Rachel Held Evans reminds us to appreciate our own uniqueness

June 18, 2013

Rachel Held Evans: A Woman’s Voice
“It’s tough representing your entire gender,” says Rachel Held Evans.  She wrote those words in a guest post for Tony Jones’s blog on Patheos. She was referring to a common expectation that often accompanies a speaking invitation or other situation in which men customarily dominate but desire to show an openness to diversity by including a woman.  The motive behind the expectation? “‘We wanted to feature a woman’s voice,’ a well-meaning conference planner will inform me with excitement,”, she writes, “as if mine is sufficient to capture the experiences of 3.5 billion human beings.”  Rachel says being expected to speak for all women is too much responsibility—that she is only one woman with her own unique voice.  It’s an important message for each of us, reminding us to be simply who we are—nothing more, nothing less.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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