LIZ CRUMLISH has written a lovely book of vignettes about women leading in the Bible. She uses an accessible style that mixes short chapters with poetry, creating room for frequent pause and reflection. Her premiss is that in these liminal times we should be looking to liminal leaders for guidance, and that the women of the Bible have much to teach us, because they necessarily embody this.
She argues that the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah teach us subversion, and Miriam, persistence. Deborah brings calm, and Ruth, tenacity. Queen Vashti said no, and Huldah spoke truth to power. Then the formidable women of the New Testament built the Christian Church, and we can use their wisdom to rebuild it today. Throughout, she talks about powerful networks of women who support one another and their communities, and who have always had to be ingenious about working around male power.
This is not a “how to” book: it is more of a meditation. In it, the author winnows out valuable lessons about women showing up and finding their voices in a whole range of challenging circumstances. While this is not without cost, she argues, these women of the Bible demonstrate the myriad ways in which women must speak up so that their wisdom can be heard. She says: “When positions become entrenched, it often falls to the women to weave a way through, to cut through stubbornness with words that challenge and move things on.” The example of these biblical women is an encouragement to us, and we can find strength from their stories to fuel our courage.
Herself an evocative storyteller, in her book she talks about the fact that women have always met and told stories, as they went to the well to collect water, or to the river to wash clothes. She sees in this a model for listening which is incredibly strong: “I imagine those watering places as places where women gathered in community, and bore witness to one another’s stories, stories of trials and tribulations, of joys and sorrows, where they learned from one another and where they challenged one another. Rather than being ‘talked over’ as is often the way in boardroom or committee meetings, women have the propensity to hold space for one another to be fully seen and heard.”
She finishes the book with a poem about pockets, because it is said that putting pockets in women’s dresses will lead to sedition because of what they might hide in them. She says: “the worldwide web of women begins with sewing pockets in women’s dresses,” and notes that wedding dresses now have pockets so that brides may start as they mean to go on.
Dr Eve Poole is Executive Chair of the Woodard Corporation and writes on theology, economics, and leadership.
Miriam’s Sisters, Deborah’s Daughters: When women lead the way
Liz Crumlish
Canterbury Press £14.99
(978-178622-605-1)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49
