The blogosphere and twittersphere have been lighting up the last few weeks in anticipation of a new book: Rachel Held Evans’s A Year of Biblical Womanhood. As the cover image intimates, it’s not your typical explanation of those “problem” women texts. I recently received a review copy of the book and will be blogging as I read. So let me give you a little background on Rachel to start.
Her official bio:
Rachel Held Evans is an award-winning author and popular blogger from Dayton, Tennessee–home of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. Her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town (Zondervan, 2010), explores the relationship between faith and doubt and recounts the challenges of asking tough questions about Christianity in the context of the Bible Belt. Her second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood (Thomas Nelson, 2012), documents a year-long experiment in which she attempted to follow all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible.
In addition to her writing, Rachel keeps a busy speaking schedule, travelling across the country for retreats, conferences, universities and churches. She has been featured on NPR, Slate, The BBC, The Washington Post, The Times London, The Huffington Post, and Oprah.com, and was recently named one of Christianity Today’s “50 Women to Watch.”
She is happily married to Dan and is a lifelong Alabama Crimson Tide fan. (I’ll try not to hold that last one against her…too much.)
And for a small taste of her experiment, take a look at this short video clip. Pretty funny stuff.
Evans’s primary objective is to examine what God truly expects of women, and to ask, is there really a prescription for biblical womanhood?
I’m intrigued enough to get an advanced copy of the book and agree to write my thoughts as I go.