“Remember the Women” – Baptist News Global

In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John: “Remember the ladies and be more generous and kind to them than your ancestors. Don’t put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember that all men would be tyrants if they could.”

On this Election Day, we realize how right Abigail Adams was and continues to be. In recent days, we’ve seen women’s rights rolled back, women’s ugly names used as legitimate political discourse, and even calls to repeal the 19th Amendment, which gave some women the right to vote.

Unfortunately, one of the key texts that many misogynists (mis)use to justify their rhetorical, political, physical, and sexual violence against women is the Bible.

I’m teaching an undergraduate course this fall. about feminism and the Bible. We talk about the importance, in the words of feminist biblical critic Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, of remembering women, of bringing back those dangerous memories of women who resisted, who claimed their right to identity and challenged patriarchal norms. For one assignment, I ask students to write a poem or short piece of prose retelling the story of a biblical woman.

This year, their ideas were so accurate not only for the biblical text itself, but also for our current moment that I want to share some of them.

I wish conservative Christians could learn to read the Bible with the empathy, reflection, and compassion that my students, including those who have never read the Bible before, bring to the text. If that were the case, perhaps we wouldn’t have women dying due to lack of access to reproductive care, or demands that wives vote the way their husbands tell them to, or the ongoing mishandling of sexual abuse by the clergy.

These students told me that I could share their work. I’m glad. Their words can help us remember these women and affirm their stories’ call for justice.

Eve
O. Cooper

I’m the first woman
I didn’t have a mother to teach me
Just rules of how to be
One mistake, I fell for a lie
No mercy
Paradise is dying
It’s all my fault, he said.
It’s all my fault, pain, suffering, death.

Job’s wife
Addison Swartzendruber

My dear husband Job. No one I have ever met had such loyalty as he did. He is described as a blameless and honest man who fears God and shuns evil. I believe this has contributed to our many fortunes and blessings. Sheep and oxen, servants and a beautiful piece of land. Our seven sons and three daughters, my pride and joy, my family. I couldn’t be more grateful for my family.

God brings these blessings and Job thanks God and worships God.

But then one day God took them all away.

He tested Job. I took everything I loved. But not me. I just had to watch. And Job still
worshiped like crazy.

I cared less about animals, land and a beautiful home. I didn’t care at all if I had fewer servants (but bless their families and their hearts). However, as soon as God brought my 10 blessings into my life, He took them away. He took their lives. And Job could have stopped him.

I found him on the floor, rubbing pot shards into the sores on his skin like some damn idiot. An idiot without a family, who can only look at his wife and melt with grief, watch her husband go through trial after trial, a man who has never cursed the name of God. Seven sons. Three daughters. The precious children were gone during the day, and Job still knelt, and Job still worshiped.

Tell me I was more than a fly on the wall watching these tests of faith. Tell me that I have the right to feel what they did to my children, what they did to my husband. I cleaned up those scattered pieces of the pot. I thought, tell me that’s enough! And when it finally happened, when the earth was restored and when we gave birth to new children, it was as if our world was torn apart and replaced.

My husband was healed the moment our world was renewed. I saw the light in his eyes. The grass was green and he had new children. My husband Job, blameless and honest, a man who fears God and shuns evil. He quickly forgave and put those memories aside. I don’t know if I will ever be able to do the same.

Trapped in the Shadows
Anonymous

They pulled me out of the shadows
trembling figure at dawn,
my heart is beating, the drum of fear,
the heaviness of their eyes is like stones.

I stood there naked
naked not only with his body,
but in spirit
my sin was laid bare before the crowd.

Where is he, the one they claimed?
Hidden, a coward among the accusers,
his silence is louder than their ridicule,

its absence is a betrayal.

“Teacher, what do you say?”
Their poisonous whisper stung,
but then I felt another presence,
heartbeat, steady and kind.

In the dust I found hope
when he lifted my chin,
unwavering gaze
no stone in hand.

“And I don’t blame you,” he said, “
and at that moment I was reborn,
not just a sinner, but a woman,
my story is revealed in the light.

Ruth
Ashley Silver

I’ll go with her
vulnerable alone
stronger together.

Leah
Amber Johnson

She’s beautiful
Cherished;
I suffer from childbirth more than once,
Not twice
Three times.
Love me I’m crying
Take care of me, I’m crying
But no one hears.

Hagar Desert Cry
Luis Nunez-Martinez

“I walk with sand under my feet,
the sun above the merciless heaviness.
Mother’s hands that once held hope
now get to the stream that is not there.

Abandoned, I call to you, invisible,
God of a promise given to another.
Is there mercy for me?
a servant cast to the barren winds?

The voice breaks the heat
tells me about rivers, about the future,
my son, whose laughter will echo
on a land that was never mine.

they heard me –
I am in emptiness.
And although I was a stranger
the desert now promises me too.”

Susan M. Shaw is a professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. She is also an ordained Baptist minister and holds master’s and doctorate degrees from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Her latest book Intersectional Theology: An Introductory Guideco-authored with Grace Ji-Sung Kim.