Evans believes that we read what we are looking for in Scripture, that it really is like a wax nose. Therefore, she encourages readers to read with a prejudice of love rather than power, self-interest, and greed. Ultimately, I’m afraid that my concerns move beyond Evans’ problems with interpretation, and straight to her view of Scripture itself. For her, authority lies with the reader, not the Word of God. This is very troubling.

Rachel Held Evans. A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012). 352 pp. $15.99.

It seems that Rachel Held Evans and I have a lot in common. The cover of her book boasts a picture of Evans sitting on the roof of a house. Back in my college days, my roommate Michelle and I spent our free time sitting on our porch roof, listening to the Beatles, drinking coffee, and making up stories about the neighbors. Even after I graduated and married I still couldn’t resist climbing out of the upstairs bathroom window onto my new, perfect roof spot for a different perspective.

But as I read her book, I discovered Evans and I ‘roof-sat’ for different purposes. For Evans, it was a time of penance based on her interpretation of Proverbs 21:9, “It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.”

Impressive Style, Slanted Interpretation

Rachel Held Evans is an engaging writer. The more I read, the more I understood her popularity among women. She tells a great story, and I really appreciate her witty observations and inability to small talk.

The chapters in Evans’ book are topics that every woman struggles with in her Christian walk. Topics relating to our roles, virtues, behavior, and lifestyle are important for each one of us to examine against Scripture. And this is what Evans claims she will be doing for one year.

I vowed to spend one year of my life in pursuit of true biblical womanhood.

This quest of mine has required that I study every passage of Scripture that relates to women and learn how women around the world interpret and apply these passages to their lives. In addition, I would attempt to follow as many of the Bible’s teachings regarding women as possible in my day-to-day life, sometimes taking them to their literal extreme. (xxi)

And there is the kicker. With all the research that Evans does, she seemingly doesn’t understand the basic principles of biblical hermeneutics. Literal interpretation, i.e., reading the Bible literarily, always discerns the different genres that are involved. More specifically, faithful interpretation pays attention to both the grammar and redemptive historical setting of the passage in question. That is, we read Scripture in its historical and linguistic context, with the final revelation of Christ’s fulfillment in all its words.

This is painfully missing in Evans’ book. Instead, she playfully uses what I call an “Amelia Bedelia” method of Scripture interpretation to try and prove that the traditional view of biblical womanhood is nonsense. In these popular children’s stories, when Amelia Bedelia sees a date cake on the Christmas baking list, she tears out actual days from the calendar and mixes them into the batter. You can use your imagination for what she does when told to “steal home plate.”

In Evans’ case, she does something similar with the Bible. In her chapter highlighting valor, she goes through Proverbs 31. Here are some of the assignments she gives herself to pursue “literal” biblical womanhood (77, 78):

• Work out those arms—“She girds herself with strength and makes her arms strong” (v.17)
• Knit a red scarf and/or hat for her husband Dan—“When it snows, she has no fear for her household, for all of them are clothed in scarlet” (v.21)
• Praise Dan at the city gate—“Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land” (v.23)

To fulfill that last one, Evans holds a sign that reads, “Dan is Awesome” in front of the “Welcome to Dayton” billboard at rush hour. Is this the way that anyone reads Proverbs 31? And yet Evans is inferring that this is what reading the Bible literally means. She does this chicanery in each chapter, gives the reader a lesson of what she really learned, and comes to her own conclusion about the value of each virtue once it’s rescued from “literal” interpreters.

Where Is the Gospel?

While she does do some valuable research that can certainly shed more light on some of the verses at hand, Evans continually misses the opportunity to present these particular passages in their redemptive-historical context and demonstrate how they lead us to the gospel.

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