Nashville publisher’s new release isn’t your mother’s Bible

It’s clear almost instantly that Abingdon Press’s newest Bible isn’t the kind of Christian women’s fare that focuses heavily on Proverbs 31 and lightly on indignities around gender.

By Genesis 34, there’s commentary from a professor at Southern Methodist University, dissecting the fact that no women mentioned in the account of Dinah’s rape ever get to speak, including the victim herself. " 'Honor killings’ still occur today, but usually the woman, not the rapist, is killed to avenge the ‘honor’ of the men in her family," it reads. “Churches sometimes ignore the rape victim’s suffering, remaining silent to protect the ‘honor’ of the rapist who may be a church leader.”

The CEB Women’s Bible — a version of the Common English Bible, which was released in 2011 — is annotated solely by women. They are National Baptist, Jewish, Catholic, Methodist and from several other faiths, and at least five are in Nashville or have strong ties. Women also constituted a third of the translation team for the Common English Bible itself, more than on any Bible released to date.

This month’s release is sure to benefit from an almost daily national conversation about gender — one prompted by the upcoming Nov. 8 presidential election, although a rep for Nashville-based Abingdon assures me the timing was purely by chance.

One of the editors is the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, senior pastor of Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton attends. Bring your own voice to the conversation about what it looks like to be a “good Christian woman,” she advised. This women’s Bible isn’t going to try to tell you.

“One of the things Hillary has gotten pushback on for a long time is something she said 20 years ago about not being a woman who stayed at home and baked cookies,” Gaines-Cirelli said. “Part of the assumption under the CEB Women’s Bible is that, for some, being in the home and being a caretaker of the children is extraordinarily powerful. That’s their call, and that is wonderful. Other women are called to be secretary of state and a candidate for president.”

If this Bible adds to the conversation in a way different from existing literature, that was the editors’ and contributors’ intention, said Rev. Judy Fentress-Williams, another editor.

“I’ve seen so many products marketed to women that are all about telling women who they are and who they are supposed to be under the auspices of scripture,” said Fentress-Williams, professor of Old Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary.

This is a product for thinking women and their male counterparts, she said. The first group can enjoy interpretations written from the female point of view — personalizing texts right away instead of trying to figure out how they relate. The second group can remove themselves from a place of privilege in their reading of scripture and see what people often rendered invisible in it have to say.

The readability editor on the original Common English Bible is the Rev. Elizabeth F. Caldwell, a Nashvillian who formerly served on the faculty of McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. For the women’s version, she submitted notes on Deuteronomy and Titus — small contributions, she said, but it thrilled her to be asked.

“I just loved being included in this company of women,” Caldwell said. “When I look at all these people they invited, there are a lot of professors in colleges, universities, seminaries, elders in churches, youth pastors. They put together this incredibly interesting group of people.”

Personally, I found the result to be a Bible that engaged me through interwoven references, discussion questions and approaches that revealed how Biblical women have been lessened or dismissed, yet their stories remain powerful.

And dealing with tensions this election season, it’s useful to find a Bible I don’t want to put down.

Heidi Hall is The Tennessean’s former religion editor. Contact her on Twitter @HeidiHallTN.