What You Didn't Learn in Sunday School: Women Who Didn't Shut Up and Sit Down

By Shawna R. B Atteberry and Mark M. Mattison

In the last few years I've read rants against the evils of feminism from some of the top Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian leaders who blame women wanting to go to work, go into ministry, and be equals to their husbands for all the social ills happening in our country. If women would just stay home divorce rates would plummet, no abortions would happen, public schools wouldn't be in trouble, and all the world's ills would come to an end.
There's just one little problem: Does the Bible really say all of that?
What You Didn't Learn in Sunday School will introduce you to women in the Bible who:
Were religious leaders.
Disobeyed their husbands to obey Godde.
Had careers.
Made their own decisions.
And guess what? The world did not end.
Eight verses have been used to make women second-class citizens, and at times, virtual slaves to their husbands. The rest of the Bible is full of stories of strong women who led their families, their people, and their countries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621896548

Shawna R. B Atteberry

Shawna R. B. Atteberry is a writer, theologian, and storyteller who empowers women to be the leaders Godde calls them to be at home, work, and church by exploring the Divine Feminine and stories of the women in the Bible. She blogs at www.ShawnaAtteberry.com, a safe haven for women to explore their calling and vocations without antiquated judgments about what a woman's role should be.

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What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School

Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down

Shawna R. B. Atteberry

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What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School

Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down

Copyright © 2013 Shawna R. B. Atteberry. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-62032-611-4

EISBN 13: 978-1-62189-654-8

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Unless otherwise marked, Old Testament quotations are adapted from the World English Bible, made publicly available through the Creative Commons License–Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike 3.0 United States. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us for full details.

Unless otherwise marked New Testament quotations are from the the Divine Feminine Version (DFV) of the New Testament, made publicly available through the Creative Commons License–Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike 3.0 United States. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us for full details.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Part One: Women Who Didn’t Shut Up

Chapter 1: The Daughters of Zelophehad

Chapter 2: The Wise Woman of Abel

Chapter 3: The Syro-Phoenician Woman

Part Two: Women Who Didn’t Submit

Chapter 4: Tamar

Chapter 5: Abigail

Chapter 6: Priscilla

Part Three: Women in Authority (Even over Men)

Chapter 7: Deborah

Chapter 8: Huldah

Chapter 9: Phoebe

Preface to Chapters 10 & 11

Chapter 10: The Corinthian Church

Chapter 11: The Ephesian Church

Appendix 1: Bringing the Women of the Bible Out from the Shadows

Appendix 2: Bringing the Women of the Bible Out from the Shadows Cheat Sheet

Bible Study Helps

Works Cited

About Shawna R. B. Atteberry

To my husband, Tracy Atteberry

The Lappidoth to my Deborah

Acknowledgments

First I would like to thank my guinea pigs: the Thursday night Bible study group that meets at Chicago Grace Episcopal Church: Rector Ted Cutis, Andrea Barnhardt, Jacki Pingel-Biddy, Robert and Sharon Novickas, and Taylor Rockhill. I taught this material for a month to get a feel for what needed to go into this book. Your questions and insights helped me to see old and treasured stories in new ways, which have made this a better book.

I would also like to thank my readers who gave me valuable feedback, as well as let me interview them for the podcasts: Sandi Amorim, Catherine Caine, J. K. Gayle, Roxanne Krystalli, Mark Mattison, Lainie Petersen, and Jacki Pingel-Biddy. Thank you for taking the time to read the book and share your thoughts with me. A special thanks to Mark Mattison for writing the forward and reading through the book twice, making valuable insights about the content as well as catching many typos.

A special thanks to my husband, Tracy, who has encouraged me to pursue my dreams. He designed the original E-book I self-published. There is nothing better than being married to a person who supports you in what you believe you are called to do. I'm a very lucky woman.

A final and heartfelt thank you to all of you who have read my blog, bought the self-published version of this book, supported me, and prayed for me over the last six years. It's been quite a journey for me, with changes in my life that I could not even imagine in the beginning. I feel honored you have chosen to share the last few years with me.

Foreword

Rarely does one come across a book so compelling that it’s impossible to encounter it and remain unchanged. This book by the Rev. Shawna R.B. Atteberry is one of those rare gems. What You Didn’t Learn in Sunday School is at once academically responsible and eminently accessible to a broad audience, making it an ideal resource for Bible studies.

Some of the biblical women described in this book are very familiar–women like Deborah and Priscilla, for example–but others are much less well known. Do you remember the daughters of Zelophehad, who dared to question Moses? What about the Wise Woman of Abel who negotiated with a military general? Regardless of how well-known these stories may be, however, each chapter provides new and penetrating insights guaranteed to help us stop and think about them in delightful new ways.

Part of the genius of Rev. Atteberry’s approach–what enables some of us really to see, for the first time, what we never did see when we first learned some of these stories in Sunday School–is her consistent juxtaposition of so-called complementarian values (particularly silence and submission) with these remarkable narratives found liberally throughout both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. I’ve always known the story of Abigail, for example, but much to my chagrin it never even occurred to me that her example clearly challenges the complementarian conviction that women should always submit to their husbands.

Reading these ancient stories through the lens of our contemporary debate about women’s rights not only clarifies the issues, it broadens the foundation for a truly biblical position. It’s not simply a matter of wrangling over a few Greek words in the New Testament, nor of adjudicating between traditional Judeo-Christian values and modern feminism. Building her case on the actual stories of Scripture rather than a handful of verses, Rev. Atteberry demonstrates that it’s actually traditional patriarchalism, not contemporary feminism, that stands in sharp contrast to the view of women often reflected in the Bible.

The issues don’t stop there, however. Rev. Atteberry’s treatment also problematizes the Fundamentalist view of Scripture as inerrant in every respect. This is vitally important because an uncompromising inerrant approach to Scripture necessarily flattens out the biblical witness into hopelessly irreconcilable texts, silencing some narratives in order to privilege a handful of other texts which clearly reflect the patriarchal values of ancient societies rather than the countercultural liberation of Godde’s good news. Ironically, it’s actually the