Interview with Amanda Held Opelt

By: Anna Grace Glaize

Amanda Held Opelt

Amanda Held Opelt is both a published author and a songwriter. Her work deftly examines faith, ritual, and meaning-making in the wake of loss. She’s published two books: A Hole in the World and Holy Unhappiness. Amanda lives in Western North Carolina with her husband, Tim, and their two young daughters. 

This interview was conducted via Zoom on March 26, 2025, and has been edited for clarity and length.

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AGG: Your book A Hole in the World explores grief rituals in particular. For you, what's the purpose of ritual in general?  

Amanda: I have an interesting relationship with just the term ritual, because I think a lot of people use it to describe their morning routine or habit. They call it a ritual. That’s a misuse of the term. Rituals are indeed habits, but what makes a ritual “ritual” is agreed-upon meaning.  The ritual accomplishes something that's metaphysical to some degree or that names meaning beyond the act itself. 

It’s communal meaning, too. I used to think, “Why do we go to all this trouble for weddings and spend all this money and go through all these activities?” It’s certainly worth asking about the expense of these things, but the pomp and circumstance of these embodied practices help us mark change. They help our bodies catch up to what’s really going on. It’s also having a community of people acknowledge something is happening to you, whether that’s good or bad. Maybe the summary [of ritual] would be the habitual nature of it is important, the embodied nature of it is important, the communal nature of it is important, and the marking of a life change is important. 

AGG: In A Hole in the World, one of my favorite passages is your description of Jeremiah’s instruction for women to teach their daughters to wail. You even talk about God as stepping into this very important social role of the wailing woman.  What’s the power in depicting God as emotionally uninhibited? 

Amanda: We ignore passages in the Bible that even talk about God repenting from his anger or relenting or changing his mind. Because it’s so much easier to focus on God's sovereignty. We understand sovereignty as fixed, sovereignty as control, sovereignty as complete consistency. What makes God so powerful and worthy of our adoration is God's ability to both be sovereign and dynamic. Meaning God's an interactive God! 

AGG: In the same chapter, you talk about how words like “emotional” and “hysterical” have been weaponized against women. 

Amanda: The intense emotional quality that has been assigned to women has not always been a pejorative…This used to be an honored skill set. For God to wail — or for God to be a woman in labor — these were celebrated things. 

AGG: Do you take Jeremiah’s instructions seriously? Are you going to teach your kids to wail? 

Amanda: Well, let me tell you…

AGG: They already know how to wail? 

Amanda: They already know how, that’s for sure! Tim [her husband] and I do try to make an effort to not hide our emotions. We’ve had a lot of difficult things happen in the years since they were born. Even with Hurricane Helene recently, I thought it was important for them to see me crying. 

If I was having a moment and felt like crying, they don’t need to be sheltered from that. I always tell them why, like, “This is why Momma is crying.” It’s important for them to feel stable. I don't want to be falling apart around them all the time. But I think showing emotion, naming it, and then saying, “Okay, and now what are we going to do?” Sometimes we pray, and sometimes we get up and do the next right thing. I want them to be comfortable with seeing somebody that they trust, and somebody that they know they can depend on, as emotional. 

AGG: One of the chapters in A Hole in the World is about food. This is a high-stakes question for a Southerner: Do you have a go-to dish that you bring to people you love when they're going through something? 

Amanda: That’s a great question. It depends on the season, and it depends on the method of delivery. Practicality when it comes to food is really important. I am all about the soups and stews when people are going through something. I throw as many vegetables in as possible. Food is healing. It’s incredible what God has literally infused in plants that can regenerate and fuel our bodies.

I was sick with COVID, and my friend brought a soup over. I think about that soup all the time! There's just something about it being made by her. She's like, “There’s a lot of good stuff in here, man! There's kale, there's onion, there's garlic, there's beans—all this stuff that's really good for you when you're sick.” I literally felt like that soup brought me back to life.  People always give Esau a hard time for selling his birthright for lentil soup. Well, maybe that's a good trade.

AGG: You've written books, and you're also a very talented songwriter. I encourage all our readers to listen to your music. Do both forms of writing satisfy the same creative itch? 

Amanda: It's definitely in some ways, yes, and in other ways, no. Writing books has been fun because it indulges my curiosity and my interest in history. It's an opportunity to explore and take people on a journey of historic discovery or ecological discovery or theological discovery in a way that songwriting just can't.  

I can't remember who said the quote, but there's some kind of quote that's like, “I paint pictures so I can communicate what can't be communicated with language.” What I love about songwriting is that it really does that. Songwriting is more about feel. Communicating something that's really hard to put into words. It's about the experience of it. Whereas books, to me, are about deep dives and exploration and discovery. 

AGG: Do you have a favorite song that you've written? 

Amanda: Well, I did write this song about my six-times great-grandfather who was a settler here in the mountains. He was killed in the Clinch River by the Cherokee. I have complicated feelings about even my presence here [Amanda lives in Appalachia]. What does it mean to love a land that wasn't originally your own? My ancestors were settlers. So, I wrote a song about those complicated feelings. I don't know if it's the best song I ever wrote, and it’s not even out on Spotify or anything, but for me it was maybe the most therapeutic I’ve ever written. 

AGG: What Is God Like? and What Is the Bible? are books started by your sister Rachel and finished by her friend Matthew after her death. Both are excellent introductions for kids to God and sacred stories. Your book Holy Unhappiness examines some of the misconceptions you had about the Christian life and how those myths got debunked in various ways. Can you do a kids’ version of Holy Unhappiness? Little six-year-old me could’ve used it!

Amanda: If I could transform it into a children's book, I think the way I would do it would be to celebrate all the different paths that Christians walk. Like, some Christians will write books. Some will write songs. Some will be artists, and some will work in offices. Some will work in churches. And some will work cleaning up the trash. Some will get married, and some will have children. Some won't. Some will be sick, and some will die young. I don't know if you can put that in terms of kids’ stories. 

AGG: I think you can. Those Victorians had some messed-up children’s books. I think we're underestimating kids. 

Amanda: I hope so. Yeah, I would love to expand their imagination to understand that a life of faith might not look like the American dream. It might not look like some of the expectations the church places on us as it relates to family. But that doesn't mean that you can't actually have happiness and meaning and fulfillment. 

AGG: Do you have a favorite woman in the Bible? 

Amanda: I hate to just go with the crowd here…When I think about women in the Bible that I can’t get out of my head, it’s Mary, the mother of Jesus. Again, I know, I’m going with the celebrity woman from the Bible. It really should be Dorcas. Or Abigail. But it’s not — it’s Mary. 

It’s not her status as God’s mother that I find so inspiring. It’s her quiet trust. She is a consistent, non-anxious presence in scripture. She was able to see the vision of the Messiah so clearly that she was able to celebrate in the midst of, “My life is over.” Even in Jesus’ adulthood he was being referred to as the son of Mary. Which would have been countercultural. Like, people remember this child is illegitimate! They remembered her supposed shame, and that shame no doubt followed her for the rest of her life. She was able to look past it and see “the world's being turned upside down by this miracle I'm going to participate in.” It’s her vision [for the future] that speaks to me. 

If I get a second choice, I would mention Martha. She gets such a bad rap because she's seen as this busybody that doesn't notice Jesus. But then, when her brother [Lazarus] dies, it’s her sister Mary who’s completely overcome by grief. And Martha’s doing the needful. She demonstrates an incredible faith that’s often overlooked because she was the busybody in the kitchen. She’s the one [in the Lazarus story] who goes out and meets Jesus on the road. Martha understood the assignment. Jesus corrected her, and she was like, “Alright.” I appreciate that about her; she grew! Her character development in Scripture’s pretty great. 

AGG: What are you working on next? 

Amanda: I just signed with Harper One for a book about traditional Appalachian food practices. It’s using Appalachian food to tell a story about theology of the body, theology of food, and theology of creation care. How food is an invitation to be present in your body. And how food is an invitation to be present in community and present to the earth. It's been so fun to write. I've been going to sorghum boils and visiting farms. It’s been super great. It’s not a book just about food. It's about a lot of things, but food is the mechanism by which I’m telling the story. 

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PART 2: Interview with Dr. Julie Faith Parker

By Anna Grace Glaize 

Dr. Julie Faith Parker’s book, Eve Isn’t Evil

Dr. Julie Faith Parker is the author of Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions. She holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible from Yale University and is ordained in the United Methodist Church. You can find out more about Dr. Parker at her website juliefaithparker.com.

This interview was conducted on July 22, 2024, via Zoom and has been edited for clarity and length.

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AGG: So, you’ve talked about how this [Eve Isn’t Evil] is written in your voice, how you knew it was gonna be a very different style of book, and you also share some very personal stories such as raising your son, who is on the autism spectrum and supporting your daughter, who has bipolar disorder. How does the Bible help you with these challenges? 

Dr. Parker: I think it mostly helps me by, first of all, being very honest about how we are. We’re all hot messes in our own ways! The Bible gets that, which I find super reassuring…

“You Think Your Family’s a Mess? Biblical Families Are Us,”[Ch. 3 in Eve Isn’t Evil] goes through the story of Joseph. My daughter realized that Joseph could be seen as someone who’s on the autism spectrum. He’s very good visually, but he’s not so great socially. He has these gifts, he has these skills, he’s able to interpret these dreams, he has these extraordinary abilities that other people don’t, which is often true of people on the spectrum, but he struggles socially. He tells his brothers about his first dream where the sheaves are bowing down to him, and they already hate him. Then he tells his brothers another dream where the sun and the moon and the stars are bowing down to him. It’s like, stop after one dream! Why’d you keep going?! You’re not doing yourself any favors!

AGG: Yeah, read the room!

Dr. Parker: I know! Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly it. He can’t read the room. So it’s very possible to read him as someone on the spectrum. There’s actually a book that’s been written about this called Was Yosef on the Spectrum? It’s in the bibliography of my book, but it’s an entire book in which Samuel Levine, who’s a rabbinic scholar, goes through the history of rabbis interpreting Jseoph in a way that we can definitely read him as on the spectrum. 

That was really helpful to me, because we see how Jacob is giving his son Joseph this special coat, and I think maybe he’s trying to compensate. Maybe he’s trying to help his son because he struggles so much, and the world is beating him down so he wants to raise him up a little bit. I can really appreciate that. 

Also, we see that none of us are perfect. You get that in biblical families, too. So it helps me just to be a little less hard on myself. There’s a lot of pressure, especially on women, especially on mothers, to do it all right. To get it all right all the time. But we don’t, and we can’t, and we see that in Genesis, too. To me, it kind of takes off the pressure a little bit. It helps me appreciate the great gifts that my son has in the midst of the challenges that he faces. 

…I’ve got another chapter called, “Guns and Psalms.” There I talk about the raw, honest emotion of the Psalms. They just put it out there! Any emotion or feeling you can find voice to in the Book of Psalms. One of the emotions you can see there, one of the states of being, is one of being depressed. The Psalmist just despairing and almost wishing to die. That made me think of my daughter, who has bipolar disorder, and how she has really struggled with depression. Depression is a very serious condition. It’s not, “Oh, I’m having a bad day, I’m so depressed.” It’s really a clinical state that’s hard to get oneself out of. That’s what I see in the Psalmist, and that’s what I’ve experienced with my daughter Mari. Just to see that the Bible gives voice to something so personal and so true to my family is just really comforting and gives me assurance that we can go on if they did. 

I’ll just add a little PSA that both of them are doing really well now! My son works for J.P. Morgan Chase. He lives in Brooklyn. Shares an apartment with my nephew, his first cousin. They’re super close, so that’s really wonderful. He’s doing really well. My daughter has just produced a show called “Bipolar Badass,” and she has performed that Off-Broadway to a sold-out house. She’s going to be performing for the National Alliance for Mental Illness later this month and is just giving an honest voice to what she’s going through because she wants to help people. 

AGG: Speaking of some of the messiness that we get to see in the Bible, the Bible also has some real challenges for modern readers. In your chapter “Profit from Prophecy,” you talk about women and sexual violence in the Bible. How can we deal with difficult texts in ways that do not inflict more damage, specifically on women?

Dr. Parker: That’s a really important question because there’s a lot in the Bible that’s just awful about women. I wanted to be honest about that and to deal with those texts head-on. I don’t write about this one, but many of us are familiar with this story of the rape of the Levite's concubine in Judges 19.

AGG: It’s a horrific story.

Dr. Parker: Horrific story. You know Phyllis Trible, she wrote the book Texts of Terror, as a lot of us who’ve been to seminary know. In that book, she looks at this story among others. She says that this woman is the least character in all of scripture. That’s one horrific story. 

In the book, I look at the story of Gomer and the abuse she’s made to suffer rhetorically here at the hands of the prophet Hosea. Hosea represents God and she represents Israel. It’s just awful. “I’m going to strip you naked as the day you were born, you’re going to be out in the wilderness.” All awful, abusive stuff, and we can’t pretend it’s not there. Because when we do that we do a grave disservice to women who really suffer in these ways. Violence against women is a huge issue still. I wish I could say, “Oh, well fortunately we worked all that out.” Hardly. It’s a cancer in our culture, and it is pervasive, and we don’t talk about it. We certainly don’t talk about it in the church…We ignore these texts because they’re difficult, and they’re awkward, and they make us feel uncomfortable. But in doing that I suggest we are doing a grave disservice to the people that are sitting silently in the pews and suffering. 

I think there are a couple of things we need to keep in mind. First of all, we need to be brave enough to talk about these texts. I did once preach on the story of the Levite’s concubine, this woman who’s gang-raped and dismembered, during a Good Friday service. There are opportunities there in the liturgical year to talk about these texts. We can be brave to talk about them.

 I think it helps also to recognize—and this is a key lens for me in reading the Bible—that the Bible is descriptive, not prescriptive. It shows us what is going on in the characters' lives in that time and place, a lot of which still corresponds to our lives in our time and place. It’s describing these realities, like the reality of intimate partner violence, but it is not prescribing, “This is what we should do.” It is just showing us this reality. Sometimes, and I say this in the book, the justice is not in the text. The resistance is the real reward. When we resist the reading, when we see how someone is abused and say, “No, this is wrong.” When we feel ourselves reacting in this way, that to me is the power of the text.

Also, sometimes I think we really need to question translation. I can read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. I usually read it in English because it’s, you know, quicker, but I can read both of those languages…When I do that it blows my mind, Anna Grace! It never fails to stun me. I could give you example after example, but for now, I’ll just give you one. That is Ephesians 5:22. So Ephesians 5:22…the English says, “Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.” The Greek says, “Women” (women and wives are the same word, men and husband are the same word) “to your men as to the lord.” No verb, Anna Grace, no verb! Your translators have just helpfully supplied that for you…That verse has been used against a lot of women…It’s not even in the text. Now, in fairness, there are some manuscripts where you’ll find it, and it is in the context of hierarchy, but the most recent scholarly Greek manuscript, the Nestle-Aland 28th Version, does not have the verb in it. And yet this is something where we all “know” the verse. So that’s a more subtle violence that’s done to women. The violence of sexist translation. 

AGG: Many people assume that the Bible is against women. As a Bible scholar, what suggestions do you have for women who want to like the Bible but find that very hard? 

Dr. Parker: I think a lot of women just get turned off. They just say, “This is so sexist. I have no need of it.”... I think that because it has such a strong cultural presence, it really is our responsibility to grapple with these texts. There are a lot of ways that we can do this. 

We can first read to resist. We can recognize that the Bible is descriptive, not prescriptive. Also, as I constantly tell my students, there is no one right way to read the biblical text. We know this ourselves! I mean we read the Bible at one point, then we come back to it ten years later and we see something totally different…So there is no one right way. There are lots of ways you can read the Bible, of course! But there’s a wrong way, and that’s any way that’s harmful to yourself or someone else… 

Then there are things like reading books like Eve Isn’t Evil or going to a website like Women in the Bible. Reading the work of feminist scholars. A lot of good work has been done, and I give an annotated bibliography at the end of Eve Isn’t Evil so people can know right away some resources I think might be helpful…

Also, give yourself permission to question the text…“Who wrote this text?” “Why did they write it?” “Whose interests are served in this text?” “Whose interests are served with a particular interpretation?” 

And if you’re being told that the text should be used in a way that is harmful to you, say, “Sorry. I don’t believe that,” and move on. 

AGG: Love it! In chapter 9 of your book, titled “My Favorite Feminist Jew,” (you have lots of great chapter titles) you describe Jesus’ mission as “tikkun olam” or world repair. Where do you see world repair being done today?

Dr. Parker: I think there is so much of it taking place, Anna Grace, and we just don’t notice it because it’s not in the headlines. I think most people are really good people, and they’re trying day in and day out to make the world better in their own humble ways.

It’s a hard time to be the church now. It’s a really hard time. In some ways that’s encouraging, because when the church was just starting out, it was a hard time. I believe there’s some sort of rebirth that’s going to take place. We’re resurrection people. A lot of the mainline progressive churches are dying on the vine. That’s because we’re in a whole new age. Like when the printing press was invented, you had the Reformation. Now that we’re in the digital age, who knows what the church is going to be next? I think that the church really does a lot of good work on local and regional and national levels. There is good work being done. 

AGG: You’re uniquely situated to answer this question because of your work at Marble Collegiate Church and all of your qualifications: Besides reading this book, what ideas do you have about introducing folks in church pews to biblical scholarship?

Dr. Parker: I think just starting by reading the Bible is a really good idea! A lot of folks have Bibles, and they don’t read them. It’s kind of a cultural icon, but they don’t really take it down off the shelf. I get it! I was one of those people for a very long time. 

If you can, splurge on a good study Bible. I like The Oxford Study Bible more than The HarperCollins Study Bible because it doesn’t give a heading for each section, which really directs your reading. My students would think, “Oh, this is in the Bible.” It’s not in the Bible! The editors put it there…Get a study Bible and look at the notes at the bottom and the chapters at the beginning. I tell pastors that, too. That’s a helpful refresher. To read the Bible is a great place to start, and the notes will introduce people to the scholarship and the current conversation because those get updated frequently…

Maybe have a Bible journal to write your reactions to texts…Find some good podcasts, and listen to those, as well. I know that Yale does one; Yale Religion. I did another one called Faith and Feminism. There are a lot of great podcasts out there. 

Talk about the Bible in everyday life. I think we don’t do that enough, and it relates to so much of our lives. For pastors, to have sermon talk-backs. Sermons are such a one-way conversation, that can help open it up. …Finally, just cherish sacred scripture. Realize that there are a lot of reasons this text has lasted so long. Part of it is its honesty. If these were all idealized people in idealized situations, we wouldn’t be able to relate to them in any way. Instead, we have these really messy stories, really honest emotions, and we see how people have struggled and learned and grown, always holding onto their faith. That can be really helpful for us as we seek to do the same. 

AGG: Excellent! Thank you so much, Dr. Parker. 

Dr. Parker: Oh, you’re welcome! It’s been such a joy to talk with you. Thank you so much for inviting me…I’d like to mention that if groups read Eve Isn’t Evil, I have a free study guide that is available on my website juliefaithparker.com. They are available to download. I also can be contacted via that website, and I’m glad to Zoom in free of charge for any group that reads the book and answer questions or just have a casual conversation. 

Thank you so much to Dr. Parker! 

You can find the downloadable study guide for Eve Isn’t Evil here.

PART 1: Interview with Dr. Julie Faith Parker

By Anna Grace Glaize

Dr. Julie Faith Parker

Dr. Julie Faith Parker is the author of Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions. She holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament/Hebrew Bible from Yale University and is ordained in the United Methodist Church. You can find out more about Dr. Parker at her website juliefaithparker.com.

This interview was conducted on July 22, 2024 via Zoom and has been edited for clarity and length.

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AGG: If you wouldn’t mind, could you share a little about why you wrote Eve Isn’t Evil? 

Dr. Parker: Sure. First of all, Anna Grace, thank you so much for having me. I’m really delighted to be here, and I’m so excited about your website! I’ve looked at it. I’m just thrilled to see that there is such a strong, reliable, smart, insightful source that is freely available on women in the Bible. Because there is so much out there that is just junk—especially when it comes to the Bible—and so it’s really wonderful that you are doing this really important work and providing this ministry to lots of grateful people like me. I just wanted to say thank you for all that you do, and also for inviting me to come and talk about my most recent book Eve Isn’t Evil…

The genesis of this book was actually a meeting that I had with a medium in 2015. I was leading a women’s retreat. My husband’s a pastor. I’m the wife of a minister, the daughter of a minister, the sister of a minister, and a minister myself! So I’m very steeped in church. At this particular church, every spring I would lead the women’s retreat. I had been at two separate campuses for campus interviews as a professor. I had two three-day interviews, and I didn’t know if I was going to get one offer, or two offers, or zero offers! 

This two-week period of uncertainty and waiting happened to be when the women’s retreat took place. I knew a woman on the retreat happened to be a medium. She had an office in Manhattan and an office in L.A. She paid the rent on those offices working as a medium, so I thought there must be something to it otherwise she could never afford those rents! I said to her during a break in the retreat schedule, “Can I meet with you please?” 

It wasn’t like I made an appointment weeks in advance. She just was there and I was there. I just asked her and she very graciously said, “Sure!” Her name is Alexandra LeClere. I share that name with you with her permission. We went into her little lodge bedroom and she sat on one bed and I sat on the other. She looked out the window, she said the Lord’s Prayer, and then she said, “Columbus.” Which was where I ended up teaching. In Columbus, Ohio. Then she said, “Write a book in your own voice. Don’t wait.” 

But I did wait! That was 2015. The book came out in 2023. I published two other books in between, lots of articles, it’s not like I wasn’t writing! But this book was on my heart all that time because it took me a while to muster the courage to write a biblical book that’s so personal. In this [Eve Isn’t Evil] I share some real personal stories, and that is not something I read by other academics. So I thought this might be my contribution: to be a little more vulnerable in my sharing because I can let people know how the Bible has been really helpful to me…Hopefully, they might find the Bible to be really helpful to them, too. 

AGG: That, to me, is one of the most endearing parts of the book. It is so strongly in your voice and is so warmly written. I read a lot of academic stuff, and so to get great content and also in a very accessible, approachable style is one of the reasons why I’ve been recommending this book. 

Dr. Parker: Thank you, Anna Grace! Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. 

AGG: It sounds like you knew going into it that this book was going to be a little bit different. Also, I’ll say, this is not the first time I’ve heard your voice! I’ve literally heard it before on the audiobook narration. Did you expect to be creating audiobooks? What was that process like?  

Dr. Parker: You know, I really wanted to do the audiobook! I was hoping that they would make it an audiobook because it is in my voice…I wanted to give voice to these words. At first, when I told the editor at Baker Academic about this, he said, “You know, we usually hire professionals for this. It’s like getting a haircut. You can do it yourself, but chances are a professional would do it better.” But I really wanted to do it!

I studied acting in college, I took these voice-building classes in seminary, and I was in a lot of plays back in my younger days. I said, “If you get someone else, they’re gonna mispronounce the Hebrew, and that would be really bad.” And he said, “Oh yeah, you’re right.” So that’s how I got to do my own recording. 

I had so much fun with it, Anna Grace! I live in Manhattan. That really helped a lot…I just hopped on a bike and biked down to the theater district where the studio was. I recorded it in a couple of days in a soundproof booth with an engineer and the headsets and the whole thing. And I just loved it! It was just a lot of fun, and people I know who have heard the recording really recommend it over reading the book. They say you just get another whole dimension of emotion in the reading.

AGG: You are really good! I listen to lots of audiobooks because I like to be able to move around, do my dishes, or something as well as “read.” That’s why I asked. 

Dr. Parker: Thank you! I really had so much fun. I’m sure that’s a factor; I really had so much fun doing it. 

AGG: How interesting that your theater background got to be used in your life as an academic. 

Dr. Parker: I hired someone, also. I hired a vocal coach beforehand. I got lessons from her. I have a whole series of voice-building exercises that I do every time before I speak publicly. 

AGG: Our website is dedicated to women in the Bible. Who are some of your favorite women in the Bible and why?  

Dr. Parker: Hard to choose because there are so many women in the Bible whose stories I find really exciting. Sometimes you really have to look closely to find them because women are not the focus of the Bible writers…Rarely, sometimes they are. Those instances are some of my favorite passages. 

I really love the story of Deborah, whom we read about in Judges 4 and 5. I like this story so much because Deborah is a prophet. She’s called a prophet (“neviah” in Hebrew). She’s a military commander. She is a judge; she’s judging Israel. 

So she has all of these roles, and she’s also called a mother in Israel. And there’s no reference to her being married or having any biological children…I say there’s no reference to her being married. But in English, somebody might say, “What? She’s called the wife of Lappidoth!” That’s not in the Hebrew. In Hebrew,  it’s “eshet lapidot.” “Lapid” is torch. That [“eshet lapidot”] means “woman of torches” or a fiery woman. But we get “wife of Lappidoth” in English. Who’s Lappidoth!? [He’s] Mentioned nowhere else in the entire Bible…This is just one of my translation issues, shall we say, but I like to think of Deborah as a fiery woman. 

I also love the story of the Israelite slave girl. That’s a story of a girl in 2 Kings 5. It’s a little girl who’s been captured from Israel, and she’s brought north to Aram. She serves this woman who’s known to us as Naaman’s wife. Naaman’s a commander who has leprosy. She [the slave girl] just expresses a wish for his healing. “Oh that my lord knew that there were a prophet in Samaria. He would cure him of his leprosy.” That’s 2 Kings 5:3. Namaan goes and follows this advice, and he goes to Samaria, and he encounters the prophet Elisha, vicariously, but it’s enough. He dips himself in the Jordan seven times, and he’s made clean.

I’m leaving out a lot of beautiful details! Everyone should go read it: 2 Kings 5:1-14. In that text, she is the one who makes his healing possible. She is the one who has this idea. She expresses a compassionate hope, and so I love her story. She’s also the only girl in the entire Hebrew Bible who is explicitly called “little” who speaks. The only little girl who speaks in the entire Hebrew Bible, and it’s a big text, you know? So that’s another reason why I love her story. 

AGG: How interesting!

Dr. Parker: I know! Isn’t that fascinating? There are girls who speak like Jephthah’s daughter for example. Or Tamar…but they’re the age of puberty. They’re around marriageable age. We know this because of the words that are used to describe them. And this is a little girl, a “qetannah” in Hebrew, so it is fascinating. Children are also not really the focus of biblical writers. But that’s another one of my favorites…

The story of Ruth and Naomi I love, because it’s women choosing each other in a man’s world. They go from this place of famine and despair to hope and abundance and new birth. So it’s a wonderful story. 

Also, let’s not forget the New Testament, or, as I like to call it, the appendix! You know, I love Mary Magdalene. We think of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. That’s how people think of her: as a prostitute…In no place in the Bible does it say Mary was a prostitute. Nowhere in the entire Bible! Yet that’s all that most people know about her. 

In Greek, Mary Magdalene reads “maria hē magdalēnē” or “Mary the Magdalene.” “Gadal” means to be big or to be great, and “migdal” is tower. So we can translate her name as Mary “the tower” or Mary “the magnified one.” Which I like a whole lot more than Mary Magdalene because there wasn’t even a place “Magdala” in the first century! It didn’t even exist. But people think of her as a prostitute from this place—not in the text! 

In Chapter 10, I have these academic deep dives…and I look at this whole question of Mary Magdalene with an interview with Elizabeth Schrader Polczer who’s done a lot of important research on Mary Magdalene. She, along with Joan Taylor who’s an Aramaic scholar in London, published an article that goes through all the semantics of how we can read Mary as the Magnified One or Mary the Tower. Because she is indeed a magnified, towering presence in the Gospels. 

---

Many thanks to Dr. Parker for her time and insight. Part 2 of our interview is coming soon! 

Interview with Rev. Lynn Smilie Nesbitt

Rev. Lynn Smilie Nesbitt  and Anna Grace Glaize

Rev. Lynn Nesbitt is an Associate Pastor at Dothan First Methodist UMC with over 40 years of experience in ordained ministry. She graciously allowed us to share a church service she crafted for Maundy Thursday. The service, called “I Am Here; I Bear Witness,” allows the women of Holy Week to speak for themselves.  This interview was conducted on April 11 and has been edited for clarity and length. 

AGG: You shared with us a resource of a service that you did for Maundy Thursday…in which the women of Holy Week get a chance to speak for themselves. So I’m wondering, how did that idea come about? 

Rev. Lynn: I wanted to do something for Holy Week that was different from what had been done before. It’s great to have a sermon and have Holy Communion. I’ve done foot washings, I’ve done handwashings. And then I realized that we were ignoring some voices that were absolutely there—and those are the voices of the women. If most people were to draw a picture of Maundy Thursday, there would not be any women in that picture. And I don’t think that’s accurate. I determined that I would only use material that was actually in the Scripture. I’d use a little bit of imagination, I’d talk about feelings because the Scripture doesn’t have feelings, but I would not invent somebody who was there. I would only use people that we have reason to believe are there. That’s why I actually footnoted the biblical references for everything so you can go look for yourself. 

AGG: I saw that. 

Rev. Lynn: I mean, you can find them yourself! I wanted something that would stir people’s imagination, so I had all of the women (we had laywomen and clergywomen there)... and we all dressed in “Biblical Costume.” We have a closet full of that at the church. So we all wore things that would help people imagine that. We didn’t act it out; we simply told our story. And it was very well-received. 

AGG: It reminded me of Vacation Bible School when you’d go into the story rooms. I did think, “Oh wow, we don’t present the Bible stories in this way when we’re grown up!”

Rev. Lynn: I grew up in the era where people used flannel board to teach Sunday School, which I, by the way, think is a fabulous idea! It’s not a bad idea at all…My Momma taught four-year olds-and so my Daddy got a board and stretched flannel across it. And then the literature came with pop-out figures, and you’d move them on the board so that the children could envision them. I think that’s a great idea! But they’re two-dimensional figures. I think a lot of figures in Scripture are two-dimensional to us. We hear the name, maybe we can list some things about them. I had a professor of Old Testament in seminary at Candler at Emory, Dr. Miller, and I took History of Israel from him. He started talking about these folks [biblical characters], and I thought, “He knows these people. He absolutely knows them.” My first thought was, “I want to know them so well that if I met Sarah in the produce aisle of the grocery store, I’d recognize her.” I want to know her as a person, not just as a flat two-dimensional figure. So, probably, that background of being taught on flannel board and then having Dr. Miller, probably that fed into that, too.

Who were these women? I don’t think most people realize that Luke says the women financed Jesus’ ministry…Everything has to be paid for. There’s a price. Jesus’ ministry had to be paid for. Somebody had to replace the sandals that were worn out. Somebody had to buy the food. There had to be money for that. And Luke tells us that the women were the ones who supplied the money to finance Jesus’ ministry. I don’t think most people know that. That’s not my speculation. It says it! 

AGG: Going into this process, did you have a favorite woman of Holy Week? 

Rev. Lynn: Probably Mary Magdalene. I think she is much maligned. 

AGG: She is. 

Rev. Lynn:...Any time that someone feels that they must attack another person, the person they’re attacking must have some real power. So, Mary Magdalene’s been attacked so much that I want to know what it is about her that scares you so badly. 

AGG: It really started with a pope who preached a very bad sermon. 

Rev. Lynn: Indeed. Indeed, but I wonder if he didn’t pick some of that up…We don’t have a history of things he was told about her. But she was the first one to proclaim the Gospel. Jesus directly told her to go tell his disciples that he was risen from the dead. Well, there is no greater thing to preach than the resurrection of Jesus, and there is no more exalted audience than his disciples…Jesus told Mary Magdalene to do that. 

I was reared in a very conservative United Methodist church and no one told me that women couldn’t be pastors, but certainly, no one told me that they could be pastors either…When they’d have a revival and we’d go to at least one night of the revival…I was about five years old, and there was a woman preaching that night. And the man introduced her by saying, he quoted Samuel Johnson (I didn’t know that when I was five years old), he said, “Seeing a woman preach is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. It’s never done well, and you’re surprised to see it done at all.” Everybody laughed just before she got up to preach, and my five-year-old self was offended. That’s the first woman I ever heard preach…

I think until I visited Candler as a prospective student, I don’t think I’d heard another woman preach. Remember that I went into Candler in 1977…There were very few women clergy…I certainly didn’t have any role models, and a lot of people were telling me I didn’t belong there at all and that Jesus said I didn’t belong there at all. But I just don’t think you can argue with Mary Magdalene. I just don’t think you can. So, Mary Magdalene. 

AG: Reading it [Rev. Lynn’s Maundy Thursday service], I liked that you gave the High Priest’s servant her due, because I think a lot of times she’s seen as a villain in that story, but she’s just saying what she knows to be true. She’s saying, “Wait! But I saw you!” That’s not a crime. 

Rev. Lynn:...The High Priest’s servant, she’s not a weighty individual in that society. But she spoke up. And a Gospel writer managed to include what she said. 

AG: This is a great way to include women in the life of the church. Are there other ways that you try to highlight women in your ministry? 

Rev. Lynn: I remember the preachers in my home church…many times they were very wonderful people, but they used a lot of golfing illustrations, and a small percentage of the men even golfed in my church! And football illustrations that left me cold…I think inclusivity is not just who you have at the table, it’s how you talk. When I preach, I try to deliberately use stories that children can relate to and older people. I mean, there’s all kinds of being inclusive…I try to have something that if you’re physically able to sit in that pew and listen, that I have something you can see yourself in. I think part of it is just being aware of folks. 

AG: Is there anything else about the women of Holy Week, the experience of writing this, or even just your life in ministry that you wanna close on? 

Rev. Lynn: I did not get a lot of encouragement when I was going into ministry. I got a lot of people telling me why I shouldn’t do it…therefore the people who did encourage me really stood out to me. Ernest Andress was on the Board of Ordained Ministry, and they would come to seminary once in the fall and once in the spring and take us out to eat, and they’d often give us rides…Ernest looked at us and said, “I’m so glad I get to be in ministry with the two of you.” And I survived on that morsel for decades. It made all the difference in the world to me…I began to realize that if I’m being left out, there are probably other folks…I’ve never forgotten Ernest Andress saying that one throw-away line, that he probably forgot he said, but it meant a lot to me. 

A Maundy Thursday Service

“I Am Here; I Bear Witness”

By Rev. Lynn Smilie Nesbitt

Narrator

Luke tells us, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “And certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities –Mary called Magdalene, out of whom had come seven demons, and Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susannah, and many other who provided for him from their substance.”[1]

We know that these women are in Jerusalem during Holy Week; we know that they are at the cross.  We have no written sources that tell what these women are doing on Maundy Thursday.  This presentation takes what we do know, what the scriptures say, and, within those boundaries, lets the women tell their stories.  Each story they tell is recorded in the gospels.  Hear now these voices from the shadows, the testimony of the women.

Susanna

My name is Susanna. We here tonight are the hidden ones, the ones always present, but always in the shadows.  The other women and I began following Jesus at the beginning.  We are the ones who finance his ministry. We are the ones who buy the food. We pay for lodging. We replace the sandals worn out from walking these rocky, dusty roads.  We followed him into Jerusalem and were part of the parade into Jerusalem last Sunday.  And we are here tonight, helping to prepare the food.  

I am here.  I bear witness.

Mary the Mother of Jesus

I am Mary, widow of Joseph, mother of Jesus.  Now that I am alone in the world, I travel with my son Jesus.  No mother ever forgets the birth of her children, but I have more to remember than most.  I have more to puzzle over, trying to understand. Never have I been so proud as when we walked into Jerusalem last Sunday, the crowds welcoming all of us, but especially my little boy—because he will always be my little boy. Tonight I helped the other women prepare and serve the food, withdrawing to the shadows as the men ate, vigilant in case there be any need.  And I saw Jesus, my Jesus, tell them that he was giving them a new commandment.  I saw him take the towel and basin and kneel, washing their feet.  I do not understand this.  He is their teacher, their rabbi; why is he acting as a servant? [2] I do not understand, but I feel that something has changed, the universe has shifted somehow. 

After supper I saw him take the bread, bless it, break it and share it with the twelve.  “This is my body broken for you,” he said,   “Eat and remember.”  Then he took the cup, blessed it, and shared it with the twelve.  “This is my blood,” he said.[3]  My own blood ran cold.  What does this mean?

I am here; I bear witness.

Music Interlude

Mary Magdalene

I am Mary of Magdala.  Jesus saved me.[4]  I don’t mean that he keeps me from going to hell, although he certainly does that.  I mean he saved me.  I was very ill, tormented in my mind and body, unable to have a normal life.  Jesus healed my body and mind and opened the way to God for me. I will follow him for the rest of my life, follow him into hell itself if he asks it. I with the other women traveled with him to Jerusalem from Galilee along with the Twelve. 

Did you think that I would stay in that Upper Room when he left it? I slipped behind the men, unnoticed, and walked to the Garden of Gethsemane.  The oil presses loomed solid in the moonlight. I watched Jesus’ agony, watched the Twelve drift into sleep while he prayed. I watched the soldiers come.  

I am here.  I bear witness.

The Mother of John Mark

It is my house where they came to have supper.  The other women and I prepared the meal and served it.  My teenage son, John Mark, was fascinated by Jesus, hanging on every word he spoke.  John Mark stood in the shadows with us and listened during supper until I sent him on to bed. I didn’t know until later that when Jesus and the Twelve left for the garden, John Mark heard them leaving and leapt out of bed, wrapping a sheet around himself, following them to the garden.  He came in very late, not a stitch on, and after he dressed, told me what he saw.  

Jesus struggled in prayer.  It was very quiet, most of those there falling asleep.  Jesus woke them up and told them it was time to leave. Then they heard the march of soldiers and saw the torches lifted high. He realized the men had come to arrest Jesus; he saw Judas identify the Lord with a kiss.  “All day long I teach in public,” Jesus told the soldiers.  “Why are you coming here with swords, at night, to arrest me?” The soldiers grabbed Jesus and John Mark turned to sneak away when a soldier grabbed him by the sheet he was wearing; John Mark managed to get away, leaving the sheet behind.[5]  I have my son safe here with me—but where is my Lord?  Where is Jesus?  

I am here.  I bear witness.

Music Interlude

Joanna

I am Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward.  My husband’s boss is a monster. Herod was curious about John the Baptist, so my husband went with him into the wilderness to see him. He should have known better:  John never held anything back and admonished Herod for divorcing his own wife and marrying his brother’s wife.  Herod promptly arrested John and put him in jail.

In that, he gave Chuza and me the greatest gift.  As Chuza tended to John, John told him of Jesus.  I had been ill for years, bound by my sickness; John told Chuza that Jesus could heal me.  John was right; Jesus healed me.  Chuza and I would have done anything for Jesus; but we knew that Herod would never let Chuza go.  In fact, Herod had beheaded John the Baptist. So together Chuza and I planned that I would follow Jesus, learn from him and support his ministry with our wealth.  I then could tell Chuza what I had learned.

Tonight I followed Jesus, my beloved Lord, as he was brought bound into the high priest’s court.  I fear for Jesus.  The chief priest, like Herod, has no mercy, only ambition.  Dear God, what will happen to Jesus?  

I am here.  I bear witness.

The High Priest’s Servant

I am a lowly maid for the high priest. I have not worked here long.  I came up from the country, from a family so poor they do not have enough to feed all of us anymore.  My parents thought that the high priest’s household would be safer for me—I hope they never find out what goes on in this place.  Here at least I have a roof over my head and enough to eat. I see more than I ever dreamed existed as I grew up in my little town.  I see the splendid but I also see evil.  Even though I am in the lowest ranks of servants, cleaning dishes and washing clothes, I see a lot.  Tonight, long after dark, I heard soldiers coming through the gates.  I came out, staying by a charcoal fire to stay warm. They were taking the Galilean Jesus into the palace to stand before the priest.  He is quiet, neither screaming in fear nor shouting his innocence.  That makes for a change—all the prisoners I’ve seen before were loud in their objections. 

I’ve seen Jesus before.  I was at the parade last Sunday, when Jesus and his followers came into Jerusalem.  Now I see another man I recognize, one who was with Jesus.  “You were with Jesus the Galilean,” I say to him.  “I don’t know the man,” he said.

One of my friends up on the porch said, “Yes you are, I saw you with him.”  “I tell you I never met him,” the man shouts back.  Then a man a little bit away said, “I can tell you are a Galilean by your accent.” The man yelled back that he had no idea what we are talking about. Then I hear a rooster crow.  Can it be that late—early morning now?  And I see the man who had been with Jesus, the Galilean we’d been talking with, sobbing.[6]

I am here.  I bear witness.

Narrator

And thus the Light of the World is arrested and judged in darkness.

These women followed Jesus, each in the way they were able.  Some of their names we know; some are known only to God. Each stayed the course, keeping close by Jesus even as he died.  Each went, after the resurrection, to bear witness to the risen Lord.  

So each of us, in the way we are able, are invited to follow Jesus.  In what way will we follow?  And how do we bear witness?

[1] Luke 8:2-3 NRSV

[2] John 13:1-20

3 Luke 22:14-20

[4] Luke 8:2-3

[5] Mark 14:51

[6] Luke 22:54-62

Female Drummers in the Ancient Near East

by McKenzie Brummond

I was drumming at Tootsies, a famous little bar on Broadway in Nashville. Even though it was a Tuesday afternoon, the second floor of the small, dingy, and entirely too purple bar was packed with tourists. Many famous artists got their start performing on the Tootsies circuit, making the dive bar a popular tourist destination. As we finished a song, a highly intoxicated middle-aged man threw a twenty in our tip bucket and yelled, “I love the girl drummer!” Gee, thank you, random citizen. At least he was a good tipper. That being said, the novelty most people associate with girl drummers has always amused me. We smash stereotypes by smashing cymbals.

This is why, while researching women in the Bible, I was astonished to learn that in Ancient Near Eastern cultures, the vast majority of drummers were women. We see a prime biblical example of female drumming in Exodus, when Miriam leads the Israelite women in drumming and dancing upon their liberation from the bonds of slavery in Egypt:

Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine

in her hand; and all the women went out after her with

tambourines and with dancing. And Miriam sang to them:

“Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse

and rider he has thrown into the sea.” (Exodus 15:20-21, NRSV)

This passage gives us unique insight into the worship of the women of Israel—their praise to YHWH is embellished with drumming and dancing. The God of Israel was worshipped by girl drummers!

 Archaeological evidence supports this idea that drummers in the Ancient Near East were predominantly women. For instance, archaeologists have discovered Iron Age terracotta figurines depicting female drummers. These clay figures, which are typically female, are commonplace among Iron Age artifacts. Scholars have speculated that these renderings could portray fertility figures, or goddesses, but the purpose of these figures remains conjecture. One quality that is evident, however, is that many of these female figurines are depicted holding hand drums. This observation implies that hand drummers in the Iron Age were predominantly women.

 It is interesting to note the way in which our own society has flipped this stereotype on its head—most drummers now seem to be men. As a member of the drumline in college, I can attest to the fact that women were in the minority. Of approximately 36 drummers, only about 7-10 of us were female in a typical year. While the drumline was a prime example of how much men dominate the scene as percussionists, I am grateful for the special sense of comradery shared by the “drummer girls.” This comradery mirrors female drummers in the bible, which attest to the existence of women’s groups in the Ancient Near East. The existence of groups specifically for women are often good for the overall status of women in a society, as these groups are an indication of relative independence and opportunities to build a strong community of women. Girl drummers empower each other and stick together (no pun intended).

I have run into some situations where the role of drums in worship is contested (not unlike the role of women in worship, in some circles). I grew up in a Methodist church where I often played the drums during our contemporary worship service. When I arrived at Notre Dame as a freshman, our dorm liturgical music coordinator was excited that I had brought my cajon (a Latin percussion instrument, or box drum) to play during our dorm masses. However, on more than one occasion, visiting families would object to the use of drums in the mass. I always found it somewhat ironic that a means of worship with such a strong biblical and historical foundation could be found objectionable. But I have always been grateful for the opportunity to express my reverence for God through my talent as a percussionist.

Will Gafney describes drumming as a prophetic activity, and perhaps there is a reason that women are particularly well-suited to this form of prophecy. Because female drummers made up a female community in Israel, it is significant that they played together to prophesy and worship YHWH. Rather than overshadow one another and try to be the star of the show, they used their talents as a beautiful opportunity for fellowship and praise. They praised God by amplifying one another. My high school band teacher used to point out that the drummer is often underappreciated. As the heartbeat of the band, it is rare for an audience to notice when a drummer is playing well, but they will surely notice if the drummer makes a mistake. I have always enjoyed this relative anonymity of the drummer because I see the musicians and instruments as servants to the song itself. I take pride in effectively keeping a steady tempo, in subtly cuing other musicians when they should come in, and in marking transitions in the song with an effective fill. I do not need solos or loud microphones to feel fulfilled as a drummer; for me, playing music is a form of communion in which no one part is greater than the whole. When I read about Miriam leading the women in worship with her hand drum or tambourine, I feel empowered as a female musician to see this fellowship reflected in my own musical communities.

I would like to wrap up this post by highlighting some inspiring female drummers from our own time. Anika Niles from Germany is widely considered to be the greatest female drummer in the world. Another well-known girl drummer is Sarah Thawer; I was especially drawn to her engaging personality! (Her DRUMS ARE THE BEST video literally had me laughing at my desk). Check out this drum off between her and another female drummer, Senri Kawaguchi. As if we needed more reasons to love Prince, both Sheila E. and Cora Coleman Dunham have accompanied him on the drums. And bands like the Summer Set and The Bangles feature female drummers Jess Bowen and Debbi Peterson. I was excited to learn that we girl drummers are part of a long legacy, and it is empowering to know that biblical women helped lay the foundation for a strong community of drummer girls that continues to this day.

Bibliography:

• Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel by Wilda Gafney (2008)

• “Miriam” Season 2, Episode 3 of Not Your Grandma’s Bible Study Podcast (April 1, 2020)

• “Of Drums and Damsels: Women’s Performance in Ancient Israel” by Carol L. Meyers (pp. 16-27) in The Biblical Archaeologist (1991)

• “Women with Hand-Drums, Dancing: Bible” by Carol Meyers (June 23, 2021)

• “16 Best Female Drummers of Today” in Drum! Magazine

McKenzie Brummond earned her Master of Religion degree from Yale University and holds a Bachelor degree of Liberal Arts from Notre Dame. Interested in music and theological principles, McKenzie spends her time contemplating the intersection of musical worship and theological study.

Should We Read the Bible Critically?

by McKenzie Brummond

The academic discipline of biblical studies hinges upon the act of reading the Bible critically. However, it can be difficult for people of faith to reconcile following the canon faithfully with reading it critically. First, perhaps I should clarify that to read critically does not necessarily mean to criticize a text, but to engage with it by asking questions and acknowledging multiple levels of meaning. As such, I argue that it is not only possible to read Scripture both faithfully and critically, but that reading the Bible both faithfully and critically can help devout followers of God to grow in their faith. 

Reading the Bible critically allows us to perceive its full complexity as a living document. For Jewish and Christian communities, the Bible is the revealed word of God. However, its divinely inspired status does not mean that the Bible was simply dropped from the heavens in its current form. The Bible is composed of numerous works by a variety of human authors, and it includes genres ranging from poetry, to proverbs, to narrative, to law (to name a few). Certainly, the process of identifying the canon was guided by the Holy Spirit. But we must acknowledge that even human beings guided by the Spirit are influenced by their own biases, culture, and era. How else can we account for the fact that Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant communities each have different canons? Acknowledging its complexity as we read the Bible allows us to take part in a long tradition of biblical interpretation and connects us to early Christians who played a part in shaping the biblical canon we still use today. Holding Scripture as the holy word of God in tension with its human influences allows us to both honor Scripture’s authority and recognize its potential to be tainted by human agenda. That being said, there is beauty in how diverse voices shine through the biblical text. The Bible’s multiplicity of voices exemplifies for us the communion of saints. Interacting with Scripture through critical reading brings us into closer communion with our ancestors in faith and with God. 

Reading the Bible critically can also help us to grow in our relationship with God. Scripture itself is teeming with examples of faithful servants of God who argue and wrestle with Him. Abraham negotiates with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; Jacob wrestles with God in the desert; and the Syro-Phoenician woman verbally spars with Jesus so her daughter may be healed. We can find inspiration in biblical figures such as these. In the same way God’s most devout followers have always conversed with God, actively reading and questioning God’s word as conveyed in the Bible helps us to foster an active relationship with God.

 Critical reading of the Bible has the potential to strengthen our faith. The process of learning involves active inquiry on the part of the student. In other words, we learn about our faith by asking questions about it. As a fundamental document for the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible is a natural guidepost for our questions. Whether or not we encounter answers to these questions, actively engaging with the word of God demonstrates care for our faith. I like to think of my faith like a muscle—I need to frequently test it and work it out if I want it to grow. If I never think about my faith or ask questions about God and Scripture, I cannot earnestly claim a strong faith in God. Going through the motions of our faith without actively engaging can lead our faith muscles to atrophy.

 The Bible is a fundamental source of revelation for both Judaism and Christianity. Because it is a source of divine revelation, it can be all too easy for us to believe that the Bible is above questioning. However, sometimes an attitude of prayerful questioning is precisely the best tool to help our faith to grow. As Rachel Held Evans writes, “I am indebted to those who have gone before me, those saints of holy curiosity whose lives of faithful questioning taught me not to fear my doubts, but to embrace and learn from them” (Inspired, p. xix). Lord, let us endeavor to lead lives of faithful questioning, that we may grow in faith, wisdom, and relationship with You. 

References and Further Reading

• “Excerpt: ‘How to Read the Bible’” by Marc Zvi Brettler on “Fresh Air,” NPR (January 30, 2006)

• Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again by Rachel Held Evans (2018)

• “The Paradigm” podcast series from Bible Project (2021)

• “The Woman Who Won an Argument With Jesus” blog post by Gary Taylor on Missio Alliance (July 31, 2014)

• Women and the Authority of Scripture: A Narrative Approach by Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Trinity Press International (2002)

McKenzie Brummond earned her Master of Religion degree from Yale University and holds a Bachelor degree of Liberal Arts from Notre Dame. Interested in music and theological principles, McKenzie spends her time contemplating the intersection of musical worship and theological study.

Interview with Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith

by Anna Grace Glaize

Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith earned her Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College. She was the rabbi of Temple Emanu-el in Dothan, Alabama from her ordination in 2007 to her retirement in 2017.  Prior to becoming a rabbi, she was an accountant for 25 years.  She and her husband Rob relocated to Broomfield, CO to be closer to family. Rabbi Goldsmith works part-time as the rabbi at Temple Or Hadash in Fort Collins, with the Adventure Rabbi, and is active in the Boulder Rabbinic community. Our interview with Rabbi Goldsmith was recorded on October 19 via Zoom and edited for clarity and length. 

AGG: From your bio, who is the adventure rabbi?!

Rabbi Lynne: The adventure rabbi! The adventure rabbi’s name is actually Rabbi Jamie Korngold. She is based out of Boulder…Boulder’s a very outdoorsy place. A lot of great hiking, a couple of mountains...What Jamie discovered is a lot of people fell out of Judaism because they couldn’t fit into the synagogue, Hebrew school mold, and they just didn’t like it. So she offers an alternative. She doesn’t have a building, so she does most of her work outdoors, which is awesome. She has Shabbat on skis. She has Shabbat services up on top of Flagstaff Mountain, which is absolutely gorgeous.

AGG: During Covid when the only safe places are outside, she had the framework all there. 

Rabbi Lynne: Oh yeah. That’s what she said, “I’m ahead of the curve!”...I’ve actually done two weddings in hiking boots, because we had to hike to the place where we were actually gonna do the wedding, and I did one in a blizzard—outside! 

AGG: Did you have a favorite woman in the Bible when you were growing up?

Rabbi Lynne: No, and I’ll tell you why. There are actually two reasons. I’m a little older. I’m 70. When I started religious school, it was probably 1957, and my parents were what I would call submarine protestants. They were under the surface for most of the year and then surfaced on Christmas and Easter and then went back underground. So I didn’t get a lot of religious school. They were good at starting us out, but about six or seven weeks into it they got tired of getting up in the morning, so we stopped going to religious school. I do remember we learned about Abraham, and we learned about Jesus. I kinda thought they were brothers because every year we got Abraham and Jesus...But we never ever got anything about a woman in the Bible. The only one I can tell you about that I knew at all was Mary... She was Jesus’ mother and that’s all I knew. She was the only biblical woman—seriously—the only biblical woman that I knew of until much, much later.

AGG: Is there now a biblical woman that you feel connected to? 

Rabbi Lynne: Maybe because we read the Torah on a yearly cycle and we’re in Genesis now, and we just finished the Torah portion where Abraham and Sarah (Abram and Sarai at that point) left and were heading out into the wilderness following God. I’ve always wondered about Sarah...My favorite’s when God says she’d have a baby at 90, I’m thinking I would’ve cried!.. She seems to follow Abraham. Whatever he did, she follows him. There was a midrash [rabbinic biblical interpretation] written by a woman rabbi actually, and she did a conversation between Sarah and Abraham. Abraham’s saying “We’re leaving. God told me we have to leave.” And Sarah’s saying, “What are you talking about?! I’m gonna leave all my sisters and brothers? My mother and father?” She said, “If you want me to go, I wanna talk to Him.”

AGG: Something was left out. We missed some of that response. She couldn’t have just said, “Yes.”

Rabbi Lynne: There totally was. When he left and took Isaac with him up to Mt. Moriah, did she know?! We don’t know...There’s been tons and tons and tons of midrash written about it, but we don’t know what happened. She had to have known something was up...Midrash lets you know that we’re not the first generation to have thought about this. They were thinking about this way, way back.

AGG: Is there a Bible story or passage about women that troubles you?

Rabbi Lynne: Yeah. It’s later on in the text. It’s not in the Torah. It’s the prostitute that gets thrown out of the house and beaten and raped and thrown back on the steps. That’s it. It’s the end of her life. What bothers me so much is that women were objectified back then, too, and women are still objectified today. What happened to her is still going on. That is probably what troubles me most. I like to think it’s not happening in the United States, but I’m sure it does….It hurts. It hurts to read it. Thank goodness it’s not part of the Torah so we don’t have to read it over and over again. It’s not a good story.

AGG: How do you deal with those dark stories in your sacred text?

Rabbi Lynne: It’s life. I mean, life is not all butterflies and bunnies. Dark things happen. Bad things happen to people, even very good people. And I know that sounds trite, but it’s so true. Horrible, horrible things happen to both women and men in the Bible. But it’s mostly women. Sometimes we tread it very lightly, but I think it’s there for a reason. It’s there for us to look at and to deal with the uncomfortable feelings we have when we read it. But that story in particular horrifies me every time I look at it. 

 AGG: As a religious leader, how do you help your community navigate those difficult stories?

 Rabbi Lynne: Two ways. Number one, it’s life. The Bible doesn’t present, like, a lollipop view of life. The Bible presents life as it is. And bad, horrible things happen whether or not you blame it on God or you blame it on people. Horrible things happen. The second thing is I don’t believe the Bible was written by God. I believe that men—and I do believe it was men—wrote the Bible. Their prejudices are showing, and it’s also a product of their age. What was happening then is not happening now...There are a lot of things in the Bible that pertain only to the lives that they were living then as opposed to the lives we’re living today. There’s somewhere—and it might be in rabbinic lit—about the 70 faces of the Torah. That the Torah is written to interpret. It’s there, but our interpretation and what we do with it is what counts…People will take the Bible that they’re holding in their hands and think it’s the gospel truth, and what it is is a translation of a translation. When you’re translating—and I’ve done this, too—particularly the Torah which has no vowels, we’re guessing from context. My prejudices are going to be in my translation. I’m interpreting as I translate. 

 AGG: Even the phrase “gospel truth” has some trouble since we have four gospels.

Rabbi Lynne: I seriously didn’t know until I was in seminary, and we took a course on Christian scriptures, which by the way was required for us before we could be ordained, that the stories are all different! I had no idea.

 AGG: You were raised protestant but became a rabbi?

 Rabbi Lynne: Well, I converted in between…My parents did not bring us up particularly religiously, and the older we got the less religion we did. I think I probably dropped out of Sunday School for good when I was eight, and that was a long time ago. I was confirmed, but I was only confirmed because my best friend was being confirmed...My husband is Jewish. We got married fairly young...and we moved to Lexington, Kentucky. We’d been married, I don’t know, a couple years, and he came home from work one day, and he said, “I gotta go find some Jews! I can’t take it anymore.” So I said, “Okay.” The rabbi delivered a really good sermon that night...I loved the prayer book. I loved the emphasis on the here and now, and not, you know, heaven—be good so ​​you can go to heaven. Be good here because you should, and this is what we need to do. I liked that. So, I went to the rabbi and said, “I need some books or something because I don’t know anything about Judaism. I mean, other than the fact you don’t celebrate Christmas, I know nothing!” He said, “Fine, I just started a conversion class.” And I said, “Well, I don’t want to convert.” And he said, “Fine!” So I joined the class, and it was six or seven months. I went every week, and he gave us a new book every week. I still have some of those books...At the end of the class, I liked that we could question things, I liked that there was no one interpretation, I liked that God was not something you could define, that He wasn’t a big guy in heaven with a long beard...A child’s idea of God is not the same as a teen’s, and it's not the same as a young adult’s, and it’s certainly not the same as a grandmother at age 70. So, I really liked all of that and resonated with it and ended up converting. The rabbi thing came later.

AGG: Are there any things you wish that modern women could take from the stories of biblical women?

 Rabbi Lynne: Oh God yes! I’ll tell you what...they worked with what they had. They got done what they needed to get done. I just thought that was fantastic. The women in the Bible did so much. They have a huge role. And we don’t give them enough credit. One of my favorite stories is Tamar and Judah. In order for her to be impregnated, she had to know exactly where in her cycle she was...Or Ruth. I mean, Ruth and Naomi were both in horrible straights. They were in the worst straights you could be as a biblical woman. She did what she needed to do and look where she ended up—she’s like the great-grandmother of David.

I thought of it in terms of the #MeToo movement. Back in the late 70s and early 80s when I was working in a corporation, there was a lot of bad stuff that happened back then. We learned stuff in the ladies’ room. We learned who not to sit next to in meetings, we learned who not to get in an elevator with, who not to be too close to, and why. That was us doing what we needed to do...I’m so glad now, I love what’s happening in the #MeToo movement.

AGG: One of my favorite biblical women rediscoveries has been Bathsheba...Rediscovering basically that that is a #MeToo story, and she was responsible in large part for making Solomon the king.

Rabbi Lynne: And you talk about an untenable position. And David shouldn’t have been there—what was he doing there in a time of war! But then she turned it around. Like I said, using what you have.

Rabbi Lynne’s Recommended Reading: 

• Basic Judaism by Milton Steinberg

• What is a Jew? by Morris Kertzer

• The Dignity of Difference by Jonathan Sacks

• The Gospel Without Jesus by Amy Jill-Levine

Interview with Dawn Hare: On the Bible, Wisdom, and How Improv Helps Interpretation

by Anna Grace Glaize

Dawn Hare

Dawn Hare is the General Secretary of the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women in the United Methodist Church. She’s also from Anna Grace’s hometown of Brewton, AL. This interview was conducted on October 8 via Zoom and edited for clarity and length. 

AG: So Dawn, could you please tell me a little bit about your role with COSROW and what COSROW does for the Methodist church?

DAWN: Absolutely. Well, and let me just say, the first thing is that people use all kinds of acronyms in the United Methodist Church.

AG (laughing): I know!

DAWN: It’s part of who we are…But what it stands for is the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women. We are one of the 13 agencies of the United Methodist Church. Folks..in our particular area have a passion for ministry...And ours is directed to the equality of women in the United Methodist Church and, by model and example, in the “kin-dom” of God and in the world.

AG: So now our women in the Bible questions...Did you have a favorite woman in the Bible growing up? 

DAWN: You know, I’ve thought about this before and you’re gonna be disappointed by my answer. No! And I thought about that hard, and I remember as a child—I mean a little child—the person in the Bible that I most wanted to be like was—

AG: Are you gonna say Jesus?!

DAWN [laughing]: No! I’m not...No, it was Solomon! I remember sitting on a pew in church...and praying, “Dear God, could you give me the gift of wisdom?” I thought wisdom was the ultimate gift when I was growing up, and I just wanted to be like Solomon…Now, what comes around is when you become General Secretary on the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women, and you start studying women in the Bible, and you start studying the feminine aspects of God, and you realize that wisdom—duh! [Wisdom is often personified as a woman in the Bible]...So maybe God was speaking to me as a small child, and I didn’t even know it. But anyway, that’s another story!

AG: That brings us to now. Is there now a biblical woman that you feel, if not your favorite, that you feel close to at the moment? Or you identify with? 

DAWN: I think more of the qualities of people than the people. Just like I was drawn to wisdom and it happened to be embodied in Solomon, and Sophia [meaning ‘wisdom’ in Greek]...I tend to be drawn to women who show courage because that’s something I’m always checking about myself. Am I having the courage I need to have in this moment? Or am I backing away? And it’s, you know, the courage of announcing that He is risen, the courage of talking to Jesus at the well. I mean the courage it took to take on the system and say, “We want this land. It was our father’s!” I think it’s not so much the characters as the character of women in the Bible that I’ve been drawn to.

AG: That’s great. So now, maybe you’ve worked through this...but I still encounter it when I read the Bible... Is there a Bible story or passage that just annoys you or that you hate or just gets under your skin? ‘Cause even when I read the commentaries on those and I can try to put it in context, there are still times when I read something, and I just don’t like it. Don’t like it AT. ALL.

DAWN: Yeah, I think I just shared with you the one I don’t like! And that is the ultimate mansplaining. For Christ’s resurrection to be announced by a woman, and then for the men to go forth and take credit for knowing it and claiming it… I think that just continues to be annoying. I heard one time long ago that if we were really living and telling scripture, every Easter morning that there would be a clergywoman or a laywoman or some woman that would get up in the pulpit and would say the words “He is risen.” And I have to think what an incredibly powerful Easter around the world it would be if from every pulpit… if the word that Christ is risen was announced as it was first heard—from the voice of a woman.

AG: So I had a TA...she said that the short answer to “Is the Bible a misogynistic text?” was “No.”... But the slightly longer answer, and the more truthful answer, is “it’s complicated.” So as a modern woman yourself, and as a woman of faith—which I think maybe makes the stakes a little different—how do you navigate reading the Bible as an ancient text...and as a spiritual text?

DAWN: Wow. You know, I think you just have to read it in the spirit of Second City [an improvisational comedy troupe], which is “Yes, And.” And know that yes, there are some parts that are really misogynistic. But those don’t come from Jesus. Those tend to come from, if you just peel some layers off, they tend to come from probably whoever sat down and wrote it down or translated it or the culture of the time...You know, we led a training earlier this week, and a piece of that was implicit bias, and that we all have biases. All of us. Well, that goes for the people who actually wrote the Bible down, too. 

AG: Love Second City. Always fun to give them a shout-out! So, finally, what lessons do you hope women today can take from the women in the Bible?

DAWN: Oh, I just think there’s so much richness to learn. To just reexplore things you think you know. You know, there was a saying when I was growing up that every time you opened the Bible and read a passage, you’d find something else or you’d explore something else. That is so much more true when you have a resource like Women in the Bible…I think, especially growing up in the South, sometimes there’s a feeling that you can’t question authority, or you can’t question the way something’s been taught to you. You can’t or a lightning bolt will come and get you. But my God is bigger than that. And it’s a wonderful thing to know that you can read a text, you can read it a different way, you can read it with one set of authorities, you can read it from a different set of authorities, and you can ask God some hard questions and try to seek the answer. Our faith’s strong enough to handle that. So I just think that Women in the Bible is a wonderful resource for the richness it offers us.

Anna Grace Glaize earned her Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School and her Bachelor of Arts in English-Literature and Philosophy from Auburn University. Her interests include theology and popular culture, true crime podcasts, and food adventures.

Tips for Critical Reading (Part 2)

by McKenzie Brummond

In a previous blog post (Tips for Critical Reading Part 1) we shared five tips on how to read texts critically and effectively. Today we’re adding to that list, plus giving you 10 questions that you should ask as a critical reader. Read tips 6 through 10 below!

6. Annotate. Whether or not you want to take notes depends on your goals and your learning style. Some people may like to highlight key words and ideas in the text. Others may want to take detailed notes in a journal as they read. Whatever method helps you to retain the information is best!

7. Determine the main idea and purpose. We often forget that the main idea and purpose of a source are two different things. The main idea is a summary of the main point of the source, whereas the purpose is the author’s goal. E.g. The main idea of an argument may be that pineapple does not belong on pizza, but the author’s purpose would be to persuade the reader to share this opinion.

8. Consult dissenting opinions. I love to post dissenting resources on this site, because it is evidence that even educated, qualified, and peer-reviewed authors can still come to different conclusions about the same issue. Reading compelling arguments for the opposing view can broaden your perspective and help you to become a more critical reader.

9. Read the bibliography. Reading the bibliography serves two purposes: First, it allows you as the reader to evaluate the credibility of the author’s source material. Second, the bibliography can be a fruitful place to find further reading on the subject at hand.

10.  Self-evaluate. To read critically, one cannot grow complacent. Continue to ask yourself, am I taking this author’s arguments at face value? How are her biases influencing her argument? How are my biases influencing my interpretation? Like any new skill, critical reading requires diligent practice.

10 Questions Critical Readers Should Ask

1. Is this source relevant to my research questions?

2. What are the key ideas presented in this source? Are there any terms I need to look up?

3. Is this author qualified to write about this subject? What biases does the author(s) have that might influence their position?

4. What biases am I bringing to the text that might influence my interpretation?

5. Is this source peer reviewed?

6. What is the source trying to say?

7. What is the purpose of this source? What is the author’s goal?

8. Are there dissenting opinions on this subject? What are the opposing arguments?

9. Does this source cite other sources in its bibliography? Are these sources reliable?

10.  What do I think about this question? Has the source answered my question(s)? Has the source given me a new perspective?

McKenzie Brummond earned her Master of Religion degree from Yale University and holds a Bachelor degree of Liberal Arts from Notre Dame. Interested in music and theological principles, McKenzie spends her time contemplating the intersection of musical worship and theological study.

Tips for Critical Reading (Part 1)

by McKenzie Brummond

1. Scan the source. Before you begin reading a source, scan headings and keywords to ensure that it is relevant to your research. Make sure the source addresses your guiding questions. Your time is valuable! Make sure you invest it in relevant material. 

2. Before you read the text, read the author. This is a step I often take before adding a resource to the website. If you are unfamiliar with the author of a source, it would behoove you to find a bio of the author online. This step can reveal the author’s credibility and biases, as biographical information often includes the author’s educational background, qualifications, and religious, denominational, and/or political affiliations.

3. Take stock of biases. These include the biases of the author(s) as well as your own biases. For instance, if you are a mainline Protestant reading work by a Catholic writer, it is worth noting that you and the author are operating within different theological frameworks.

4. Pay attention to the reviews. Is the source peer reviewed? Is it reviewed or evaluated in other sources? If so, reading these reviews gives insight into the content and arguments presented in the source and may do a lot of the heavy lifting for you when it comes to critical reading.  

5. Have a conversation with the text. Normal people might just call this step “active reading,” but I like to think of it like having a conversation with the text. I ask the text questions, offer rebuttals, and clarify concepts that might be confusing at first glance.

McKenzie Brummond earned her Master of Religion degree from Yale University and holds a Bachelor degree of Liberal Arts from Notre Dame. Interested in music and theological principles, McKenzie spends her time contemplating the intersection of musical worship and theological study.