READING THROUGH A HAZE
AS AS AS AS
it turns out, it’s surprisingly easy to track down a polygamist. When I went in search of a polygamist family to feature in my latest book, I assumed it would be much harder—considering the fact that plural marriage is illegal in all 50 states. Yet I found I was just a few Google searches away from an interview with a real-life pair of sister wives who asked only that I change their names to protect them from prosecution. I found “Eric,” “Lynn” and “Rose” through a website called BiblicalFamilies.org. Run by a group professing to be “Biblefocused, Christ-centered, Spiritfilled Christian believers,” Biblical Families provides support for men and women who practice or are interested in practicing polygamy. The group identifies as Berean in its approach, which means it emphasizes the primacy of Scripture, “taking at face value God’s Word and not depending so much on the traditions, and additions, of man.” This approach, according to the group’s website, “is how [they] came to recognize the biblical soundness of plural marriage.” Upon reading the organization’s mission statement, I smiled at its seeming familiarity. These polygamists employ much the same language we like to use as evangelical Christians—appealing to the primacy of God’s Word, vowing to take the Bible at face value and, of course, using the word “biblical” to back up a particular viewpoint or lifestyle. And yet this group had arrived at a very different conclusion than most
Christians regarding what exactly a “biblical family” looks like. It’s a pattern that repeats itself in a variety of ways within the Christian subculture. During election season, politicians and pundits encourage their followers to vote for “biblical values”—which vary depending on who’s talking. Conservatives often relegate “biblical values” to matters of abortion, gay marriage and tax cuts. Yet to liberals, “biblical values” pertain to issues of poverty, immigration and creation care. You can buy books on “biblical parenting,” “biblical economics,” “biblical psychology,” “biblical manhood,” “biblical womanhood” and even “biblical dating” (despite the fact that in the ancient Near Eastern culture in which the Bible was written, dating didn’t even exist). Each book will present a view of what’s “biblical,” often highlighting supportive texts while ignoring or explaining away those that don’t fit the author’s thesis. How is it that we can refer to the same texts yet come away with such different interpretations of them? Is it possible to apply the teachings of the Bible without some degree of picking and choosing? Does the Bible really offer a single prescription for how to vote, how to date or how to be a woman? These were the questions that inspired me to take on a new project—a year of baking bread, covering my head, growing out my hair and even calling my husband “master”—that came to be known as my Year of Biblical Womanhood.
Frustrated by the mixed messages I’d received throughout the years about what it means to practice “biblical womanhood,” I committed a year of my life to examining (and often practicing) all of the Bible’s teachings about womanhood—no picking and choosing. This included the more commonly cited passages of Scripture: submitting to my husband, attempting the Proverbs 31 life, nurturing that gentle and quiet spirit. It also included the passages Christians tend to skip over: covering my head, growing out my hair, observing the Levitical purity codes, remaining silent in church. I studied all of these passages in their contexts, often to discover they might not mean what I’d always been told they mean. For example, Proverbs 31 is regarded by Hebrew scholars to be a poem that celebrates what a woman has already accomplished, not one that dictates a domestic to-do list likely to intimidate the domestically challenged among us. I learned that nearly all of the Bible’s instructions regarding female modesty have to do with excessive wealth, not sexuality. I learned, too, that marriage and motherhood are far from the only female vocations celebrated by Jesus and the Apostle Paul. The experience was both challenging and rewarding. I celebrated the Jewish holidays, cared for a computerized baby and literally praised my husband at the city gate with a homemade sign. I traveled everywhere from Lancaster, Penn., to Cochabamba, Bolivia, to interview all kinds of interesting people. I spent countless hours in the library dissecting Greek and Hebrew words and scouring commentaries on Esther, Ruth, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Junia, Priscilla and other women of the Bible. Through it all, the goal was to humorously challenge the idea that the Bible has just one thing to say about how to be a woman of faith or that “biblical womanhood” can be reduced to a list of rules and roles. As expected, when the book released last fall, it started quite the conversation. A lot of people loved it, but some also hated it—passionately. They said I hadn’t practiced “biblical womanhood” properly, that I made a mockery of Scripture, that I should have stuck with the more familiar passages of Scripture instead of venturing into obscure or controversial territory. “Just because something’s in the Bible doesn’t make it biblical,” one reviewer wrote. These critiques stirred up the same questions that led me on this journey in the first place. And in some ways, it seemed I was right back where I started. My Year of Biblical Womanhood— and the controversy that surrounded it—revealed an inescapable fact: Biblical interpretation isn’t as easy as we like to make it out to be. From gender roles to just about any other issue you can think of, committed and good-hearted Christians often disagree on what the Bible means and how it should be applied to our lives. Why? Because the bottom line is that we all bring a set of assumptions and biases to Scripture, and these biases color our perception of what is “biblical.” The reality of our slanted interpretation is also why prescriptive appeals to “biblical manhood,” “biblical womanhood” or “biblical” anything can be so problematic. When we talk about the Bible in this way, we tend to flatten it out—emphasizing RELEVANT MAGAZINE
85