Women, Writing, Theology: Transforming a Tradition of Exclusion

3. A “Wretched Choice”?: Evangelical Women and the Word

33 3 A “WRETCHED CHOICE”? Evangelical Women and the Word Shelly Rambo Introduction I am standing outside the gospel tabernacle, staring through the large back windows where teens are perched to watch the evening revival meeting. Rows of long wooden benches span the interior space, and a bombastic-voiced man is holding a Bible in one hand, moving at a frenetic pace back and forth quoting Scripture passages. The invitation to the altar is the pinnacle moment in which young people respond to the evangelistic message by moving out of their seats, walking down the aisle, and kneeling at the front altar as a public sign of a decision to turn over one’s life to God. As a teenager, I knew that those who came to the front were dedicated, serious in the life of faith, bold and courageous to make that public act before their peers. I also knew that those who remained in their seats had some serious work ahead of them; they were, as the biblical parable says, like hard and thorny soil, unreceptive to the seed—the word of God. By contrast, visiting the altar meant that they were aiming to be fertile soil, receptive to God’s word and work. Teenagers stream in and out of this building for one week each summer . Summer Bible camps like this one are a central part of American evangelical culture. Teens leave behind short shorts and rock music to 34 / Women, Writing, Theology “get right with Jesus.” They gather for a time of revival, to get away from the pressures of worldly life and to be together with youth of similar faith. It is a time when they can anticipate dedicating or rededicating their lives to God, a time to make things right and to begin again, to carry on in the life of faith amid the pressures of teen culture. Thick armor can be developed here to battle against the cultural enemies of alcohol, sex, and drugs. These are the lures of the devil, and one needs faith to withstand the forces of secularism. My body remembers this space. It is as if I were nine, or twelve, or sixteen years old. I am standing there, more than a quarter century later, trying to figure out what went on in this building year after year, what went on inside of me, what conspired between me and God in those adolescent years of my life. Standing pen and notebook in hand, I am attempting to be an anthropologist of sorts, scanning the subculture that has deeply shaped me. I understand theology to be more than what a person or community professes, more than a set of beliefs that one espouses. Instead, it is a discursive world filled with symbols, words, and practices that craft human lives in particular ways. Theologian Serene Jones calls the teachings of the church “morphological spaces” into which human persons enter; these teachings, referred to as doctrines, give identity and form to peoples’ lives, shaping them into being certain kinds of people in the world.1 This essay is an attempt to probe the shaping power of theological discourse on evangelical women’s identity. In the testimonial tradition of evangelical Christianity, the word of God—the Bible—was speaking; it was taking on flesh through our words. What did this mean for young women within this religious tradition? I explore this question through the image of the altar, a symbol of American evangelical experience with particular morphological—shaping—power. Nineteenth-century theologian Phoebe Palmer believed that a person finds and claims a new identity at the altar. There, a woman finds her life—and her power to speak—in surrendering to the word of God. Emily Dickinson, the teenage girl and future poet, witnessed the movements of young girls toward the altar and believed that this moment of surrender was perilous . Clothing themselves in the prescribed identity of Christianity, A “Wretched Choice”? / 35 they were, in Dickinson’s opinion, circumventing the struggle to craft a world. They surrendered to Jesus Christ, who crafted them into his image, the image of the Word; vacating self, they were filled by the Word. Dickinson, by contrast, refused to convert. Dickinson’s testimonies to the Amherst religious revivals provide a unique lens through which to view the process of sanctification, the theological term for the life of holiness.2 These nineteenth-century women writers describe...