Biblical Women

What Have We Been Taught About Biblical Women?

I was having lunch with a friend on Saturday and she asked, "What do your want people to get out of your book?"  I thought back to my experience at Liberty University, being told that I could not be ordained because, "God doesn't call women."  "Well, I believe I am called"  was my response.  "Than you better discern who's call you are listening to."  The implication being that there was something satanic about my belief that I had a genuine call to ordained ministry.  I experience this same attitude in the Roman Catholic Church, which is why I am currently attending Pathfinder Church of the Risen Christ.  A Catholic Community, not associated with Rome, where all are welcome.

I also thought about what I had been taught concerning biblical women over the years.  In my Feminist Dr. on Ministry program I learned the word, conscientization.   My interpretation of conscientization is that moment when my experience does not match what I have been taught.  My ah ha moment came during a Sunday School lesson about the "temptress" Bathsheba although I did not recognize it at the time.  I sat there thinking, "wait a minute, she was spied upon by a powerful man while she was taking a bath, (everyone knows that if a woman takes a bath in a movie something bad is going to happen to her) the spy finds out who her husband is but doesn't care, he sends other guys to take her from her home, he has sex with her, he send her back to her home, when he finds out she is pregnant he tries to pass the baby off as her husband's, when that doesn't work he has her husband killed.  And she is the temptress and he is the man after God's own heart?  

Understanding Biblical Women

The answer to my friends question is this.  I would like my book to be a catalyst for reexamination of biblical interpretations that have been handed down to us.  Interpretations which have been used to limit the full  participation of women in the church.  Interpretations which misrepresent biblical women as, bad, prostitutes, virgins or mothers when they are so much more.  I would like my book to encourage readers to learn who wrote the books of the Bible, to whom they were written and when they were written.  

Empowering Women

Half the human experience of divinity is the female experience. Women who are created in the image and likeness of God.  The Bible is so much more than proof texts, taken out of context to prove a point.  I would like my book to encourage women to interpret biblical women using women's experience as we develop biblical literacy.