A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Written by: Rachel Held Evans
Pages: 308
A strong Christian woman embarks on a radical life experiment—a year of biblical womanhood.

Strong and committed in her faith—but frustrated by the inconsistencies she saw in her evangelical culture’s view of women—Rachel Held Evans became an independent woman. But, intrigued by the traditionalist resurgence that led many of her friends to abandon their careers to assume traditional gender roles in the home, Evans had a crazy idea:What if I took “biblical womanhood” literally for a full year? In the next twelve months Rachel:

Wore a scarf over her head to pray
Called her husband “master” and stood on the roadside with a sign that said “Dan is Awesome”
Adopted a computerized baby
Perched on the roof for an afternoon of penance for gossiping
Camped out in her front yard during her period
Visited an Amish schoolhouse, a pig farm in Bolivia, and a Benedictine monastery
Took up baking and knitting
Interviewed a polygamist, a Quiverfull daughter, and a courtship couple
With just the right mixture of humor and insight, Evans takes readers along with her on a lively adventure. In the process she discovers that the journey itself leads her right to the heart of God.

I read about this book on the internet and the first thing I thought: What a great addition to my Walking With Women study! It seemed to me this was a total sister… exploring what she could learn about women from the scriptures.  Evans took a different path than I would, but I like to explore other people’s paths as much as my own.

Rachel Held Evans is a regular woman, like the rest of us.  She grew up in America, touched by faith but also the secularism of the American world.  A secularism that tends to sometimes be at odds with some women of faith choosing more traditional lives in the name of religion.

She wanted to explore more than just her own flavor of religion, she wanted to investigate the beliefs of others. She planned to explore various teachings of the Bible, in an effort to understand how different people can read things differently for what these books teach.

The book is an exploration of faith, womanhood, feminism, The Bible, and so much more.

Read my Review on Page 2