Review: A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

In 2010 Rachel Held Evans, journalist, feminist and a progressive Christian decided to embark on a bold experiment. She would spend a year taking all of the bible's instructions for women as literally as was possible for a year. Each month she would pick a theme and live out those instructions as best she could--which led to instances of her sitting on her roof, camping on her front lawn during her period, holding up a sign by a major road to declare that her husband Dan was awesome and, for a brief stint, referring to her husband as master. 

A Year of Biblical Womanhood is hilarious in places and often insightful. Rachel Held Evans takes each of her assigned tasks seriously, whilst managing to keep her sense of humour and a sense of perspective. Unsurprisingly, she finds some of the tasks impossible--at one point her husband begs her to stop calling him master and camping out on the lawn only causes both the author and her husband to fear for her safety. Both also lead her to greater insight of how her relationship with Dan works and for her to probe what is written in the bible for clarity and context. 

 On a personal level, I found A Year of Biblical Womanhood extremely insightful and I loved the questions that it raised--questions that are neither for or against Christianity, but more of an examination of human nature and oppression. 

Recommended.  

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