Snippets: The Hobbit

In honour of the upcoming movie release, I read The Hobbit (for the first time) this month.  The selection below speaks of journeying- the unwilling part of travel when being at home seems much easier than the harder path of completing the quest.

Long days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up. It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long. Now they could look back over the lands they had left, laid out behind them far below. Far, far away in the West, where things were blue and faint, Bilbo knew there lay his own country of safe and comfortable things, and his little hobbit-hole. (Kindle location 837)

The Hobbit

Links: Interviews and Reviews

This week I've stumbled upon several interesting reviews and interviews:

The Hole in our Holiness

The first, a review of Kevin DeYoung's The Hole in our Holiness.  I haven't yet read the book, but have read several other by this author, and am looking forward to DeYoung's new title.    Christianity Today is publishing a four part series of reviews.  Mark Labberton composed the second of these reviews, saying,

"DeYoung examines various facets of the biblical call to holiness and considers some of the strongest voices for holy living within his own Reformed tradition. He writes with theological conviction and passion, laying out a case for the recovery of faithful character and piety as one of the highest priorities of Christian pastors, leaders, and laity alike. Surely DeYoung is right about how needed holy living is among God's people, because it is both our calling (it's intrinsic to identification with our holy God) and our mission (it's essential as an authentication of our new life in Christ)."

Read the rest of the review here.

The Creedal Imperative

Also in Christianity Today is a review of Carl Trueman's book The Credal Imperative.  Fred Sanders reviews the book, pointing out Trueman's advocacy of creed's as a counter-cultural expression of faith.


"Trueman builds up this biblical case for creeds, layers over it the historical case from both the patristic church and confessional Protestantism, and puts the burden of proof on what he calls the "'No Creed but the Bible!' brigade." Given this biblical and historical trajectory of churches using creeds, "the question is not so much 'Should we use them?' as 'Why would we not use them?'"

Trueman acknowledges that there is a case to be made against creedalism, but he thinks that case is spurious because it is entirely cultural: The spirit of our age ignores history, distrusts institutions, values emotions more than words, and hankers after novelty. For moderns, the loftiest goal is to be authentic, to speak spontaneously from the heart, giving voice to unique insights from our own points of view. For this mindset, the idea of reciting a set of ancient words in public agreement with a group is, if the word be allowed, anathema.

As a result, anti-creedal evangelicalism is, ironically, "not countercultural, but culturally enslaved." Trueman is passionate and eloquent about how creeds enable churches to dig in their heels and stand with the great tradition, pushing against the modern temperament."

Read the rest of the review here.

Why You Should Read Chesterton

Trevin Wax has included several interesting author interviews on his blog in recent weeks.  Most recently, he interviewed Kevin Belmonte.  Belmonte compiled the book  A Year with G. K. Chesterton: 365 Days of Wisdom, Wit, and Wonder (Thomas Nelson, 2012).  I have only read one of Chesterton's books, Orthodoxy, and the post introduced me to several other titles.

In the post, Belmonte shares a number of insights from Chesterton's life, as well as key quotations from his work.  He writes of Chesterton,

"When he most greatly needed to make sense of life, that shard of truth returned to Chesterton. A scene from a much-loved children story rallied to his aid. It gave him courage to believe. He began to see the world, once more, like a great tapestry woven by the Master Story-teller. He followed the thread of thanks he re-discovered to back the light—to faith."

Read the full post here.

Snippets: The Autobiography of G. K. Chesteron

"No man knows how much he is an optimist, even when he calls himself a pessimist, because he has not really measured the depths of his debt to whatever created him and enabled him to call himself anything. At the back of our brains, so to speak, there was a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life was to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder; so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he was actually alive, and be happy."

The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton

Quick Reads: The Evernote Bible

Brandon Collin's short book, The Evernote Bible is a guide for using Evernote to increase productivity. Though I have used Evernote for several years, particularly to sync notes between different devices, Collin's introduced me to many new features and uses for the software.

Evernote is a free software program/service, available to download from evernote.com.  Its primary purpose is creating notebooks to organize personal information.  The Evernote Bible begins by explaining the basic features, such as organizing notebooks and tags.  I was introduced to several other features, including

• e-mailing notes directly into Evernote
• clipping information from the web into Evernote
• encrypting information within a note
• sharing notes and
• automatically importing folders and documents into Evernote.

In addition to introducing the basic and power features of Evernote, Collins provides suggestions for how to use Evernote as a tool for storing various kinds of personal and professional information.  This quick read provided numerous practical suggestions to improve my organizational systems, using software which I already have on my computer.  The hour or so it takes to read this book is time well spent.

 The Evernote Bible - The Guide to Everything Evernote, Including: Tips, Uses, and Evernote Essentials

Her.meneutics: Holy Homemaking: A Response from Rachel Held Evans

A few weeks ago I reviewed the book A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.  The book has been widely debated, and as I noted in my review, though I didn't agree with everything in the book (particularly the hermeneutical approach), Evans nonetheless says many valuable things about living biblically in the modern world.

The following blog post by Evans in Christianity Today addresses one fault often found with her book, as some reviewers take issue with the fact that she may seem to undervalue the role of homemaking.  She writes,


Another rumor you may have heard is that the book disparages homemaking. Several readers inferred this from Jen Pollock Michel's recent Her.meneutics article, "What You Don't Know about Complementarian Women," but nothing could be further from the truth.

In A Year of Biblical Womanhood, I devote an entire chapter to homemaking. As I refocused on my own homemaking skills (or lack thereof!), I confess at one point that "it was out of ignorance and insecurity that I ever looked down my nose at women who make homemaking their full-time occupation.” Keeping the home, I say, “requires creativity, problem solving, innovation, and resourcefulness.”

The chapter concludes with the following reflection. As you’ll see, it’s in full agreement with Michel’s view that keeping a home is sacred and dignifying work: 

When Brother Lawrence sought sanctuary from the tumults of 17th-century France, he entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris, where his lack of education relegated him to kitchen duty. Charged with tending to the abbey’s most mundane chores, Brother Lawrence nevertheless earned a reputation among his fellow monks for exuding a contagious sense of joy and peace as he went about his work—so much so that after his death, they compiled the few maxims and letters and interviews he left behind into a work that would become a classic Christian text: The Practice of the Presence of God. 
“The time of business,” explained Brother Lawrence, “does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.” 

For Brother Lawrence, God’s presence permeated everything—from the pots and pans in the kitchen sink to the water and soap that washed them. Every act of faithfulness in these small tasks communicated his love for God and desire to live in perpetual worship. “It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God,” he said. 

After reading Brother Lawrence, I tried to go about my housework with a little more mindfulness—listening to each rhythmic swishing of the broom, feeling the warm water rush down my arm and off my fingers as I scrubbed potatoes, savoring the scent of clean laundry fresh out of the dryer, delighting in the sight of all the colorful herbs and vegetables and cheeses on my countertop. And sure enough, I found myself connecting to that same presence that I encountered during contemplative prayer, the presence that reminded me that the roots of my spirit extended deep into the ground. I got less done when I worked with mindfulness, but, somehow, I felt more in control. 

I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it’s up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God’s presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God’s presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. 

If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner. 


Read the rest of the post here:

Her.meneutics: Holy Homemaking: A Response from Rachel Held Evans

For my review of the book, click here

Snippets: Heaven Without Her

Kitty Foth-Regner's book Heaven Without Her is an interesting mix of personal memoir and apologetics book.  At the heart of the book is Foth-Regner's spiritual journey from agnosticism to Christianity, set against the backdrop of her mother's immanent death.  She moves from rejecting the Christian tradition of her parents, to setting out on a spiritual quest for truth.  Interwoven throughout the story is the intellectual path that she travels; she often describes the impact of various books on her quest for truth.  In one such discussion, she quotes from the writings of A.S.A Jones

"Describing the Bible as a spiritual stereogram, Jones wrote, 'You need two aspects of the intellect to see the reality of God in its pages; you need to utilize both the logical and spiritual (or poetic) component of your thinking to see Him.  If you use only one in the absence of the other, you will lose the effect.  It's like covering one eye' 
Jones pointed out that depth is key to seeing the truth in the Bible just as it is in stereograms.  'I think the reason a lot of people aren't seeing its truth today', she said, 'is that we have become a nation of shallow thinkers'.' (epub edition, 258)

Heaven Without Her: A Desperate Daughter's Search for the Heart of Her Mother's Faith

Links: From Scroll to Screen

Though many articles have been published in recent years about the transition from paper books to increased e-reading, this one in the New York times is one of the most interesting I've read.  In it, Lev Grossman writes about the major transitions in the technology of reading:  the development of the codex, and the development of e-reading platforms.  The way in which the form of the book influences reading is a major theme in his article:  the codex allows for a certain type of reading- moving from section to section in a single work- that is more difficult with digital documents (not to mention, with a scroll).  He writes,
"But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It’s no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That’s the kind of reading you do in an e-book."

Read the rest of the article from the New York Times here.

Snippets: Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail

 Rom Brafman's book, Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail explores the personality traits and character qualities that help people to succeed, even if they have faced significant adversity.  He refers to these successful individuals as "tunnelers", and among other things, notes that those who live accomplished lives in spite of obstacles share a common set of characteristics.  Among other characteristics, Brafman notes that "tunnelers" are those who take responsibility for their current situation, who search out meaning in life, that maintain a calm approach to difficulty and who use humour well.  While most of the book is focused on an individual's personal characteristics and approach to life, the last section of the book highlights the importance of mentors, who Brafman calls satellites.  He also outlines ways in which mentors can help others succeed.  In this context, he notes,

"What qualities, then, define a satellite?  One of the most important ingredients is unconditional positive regard, a term coined by the psychologist Carl Rogers.  It refers to the giving of support and acceptance with no strings attached -- with no quid pro quo.  A strong satellite is there no matter what, without an overriding agenda to govern the interaction" (170).

"It's easy to overlook how important that unconditional support can be.  We're so used to paying attention to the other details of leadership -- whether setting boundaries, providing feedback, or teaching -- that we sometimes forget to communicate the most basic element:  that we're there to be counted on no matter what" (178).

"They key is to be honest and direct while also being caring and respectful.  That's what makes it so challenging.  When we're in a position of power, most of us either think of ourselves as the 'authority figure' who lays down the law, or the 'nice guy/gal' who's there to be a friend and supporter.  Combining the two -- which is what makes for an ideal mentor -- forces us to consistently shift roles (180)".  

  Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail: The 6 Enduring Principles of High Achievement

Review: Prayers for Today

 Prayers for Today:  A Yearlong Journey fo Contemplative Prayer by Kurt Bjorklund guides the reader through a series of 260 devotional readings.  The readings are progress through a cycle of ten themes:

* Prayers of Thanksgiving * Prayers of Confession * Prayers of Affirmation
* Prayers of Petition * Prayers of Renewal * Prayers of Praise and Adoration
* Prayers to Have Christ-like Character * Prayers for Wisdom and Guidance
* Prayers of Intercession * Prayers of Surrender
The scope of this cycle provides promptings towards a well-balanced prayer life, without feeling overwhelmed by trying to focus on multiple topics during a single devotional reading.  Unlike some other prayer books, there is a single reading for each day, though the reader might choose to do more than one (such as a morning prayer and evening prayer), cycling through the book on a more frequent cycle.
     Most of the readings follow a similar pattern.  The readings begin with a scripture reading, followed by a written prayer on the theme, generally taken from other prayer books or Christian writers, but sometimes written by Bjorklund himself.  In some readings, there are multiple Bible readings and prayers.  The day's reading concludes with promptings for free prayer on the days' theme.
    Bjorklund is a Lutheran minister, and the book is firmly within the Protestant tradition, though it draws widely from the best of Christian history.  As a result, the reader is able to worship through the best of different traditions, without stumbling over material that would cause difficulties theologically.  Prayers for Today is very accessible to those who are new to using prayer books as a part of their personal worship.
     Prayers for Today is not organized according to the church year, and as a result can be used at any time.  Some readers may want to use it alongside more seasonally focused resources at some times of the year.  Because of the free structure, the reader is able to choose the number of readings they wish to use daily, and the cycles and seasons of the year during which they want to use the book.
     Prayers for Today is highly recommended for anyone wanting to increase the richness of their devotional life.  It helps the reader to broaden their prayer life to include a rich variety of themes, and to weave scripture and written prayer alongside free prayer.

  Prayers for Today: A Yearlong Journey of Contemplative Prayer

Note:  I received a free review copy of this book from Moody Publishers, but was not obligated to write a positive review.

Classic Poetry: Jehovah-Rophi by William Cowper

Jehovah-Rophi. I Am the Lord That Healeth Thee
Exodus 25:26 

Heal us, Emmanuel! here we are,
Waiting to feel Thy touch:
Deep-wounded souls to Thee repair
And, Saviour, we are such.

Our faith is feeble, we confess,
We faintly trust Thy word;
But wilt Thou pity us the less?
 Be that far from Thee, Lord!

Remember him who once applied,
With trembling, for relief;
"Lord, I believe," with tears he cried,
 "Oh, help my unbelief!"

She too, who touch'd Thee in the press,
 And healing virtue stole,
Was answer'd, "Daughter, go in peace,
Thy faith hath made thee whole."

Conceal'd amid the gathering throng,
She would have shunn'd Thy view;
And if her faith was firm and strong,
Had strong misgivings too.

Like her, with hopes and fears we come,
To touch Thee, if we may;
Oh! send us not despairing home,
Send none unheal'd away!

Snippets: Accidental Pharisees

 Larry Osborne's book Accidental Pharisees warns against falling into the errors or Pharisaism in a quest for obedient discipleship.  His book provides a warning against the sin of pride.  He also warns against turning our gifts into rules for others to follow, and inadvertently twisting obedient discipleship into extra-biblical burdens.
A few key points from the book:

When it comes to bruised reeds, smoldering wicks, and the weary saints, Pharisees have no patience. They pile on heavy burdens and lots of guilt. But they don’t lift a finger to make anything easier. They thin the herd at every opportunity. Not so with Jesus. The bruised reed he will not break. The smoldering wick he will not snuff out. To the weary and heavily burdened he offers rest, a light load, and an easy yoke. (Kindle location 349)

Now, obviously I’m not saying that we can live like hell and call ourselves disciples. The Bible is quite clear. If we genuinely know God and love him, we will keep his commandments. But I am saying that our definitions of what it means to be a genuine Christ follower must include room for the weak and the struggling, the frightened and the failing, in order to remain aligned with Jesus rather than with the Pharisees of old. Following Jesus is not a race to see who can be the most radical, sacrificial, knowledgeable, or quickest to burn out. It’s not a contest to see who’s willing to take the hardest road. That’s asceticism, not discipleship (Kindle location 2439)

Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith

Links: The Legacy of Flannery O’Connor: A Conversation with Jonathan Rogers

Trevin Wax has posted an interview with Jonathan Rogers about the legacy of Flannery O'Conner.  Rogers is the author of  The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor.  The interview addresses the impact that O'Connor's illness had on her writing, the way in which racial issues impact her writing, and the sacramental nature of her works.  Below is a portion of the interview.


Trevin Wax: O’Connor was a devout Catholic who saw the Eucharist as the central and most profound aspect of Christian worship. How did the sacramental vision she inherited from the Catholic Church impact her view of the world, and Southern Protestants in particular?

Jonathan Rogers: O’Connor once wrote,

“The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.”

She was making a theological statement. Everything deserves our attention because the world of human experience is shot through with meaning.

That’s the sacramental vision – the idea that ultimate meaning doesn’t just live off in some Platonic ideal that we strain toward “spiritually,” but that God reveals Himself to us, does His work on us, through the concrete facts of the material world. For that reason, the artist has an obligation to depict the world that she sees, the way that she sees it. It is not her job to clean anything up or tie up loose ends or offer simplified answers to complicated questions. It is her job only to portray what she has seen in the world God has made.

All Christians agree, of course, that God reveals himself through the world around us. In that broad sense, all Christians have a sacramental vision.

But O’Connor, as a Catholic, was much more comfortable with mystery than most Protestants tend to be. She wrote:

“The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.”

We Protestants aren’t looking to inhabit mysteries; we’re looking for explanations, solutions, household hints. Just stroll through a Christian bookstore. Seven Steps to This, Ten Steps to That, Your Best Life Now! It’s all very pragmatic and solution-oriented, thoroughly modern and slickly marketed. The modern/post-modern impulse is an impulse toward demystification, and American Protestantism is right in the middle of it.

O’Connor’s sacramental vision frees the Christian writer from the tyranny of “edification.” We assume that the Christian writer’s job is to edify the reader – which is true enough, I suppose – but we have such a narrow definition of edification.

What passes for edification is, to borrow a term from O’Connor, “Instant Uplift.” It doesn’t invite us into a mystery. It’s “safe for the whole family,” as the billboards for the Christian radio stations say. I don’t know that the Bible is safe for the whole family. It’s hard to imagine Christian bookstores stocking a book so wild and ragged and mysterious as the Bible if it weren’t the Bible.


Click below to read the full post.
The Legacy of Flannery O’Connor: A Conversation with Jonathan Rogers

November Reading Log

Here are this month's reading adventures...so far:

• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand- The fascinating biography of Louis Zamperini, Olympic athlete and WW2 veteran
• Too Busy for Your Own Good by Connie Merritt- A time management book for professional women
• Modest:  Men and Women Clothed in the Gospel by Tim Challies and R.W. Glenn
• Accidental Pharisees:  Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith by Larry Osborne
• Succeeding When You're Supposed to Fail by Rom Brafman
• Heaven Without Her by Kitty Foth-Regner
• The Evernote Bible:  The Guide to Everything Evernote by Brandon Collins
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Snippets: A Hidden Life of Prayer

David McIntyre's classic work, The Hidden Life of Prayer motivates Christians to develop a deep and meaningful life of prayer.  From the book:

He who has a pure heart will never cease to pray, and he who will be constant in prayer shall know what it is to have a pure heart (Kindle location 51)

The equipment for the inner life of prayer is simple, if not always easily secured. It consists particularly of a quiet place, a quiet hour, and a quiet heart. (Kindle location 184)

Our realization of the presence of God may, however, be accompanied with little or no emotion. Our spirits may lie as if dead under the hand of God. Vision and rapture may alike be withdrawn. But we ought not therefore to grow sluggish in prayer. So far from interupting the exercise at such times, we ought to redouble our energy. And it may be that the prayer which goes up through darkness to God will bring to us a blessing such as we have not received in our most favored hours. (Kindle location 339)

Hidden Life of Prayer, The: The Life-blood of the Christian

Review: A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master"

 Rachel Evan's book A Year of Biblical Womanhood chronicles her year long exploration of the Bible through the eyes of a 21st century woman.  Each month, she chooses an area of focus- ranging from submission, to modesty, to justice, and chooses tasks for herself from passages of scripture concerning women.  Interspersed between these chapters are portraits of women from the Bible, ranging from well-known women such as Ruth, to lesser-known women such as Junia and Tabitha.  She also interviews women from various streams of Judaism about the way they seek to follow the Bible's instructions for women in their various lifestyles.  The book is similar in theme and organization to A.J. Jacob's The Year of Living Biblically.
The Bad:  Not a Hermeneutics Lesson
There are no nuances in Rachel Evan's application of various scripture texts.  Her self-assigned projects for living Biblically are taken from texts ranging from Leviticus to Proverbs to the New Testament epistles, with little regard for the overall intent of the passage or its place in the overall biblical story.  For example, she follows the Levitical purity laws with equal fervor as commands to seek justice.  The overall result of this haphazard interpretive method can be the distortion fo scripture, and as a result her writing at times is irreverent.  At times, her approach seems disrespectful of women who hold to more conservative positions about women's roles.  However, her approach needs to be understood in light of the fact that although she addresses theology at many levels, she in no way seems to intend that the way of life she adapts for her "project" should be used to interpret scripture in normal circumstances.
The Good:  Biblical Freedom
Though some may disagree with Evan's overall egalitarian position, she has many valid insights about the overall biblical perspective on women's lives and roles.  She challenges some interpretations that are viewed as "biblical", but in fact go beyond the clear teaching of the Bible about women.  Throughout the book, she challenges the reading of Proverbs 31 as a prescriptive list of tasks for the "ideal woman",  reading it instead as a poem praising a woman of valour.   She also challenges the idea that marriage and raising children is the only valid calling for a Christian woman, highlighting Paul's teaching about singleness.  She writes, "as a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ. And following Christ is something a woman can do whether she is married, or single, rich or poor, sick or healthy, childless or Michelle Duggar." (Kindle location 3282).  In light of her own experience, she explains,
     Growing up in the Church, I must have heard a thousand times that my highest calling as a woman was to bear and bring up children. While men could honor God in varying capacities through work, family, and ministry, a woman’s spiritual aptitude was measured primarily by her ability to procreate. Even as a child I noticed that the church deaconesses hosted dozens of wedding and baby showers each year, but never a housewarming party for a single woman or a celebration dinner for a woman who passed the bar or graduated from medical school. Subtly, the belief that I was incomplete without a husband and children crept into my subconscious. Without procreating, I believed, my contribution to the Church didn’t really count. It hasn’t always been this way. Both Jesus and Paul spoke highly of celibacy and singleness, and for centuries the Church honored the contributions of virgins and widows to the extent that their stories occupied the majority of Christian literature.  (Kindle location 3254)
    Throughout the book, Evans seeks to correct the idea that there is only one correct life model for a Christian woman.  Though she may err in taking some of the Bible's commands lightly, she does well to correct an imbalance that requires a lifestyle for women that is mandated more by cultural norms than by the Bible's teaching.  At the end of the book she concludes,
    So after twelve months of “biblical womanhood,” I’d arrived at the rather unconventional conclusion that that there is no such thing. The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth. Among the women praised in Scripture are warriors, widows, slaves, sister wives, apostles, teachers, concubines, queens, foreigners, prostitutes, prophets, mothers, and martyrs. What makes these women’s stories leap from the page is not the fact that they all conform to some kind of universal ideal, but that, regardless of the culture or context in which they found themselves, they lived their lives with valor. They lived their lives with faith. As much as we may long for the simplicity of a single definition of “biblical womanhood,” there is no one right way to be a woman, no mold into which we must each cram ourselves—not if Deborah, Ruth, Rachel, Tamar, Vashti, Esther, Priscilla, Mary Magdalene, and Tabitha have anything to say about it. (Kindle location 5139)
     Though the book has its imperfect moments- and perhaps more so than some other books- her overall conclusions make the book a thought provoking and worthwhile read.  The book intersperses the lighthearted humour of some moments of Evan's quest with deeper reflection about what it means to live as a Christian woman seeking to live out the Bible's teaching.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband "Master"