Thursday, December 13, 2012

Fall Reading Adventures: A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Do you all know about Rachel Held Evans? She blogs about the intersection of feminism and Christianity. Her blog became a book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, in which she spends a year living out Biblical edicts about women. RHE sleeps in a tent when she's on her period, celebrates Passover, and explores how women from Orthodox Judaism to Mennonite communities explore and live out Biblical definitions of womanhood.

Evans concludes that all such definitions of womanhood pick and choose from the parts of the Bible with which its adherents feel most comfortable (very few people expect women to camp out during their periods or marry their rapists). This conclusion means for Evans that she chooses to focus on the strongest thread of the Biblical narrative: liberation.

This is a blog primarily about teaching, so I won't get too spiritual here, but I have to say that A Year of Biblical Womanhood contained some of my favorite non-fiction prose of the year (and this is from a lady who finishes The New Yorker every year). Check it out (and recommend it to all your students who love feminism, exploring spiritual issues, or "stunt" journalism in journal)!

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