Jewish holidays. And so there I am, I made matzah toffee for, I guess that was Passover, and there I am blowing my shofar for Rosh Hashanah. And the lady who really helped me with a lot of the Jewish holiday things, and also just working through this whole year,

00:24:13.840 - 00:24:26.320

is a woman named Ahava. And Ahava's an Orthodox Jew who lives in Israel, and she and I are friends. And she offered to help me out throughout the year and just kind of be her go-to person. So every time I had a question, I could e-mail her.

00:24:27.520 - 00:24:36.400

Passover ended up being a lot more work than I thought it was going to be. And she kind of walked me through all that. I had to clean my kitchen out totally and wipe it down. It was insane.

00:24:36.560 - 00:24:53.920

But she just kind of stayed on call the whole time. And she even sent me her challah recipe, which I didn't mess up too badly. And we still are friends because of this project. But one thing Ahava taught me that I really, really valued and one thing she really helped me through was understanding Proverbs 31.

00:24:54.160 - 00:25:03.360

Now, how many of you ladies are familiar with Proverbs 31? How many of you kind of hate it just a little bit? Yes. How many of you are evangelical and you kind of hate it a little bit?

00:25:03.360 - 00:25:26.640

That's kind of where this thing gets pounded into our heads. So Proverbs 31 is this beautiful acrostic poem, and it's found at the end of the book of Proverbs, and it extols the virtues of an upper-class, ancient Near Eastern wife, probably a queen, And this lady provides food for her family. She gets up before the sun rises and she works until the sun sets.

00:25:27.080 - 00:25:41.760

She invests in real estate, plants a vineyard in her free time. She spends hours and hours at the loom weaving and selects the finest fabrics to trade with the merchants. She cares for the poor. She's basically like a Pinterest board come to life.

00:25:42.800 - 00:26:00.960

And This was never good news for me because this woman was always presented to me as the model of true biblical womanhood. If you want to be a good Christian woman, this is what your life will be like. And this is bad news for somebody who gets a panic attack upon walking into a Hobby Lobby.

00:26:01.200 - 00:26:11.280

I don't know how to sew. I'm not crafty. I'm not great at the domestic stuff. And so I always felt like I was falling short of God's ideal, of God's standard.

00:26:12.080 - 00:26:36.080

You can even buy a book called How to Be the Proverbs 31 Woman in 31 Days. You know, leave it to evangelicals to turn a poem into a to-do list. So I asked Ahava, I said, hey, this passage, Proverbs 31, is it a source of as much feelings of inferiority among Jewish women as it can be among Christian women? And Ahava was a little surprised by the question.

00:26:36.800 - 00:26:48.800

She said, Rachel, no. In my culture, Proverbs 31 isn't a to-do list. It's seen as a blessing. She said, in my culture, it's not the women who memorize Proverbs 31.

00:26:49.040 - 00:27:02.400

It's the men. The men memorize it so they can sing it as a song to their wives, to their sisters, to their daughters. which I thought was pretty cool. She says, my husband sings this to me at every Sabbath meal.

00:27:02.640 - 00:27:17.440

And she said, and it's unconditional. It's not based on what I've done that week, which I thought was kind of neat. Can you imagine a men's conference, a men's Christian conference that revolved around the passage of Proverbs 31? Never happens, and yet that was the intended audience.

00:27:17.680 - 00:27:29.960

I looked into it a little bit more, and sure enough, my Old Testament scholars help me out with this a little bit. And the first line of the poem there, a woman of noble character who can find. You'll see that translated, an excellent wife who can find.

00:27:30.480 - 00:27:55.200

a woman of strong character who can find, or something like that. But the Hebrew there is actually best translated, a woman of valor who can find. And the Hebrew is , woman of valor. And Ahava explained that in Jewish culture, this expression is used as almost like a version of you go, girl.

00:27:56.000 - 00:28:40.880

It sort of uses this celebration of women and all that they accomplish. So, like, if your friend gets that job she applied for, you'd say, Woo, woman of valor, you did it! You know, when somebody finally finishes up all their coursework for seminary, it's a good time to say, Woman of valor, you did it! When a woman finishes her last chemo treatment, it's a good time to hold her hand and look her in the eye and say, You are a woman of valor! And I thought this was so cool that I started using it in my conversations with my friends and on the internet. And when somebody finally finished a book they'd been writing for years and trying so hard to finish for years, I sent her an e-mail that just said, Eshet Hile, Woman of Valor.

00:28:41.320 - 00:28:49.840

I started using it with my friends. When my mom beat breast cancer, I made a big card that I even tried to do the Hebrew. It was a mess. It said, woman of valor.

00:28:50.240 - 00:29:03.760

And I knew I'd succeeded in sort of getting the word out when somebody sent me a message. She said she was playing Mario Kart with her five-year-old. And this is a mom, and she got a superpower. And her five-year-old turned to her and said, woman of valor.

00:29:05.200 - 00:29:26.080

And I thought, that's how this is meant to be used. And I love this idea of sort of taking Proverbs 31 back as a celebration of what women have already accomplished. Not as a sort of to-do list, not as a burden, not as some one more ideal that we could just simply cannot meet. I love this idea of using it as a celebration.

00:29:26.080 - 00:29:37.440

And that's how it had been traditionally used. And I found that really encouraging. According to Ahaba, Proverbs 31 isn't about what you do, but how you do it. It's celebrating the woman's valor.

00:29:37.680 - 00:29:54.520

So to apply it today, you know, if cooking and sewing and keeping the home is your thing, do it with valor. If you're a stay-at-home mom or a CEO, do it with valor. If you're a barista at Starbucks, if you're a student, if you're a pastor, do it with valor.

00:29:54.520 - 00:30:11.240

It's not about living up to a list of roles or rules. It's about living your life with bravery and faith. So of course, I learned this after I turned Proverbs 31 into a to-do list for the project, which was a nightmare. It was definitely the hardest month of the project.

00:30:11.240 - 00:30:24.800

I had all these sewing projects, and I actually don't know how that machine works there in that picture. And so what I did, I got, because I wanted to take it super literally. So it says she clothes herself in purples. I had to make a purple dress.

00:30:24.800 - 00:30:38.960

And she sells sashes, makes sashes and sells them to the merchants. So I made that Proverbs 31 sash and sold it on eBay. And it says she makes coverings for her bed. And I got in my head, oh, I'm going to make a quilt, whatever.

00:30:38.960 - 00:31:01.680

I made a pillow. But really I didn't make any of that because I got, I was supposed to take a month at making all of this and it was already two months into it and I was nowhere close to finished. So I just invited friends over for a sewing party, which some people find fun. And they came over and like all the ladies from church came over and it was done in like an hour.

00:31:01.680 - 00:31:30.000

It was awesome. And I felt like I could get away with it because it does say in Proverbs 31 that she provides food for her servant girls. I didn't tell them that they were my servant girls, but I made cupcakes, so I felt that I had fulfilled it mostly. Of course, the first question people always ask me when they find out that I did this year of biblical womanhood is, why, Rachel, why did you do this crazy, bizarre thing?

00:31:30.480 - 00:32:15.920

And I did it because I thought it would make an interesting story, of course, thought it'd make an interesting book. but also because I wanted to have better, more authentic conversations about this whole notion of biblical womanhood, not just so that I could raise the issue in my evangelical culture where it needs to be raised, but also so that we could talk about the Bible, you know, how we interpret it, how we apply it, how we speak about it with one another, how we wrestle with it. Because I think the reason we bump into so much controversy and so many problems over this idea of biblical womanhood or biblical manhood or biblical marriage is because a lot of people are looking to the Bible to function in a way it was never intended to function.

00:32:16.160 - 00:32:45.600

They're looking to the Bible to be a blueprint for living. And sure enough, if you open any of those biblical womanhood books, I promise you will see the word blueprint at least 10 times. One writer put it this way. She said, what if I told you that the God of the universe, the sovereign of heaven and earth, not only made himself known in his word, but also provided a complete blueprint for how he wants you as a woman to live your life.

00:32:47.120 - 00:33:08.720

Now, I can kind of see the appeal, can't you? I mean, if the Bible were a blueprint, if it spelled out exactly how we were all to live, think of all the difficult decisions we would avoid, especially as women. of all the controversy we would dodge. We wouldn't have all of this tension and conflict because we would all look exactly the same.

00:33:09.680 - 00:33:25.440

But here's the thing. I searched high and low. I combed through commentary after commentary. I spent a year of my life immersed in this notion of biblical womanhood, and I never found a blueprint in the Bible for how to be a woman.

00:33:25.880 - 00:33:48.560

And just when you think you've found one, like, oh, here it is, it's in Proverbs 31, or oh, here it is in 1 Corinthians. A woman will come along and will be celebrated in the scripture for breaking right out of that mold. Deborah doesn't fit into the typical biblical womanhood blueprint, does she? was a warrior, she was a prophetess, she was basically the commander in chief of Israel.

00:33:48.800 - 00:34:13.520

People like to ignore the story of Deborah when they're talking about women in leadership. Sarah doesn't fit into a blueprint or a mold. Esther, Tamar, Junia, Naomi, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Nazareth, Mary of Bethany, Holda, and Jael seen there exhibiting her gentle and quiet spirit by driving a tent peg through a guy's skull. None of these women look exactly the same.

00:34:14.240 - 00:34:38.160

And that's because the Bible doesn't communicate to us as a blueprint. God doesn't teach us in bullet points. Instead, the Bible is this collection of poetry, history, letters, laws, philosophy, proverbs, traditions, prophecies, and mostly stories. And stories are kind of hard to cram into a blueprint, aren't they?

00:34:39.360 - 00:35:07.040

So what I wanted to do with this project and what I want to encourage you to do in your own communities of faith is to return to this idea and to celebrate this idea of the Bible as a conversation starter rather than a conversation ender. Y'all are from Texas, so I know you've seen the bumper stickers. God said it, I believe it, that settles it, right? And this is not a unique sentiment to evangelicalism, though I know we struggle with it quite a bit.

00:35:08.000 - 00:35:25.760

We see this in every tradition and in many cultures and among Christians, where the Bible is sort of pulled out to be used as an argument. It's pulled out and used to end the conversation rather than to start one. And this goes back to the blueprint mentality. Think about it.

00:35:26.000 - 00:35:53.920

A blueprint, if the Bible were a blueprint, blueprints are designed to be very straightforward, if you will. The perfect blueprint would really require no conversation between the architect and the builder, right? So if the Bible were a blueprint, we really wouldn't have any need to talk to the architect, this is kind of a crude metaphor, but God, much less with one another. There would be no theology books, no rabbis, no midrash, no study groups, no seminary.

00:35:54.240 - 00:36:17.920

There'd be no 2.30 A.m. dorm room debates about predestination and free will, because we would have nothing to talk about. But instead, we're part of this dynamic, centuries-old conversation with God and with each other, precisely because the Bible is difficult to understand at times. Precisely because it's not a blueprint, not a list of bullet points.

00:36:18.400 - 00:36:41.120

And I think maybe God wants us to struggle through the Bible like this, because it draws us into conversation with one another. I think maybe God wants us to have these conversations with one another because being people of faith isn't just about being right. It's about being part of a community. It's about having people to talk to and the Bible gives us something to talk about all the time.

00:36:41.680 - 00:36:58.880

I think the Jewish culture has done a better job of preserving this in a lot of ways. I talked with Ahava about this and she said, So the other night we had a bunch of people over, her husband's a rabbi, and they had a bunch of people over, a bunch of other rabbis over for dinner. And she said, oh, Rachel, the conversation went late into the night.

00:36:59.040 - 00:37:07.520

They kept arguing. Nobody could totally agree. Everyone had a different perspective. We started running out of food, and it was wonderful.

00:37:08.720 - 00:37:31.960

She knew that it was that text brought them into community together. It gave them something to talk about and fellowship over and wrestle with. But we can't get at that when we treat the Bible as a conversation ender, as just another piece of ammunition in our wars with one another as believers. Now, obviously, there are principles of interpretation to keep in context.

00:37:31.960 - 00:37:58.800

I usually give this talk to college students, not seminarians, so you all know about the importance of context. audience, language, and understanding scripture. And those principles keep us from serious error, but it's easier to apply them when we've surrounded ourselves with a diversity of people to help us understand the text better. If you want to understand the book of Ruth better, speak with a widow, especially a widow in a developing country.

00:37:59.360 - 00:38:20.160

If you want to understand Jesus's parables in a new light, come hang out with me in East Tennessee and talk to some farmers. And if you want to hear the story of Exodus in a way you've never heard it before, hear it from a black preacher. We can't do this, though, if we treat the Bible as a conversation ender. If we fold our arms and say, the Bible said it, I believe it, that settles it, I know what this text means.

00:38:20.640 - 00:38:37.320

And we can't do that if we ignore the Bible altogether or sidestep the parts that make us uncomfortable and that lead to conflict. I don't love talking about those passages any more than you do, but that's part of what keeps us talking to each other. So we have to value that.

00:38:37.320 - 00:38:55.440

And we can't do that when we treat the Bible as a blueprint or when we disregard it altogether. I'm going to finish up with the story of Ruth, and then I'm going to do a little reading. Most of you are obviously familiar with the story of Ruth. Ruth's story happens during that really violent and turbulent time when the judges were ruling over Israel.

00:38:55.440 - 00:39:11.760

And it begins with Naomi and her husband leaving Bethlehem to escape famine in Moab. And Naomi and her husband have two sons who marry Moabite women. But then tragically, Naomi's husband and the two sons die. This is the worst case scenario for Naomi.

00:39:12.080 - 00:39:35.320

Leaving Naomi and her daughter-in-laws basically to fend for themselves. And a widow, being a widow in that culture basically left you pretty powerless and was kind of the end of the line. So Naomi, distressed and ready just to do the only thing she knows to do, goes back to Bethlehem where she knows some people. And that's where we have that wonderful scene on the road to Bethlehem between Naomi and her daughter-in-law, the Moabite, Ruth.

00:39:36.280 - 00:39:50.640

And Ruth says, your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. I'm sticking with you no matter what. But one of the reasons I love Ruth is that Ruth is a fascinating character to me because she basically broke every rule in the biblical womanhood book.

00:39:52.400 - 00:40:04.240

she certainly doesn't make it to a lot of the biblical womanhood books that we read in the bookstores. And that's one of the reasons why she's such a great conversation starter. First of all, Ruth was a foreigner. Ruth was Moabite.

00:40:04.480 - 00:40:23.680

Now regarding foreigners, the law was pretty clear about this. It said, Deuteronomy 7.3 says, do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods. And the Lord's anger will burn against you and quickly destroy you.

00:40:23.760 - 00:40:38.480

Strong language, right? And Moabites in particular were forbidden from even entering the temple. It's interesting in scripture too, you see the influence of foreign women blamed on a lot of things. Everything from the downfall of Solomon to the Babylonian exile.

00:40:38.880 - 00:41:02.320

The author of First Kings wrote this about Solomon. He loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh's daughters, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonites, bunch ofites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, you must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods. Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love.

00:41:02.560 - 00:41:24.560

He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines, and his wives led him astray. I love that the problem is that they're foreign, not that there were 1000 of them. And even foreign daughter-in-laws in the culture were sort of subjected to a caricature almost. The worst sort of daughter-in-law you could get is a foreign daughter-in-law.

00:41:24.840 - 00:41:44.720

Esau married two Hittite women who were described as a source of great grief to Isaac and Rebecca. And scripture's quick to point out that Delilah was a Philistine, and Samson's parents most certainly did not approve. So at the time, you could argue that rule #1 of biblical womanhood is that foreign wives are bad news. And yet Ruth,

00:41:45.200 - 00:42:02.640

time and time again in the book of Ruth is referred to as Ruth the Moabite. Ruth the Moabite went to Bethlehem. Ruth the Moabite spoke to Boaz. The author is very careful to reinforce the fact that Ruth is in fact a Moabite.

00:42:03.520 - 00:42:12.720

And you could argue the best daughter-in-law of all time, right? So that's kind of interesting how she broke that rule. She was also childless. You know,

00:42:13.520 - 00:42:35.880

Growing up in evangelicalism, I was often told from the pulpit that a woman's highest calling is motherhood. You'll see this slip into Mother's Day sermons too in any manner of church. And you know, as a woman who doesn't have any children and who knows a lot of women who would love to have children or have sadness around that, can be a pretty destructive message to send.

00:42:35.880 - 00:42:52.800

And I often think of Ruth, who was childless. It appears in the text that she had been married for some time, and in that time with her first husband, not produced any children, which in that day and age was kind of the prime directive of women. You make a male baby, that's your job. And she had not done that.

00:42:52.800 - 00:43:18.480

I often think of how she would feel if somebody said a woman's highest calling is motherhood. Ruth was also a widow, which sort of put her in a position of women. Widows were often exploited during that time, and that's why we have so many provisions in scripture to protect orphans and widows, because orphans and widows were truly the most vulnerable of society. Ruth is also a leader in many capacities.

00:43:18.480 - 00:43:39.440

She really took leadership over her home to make sure she and Naomi were provided for. When I was in college, we had a speaker come talk to us one time about how in relationships, girls should never ask a boy out on a date. This is at college, so of course it made news. Because men should always be the leaders in the relationship.

00:43:39.440 - 00:43:51.120

And I remember, even as a student, thinking, has this dude never read the book of Ruth? Because she totally took the initiative in that relationship, right? I mean, uncovered is sandal.

00:43:51.120 - 00:44:01.520

I'll let y'all figure out what that means, but that sounds like initiative to me. So she was definitely a leader. And then finally, Finally, Ruth was poor.

00:44:01.760 - 00:44:19.760

She was dirt poor. She had been reduced to gleaning leftovers from the field, which is a provision made only for the poorest of the poor in Israel. So you could argue that Ruth is the opposite of the Proverbs 31 woman, circumstantially. She wasn't praising her husband at the city gate.

00:44:19.920 - 00:44:26.960

She had no husband. She was a widow. She wasn't providing food for her children. Her children weren't rising up to call her blessed.

00:44:27.200 - 00:44:43.520

She had no children. She wasn't exchanging fine linens with the merchants. She was gleaning leftovers from the fields. And yet guess what Ruth is called by Boaz before she gets married, before she recovers from her poverty, before she has children?

00:44:44.480 - 00:44:56.320

Boaz says, all the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character. But guess what the Hebrew is there? You are an eshit hile. You are a woman of valor.

00:44:57.360 - 00:45:25.040

And Ruth is called a woman of valor not because she stuck to a blueprint, not because her life was shaped into a specific womanly mold, or because she played by a list of rules, but because even with the odds stacked against her, she was stubbornly and freakishly brave. She was a woman of strong, strong faith. Now, a blueprint would be easier, right? A blueprint wouldn't cause as much controversy or conversation, but God didn't give us a blueprint.

00:45:25.440 - 00:45:53.800

And I think maybe it's because God wants us to be in conversation with one another, and maybe because God wants us to live our lives with valor, not according to some blueprint or a list of roles, no matter our circumstances, no matter our gifts, no matter our gender or status or station in life. So at the end of the year, people would sometimes ask me, well, what did you decide Biblical Womanhood was? You know, what is Biblical Womanhood, Rachel, since you've appointed yourself the expert? And I had a hard time answering that.

00:45:53.800 - 00:46:15.840

Obviously, it's kind of complicated, but the best I can come up with, and there are New Testament scholars in the room, so maybe I'm wrong, is when Jesus was asked, what's the most important element of the law? He said, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. So maybe that's biblical womanhood. Loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving my neighbor as myself.

00:46:16.800 - 00:46:28.800

My highest calling is not motherhood. My highest calling is not to teach or to lead or to write. My highest calling is to follow Jesus Christ. And that's true for every man and every woman in this room.

00:46:29.280 - 00:47:03.120

And so my prayer for you today is that you, I think with this project, I was able to bring a little bit of humor and a conversational tone to the sometimes complicated and sometimes contentious conversation about hermeneutics and how we interpret and apply the Bible. So I'm hoping that this encourages you to maybe bring some creativity to that conversation and don't be afraid to use humor and don't be afraid to, you know, talk with people about how this really applies to their life and how they're thinking. And I'm going to finish with a brief reading from one chapter of the book.

00:47:03.920 - 00:47:20.000

And this is, I didn't want to do a whole book on biblical womanhood and just leave out the uncomfortable stories. Because if you're a woman and you've read the Bible, you've bumped into these and they've bothered you. And folks in my evangelical community were not pleased about this chapter.

00:47:20.880 - 00:47:38.560

I had hoped I would leave this out, but I just didn't feel that I could. So this is a section from the obedience chapter about the dark stories in scripture. I'm glad I have a biblical name. It's a name as old as the storied shepherdess of Potomarum.

00:47:39.200 - 00:47:58.880

A woman so captivating, her husband pledged 7 years of service in exchange for her hand. A woman whose determination to bear children sent her digging for mandrakes and bargaining with God. A woman brazen enough to steal her father's idols and hide them in a camel's saddle. A woman who took her last breath on the side of the road, giving birth.

00:47:59.480 - 00:48:19.840

A woman whose tomb survived obscurity, conquest, earthquakes, and riots to become one of the most venerated and contested sites of the Holy Land. Beautiful, impetuous, jealous Rachel. Rachel, who fought to legitimize her existence in the only way she knew how. Rachel, who, though it killed her, won.

00:48:20.800 - 00:48:50.400

With Rachel, I notice the details. I absorb her stories as a child does, wide-eyed and attentive, The distance between long ago and yesterday is close as a memory. And like a child, I long for more, wishing at times I could sit beneath Anita Diamant's fictionalized red tent, where Dinah learned the history of her family from her four mothers, Leah, Rachel, Billa, and Zilpha, who Dinah says, held my face between their hands and made me swear to remember.

00:48:51.520 - 00:49:13.520

We recall with ease the narratives of scripture that include a triumphant climax. A battle won, a giant slain, chariots swallowed by the sea. But for all of its glory and grandeur, the Bible contains a darkness. You will only notice if you pay attention, for it is hidden in the details, whispered in the stories of women.

00:49:14.800 - 00:49:42.000

My quest for biblical womanhood led me to these stories late at night, long after Dan had gone to sleep, and I conducted my nightly research by his side in bed, stacks of Bibles and commentaries and legal pads threatening to swallow him should he roll over. The darkest if these stories mingled with my dreams, and I awoke the next morning startled, as if I'd been told a terrible secret. Perhaps the most troubling of the dark stories comes from the lawless period of the judges.

00:49:42.560 - 00:50:07.760

Jephthah was a mighty warrior of Gilead and the son of a prostitute. Banished from the city, he took up with a gang of outlaws in the land of Tob. Jephthah must have earned A reputation as a valiant fighter because years later, when the Gileadites faced war with the Ammonites, the elders summoned Jephthah and asked him to command their forces. When Jephthah reminded them that they had expelled him from the city, they promised to make him their leader if he agreed.

00:50:08.440 - 00:50:37.840

The opportunity to rule over those who once despised him proved too much for Jephthah to resist. As Jephthah charged into battle with his countrymen behind him, filled with the spirit of the Lord, he made a promise to God. If you give the Ammonites into my hands, he said, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me, when I return and triumph from the Ammonites, will be the Lord's, and I will make a sacrifice as a burnt offering. The text reports that God indeed gave victory to Jephthah.

00:50:38.480 - 00:50:55.360

He and his troops devastated 20 Ammonite towns, thus deterring the Ammonite king from further attack. When Jephthah returned home, glowing with the sweat of triumph, who should come out to meet him but his daughter? dancing to the sound of timbrels. She was his only child.

00:50:55.600 - 00:51:07.440

The Bible never reveals her name. When he saw her, Jephta tore his clothes and wept. He told his daughter of his vow and said he could not break it. The young girl resolutely accepted her fate.

00:51:07.440 - 00:51:25.920

She asked only that she be granted two months to roam the hills and weep with her friends over a life cut short. Unlike the familiar story of Isaac, this one ends without divine intervention. Jephthah fulfilled his promise and killed his daughter in God's name. No ram was heard bleeding from the thicket.

00:51:26.080 - 00:51:47.440

No protest was issued from the clouds. No tomb was erected to mark the place where she lay. But the women of Israel remembered. The narrator reports, from this comes the Israelite tradition that each year the young women of Israel go out for four days to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah.

00:51:48.320 - 00:52:27.600

They could not protect her life, but they could protect her dignity by retelling her story, year after year, in four days, in a mysterious and subversive ceremony that perhaps led the women of Israel back to the same hills in which Jephthah's daughter wandered before her death. It was a tradition that appears to have continued through the writing of the Book of Judges, but it is a tradition lost to the waxing and waning of time, no longer marked by the daughters of the Abrahamic faiths. But for the project, I wanted to do something to bring this ceremony back. So I invited my friend Christine over to help me honor the victims of the Bible's texts of terror.

00:52:28.720 - 00:52:55.520

We prepared for the ceremony for weeks, Christine with wood and paint, I with poetry and prose. Finally, just before Christmas, while the tree was lit and paper snowflakes hung from the windows, Christine came over with a heavy paper bag in her arms. We sat on the living room floor with the coffee table between us and began our ceremony. We started with a daughter of Jephthah, whose legacy inspired me to honor her the way Israel's daughters once did.

00:52:56.160 - 00:53:25.600

I read her story from Judges 11, followed by a short poem by Phyllis Tribble, recounting the young girl's tragic end. Christine lit a tall white taper candle on the coffee table, and together we said, we remember the daughter of Jephthah. Then Christine read the story of the concubine from Judges 19, who was thrown but to a mob by her husband, gang raped, killed, and dismembered. I lit a tiny tea candle, and together we said, we remember the unnamed concubine.

00:53:26.720 - 00:53:52.320

Next we honored Hagar, whose banishment from the house of Abraham nearly cost her life. I read this to her story from Genesis 21 in a poem entitled, No Less Than the Prophets Hagar Speaks. For Hagar, we set aside a damask votive, which we lit before saying, together, we remember Hagar. Finally, we remembered the Tamar of the Davidic narrative, whose rape in the king's house left her desolate and without a future.

00:53:52.920 - 00:54:14.880

A heartbreaking poem from Nicholas Lee pulled each of the stories together and connected them to the silent victims of misogyny from around the world. We resolved, as Lee had, to listen, however painful the hearing, until there is not one last woman remaining who is a victim of violence. We lit a white pillar candle and together said, we remember Tamar.

00:54:16.000 - 00:54:36.800

Then Christine unveiled her diorama. Constructed of a small pine wood box turned on its side, the diorama featured 5 faceless wooden figures huddled beneath a ring of barbed wire. Nails jutted out from all sides with blood red paint splattered across the scene. Glued to the backward was a perfect reflection of the five feminine silhouettes cut from the pages of a book.

00:54:37.440 - 00:55:05.120

Around this, Christine had painted a red crown of thorns to correspond with the circle of barbed wire. Across the top were written the words of Christ, As you have done into the least of these, so you have done unto me. Christine and I talked for a while after the ceremony was over about our doubts, about our fears, and about how sometimes taking the Bible seriously means confronting the parts we don't like, or understand and sitting with them for a while, perhaps even a lifetime.

00:55:05.920 - 00:55:36.400

Ours was a simple ceremony, but I think it honored these women well. Those who seek to glorify or sanitize biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the raped princess of David's house, The daughter of Jephthah and the countless unnamed women who have lived and died between the lines of scripture, exploited, neglected, ravaged, and crushed at the hand of patriarchy, are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebecca, and Ruth.

00:55:36.960 - 00:56:35.120

We may not have a ceremony through which to grieve them, but it is our responsibility as women of faith to guard the dark stories for our own daughters, and when they are old enough, to hold their faces between our hands and make them promise to remember. So that was an example of trying to also bring in, I brought in a lot of humor into the book, but also bringing in a way to honor the stories of women that maybe make us a little uncomfortable. And it's kind of interesting, I've heard from churches who've actually worked a similar ceremony into their liturgy around, one group did it during Ash Wednesday, or if they were doing some sort of ceremony to honor women or some sort of service to honor women, And so it's been kind of interesting to see how people have taken that and used it creatively to get people talking about some of these passages and then talking about the issues we have with violence against women around the world and sort of using the Bible as a starting off point for that.

00:56:35.120 - 00:56:39.840

So that's been kind of cool. Okay, I think I'm done. And do we have time for a question or two?