Walk Worthy Press: Just A Sister Away by Renita Weems

Author Testimony

The opportunity to revise my first book Just A Sister Away, which I wrote on a dare some eighteen years ago, is a chance to return to a first love. That love is of talking to ordinary women about the ordinary acts of triumph and defeat that women of faith endure, that after time turn into the biography of a life lived, of lessons learned, and of a faith in one’s spiritual path that waxes and wanes a thousand times.

I was a student at Princeton working on Ph.D. in biblical studies at the time, just a few months short of landing my first teaching job, when the book finally found its way to light. I never imagined the response Just A Sister Away would meet from women (and men) from across the country. Although I’d long ago given up on the idea of parish ministry as a vocation for myself, as an ordained clergy and also a budding biblical scholar I wrote Just A Sister Away searching for way to color outside the lines when interpreting traditional sacred stories, while hoping to stay on speaking terms with the sort of everyday, ordinary women who’d nurtured me spiritually as a girl and later as a young adult. At that time I knew of precious few books that offered any modeling to ordinary readers for how to read against the grain, peer behind what’s there on the pages, to uncover the biographical bits and pieces about silenced and forgotten women who are generally ignored by male preachers and commentators alike. Studies of women in the Bible by African American women writers were virtually non-existent. I was excited eighteen yeas ago about applying some of the insights I was gaining in my studies there in

graduate school to some of my favorite stories about women in the Bible. Literary criticism, women’s biographies, the perimeters of my own autobiography, and womanist and feminist criticism emboldened me to pay attention as much to what’s not said as to what is said

I describe writing Just A Sister Away as a dare because I’d never considered writing a book prior to my then publisher’s invitation to do so. Upon hearing me speak at a convocation of evangelical women’ about Jephthah’s senseless sacrifice of his only daughter, Lura Jane Geiger of LuraMedia Publishers cornered me about bringing my "radical" interpretations to print.. At first hesitant, I eventually relented under the pressure of friends and others who called and wrote pestering me for copies of the lectures they’d heard me give on this or that woman in the Bible. Thus, the task of putting into print my reflections on nine of my favorite stories about women in the Bible back in 1987 was a deeply personal experience. For me it was an experiment with combining autobiography and biblical interpretation, the personal and the public, the scholar with the believer who wished to remain faithful. "Faithful to what?" some may ask. I don’t know if I had an answer back then. All I knew was that it was important to me to do scholarship that was intelligible and transformative to the sort of women who’d nurtured me when I was new to the spiritual journey. Telling the story of a woman’s life was important to this community of women. No matter how far I strayed as a critical thinker and biblical scholar, I was, and remain at heart, a southern, black (ex-)Pentecostal girl from Georgia who couldn’t shake her love for the African-American storytelling tradition. That combined with my seminary education which prompted me to pay attention to to the counterimpulses in the biblical narrative stirred me to see familiar stories about women in the Bible with new eyes. Writing gave voice to my vision. What I did not foresee the disapproval Just A Sister Away would meet from some who would complain that I was somehow violating the text by bringing new questions to bear upon these sacred stories . But neither could I have imagined the depths of inspiration (and liberation) other readers, both female and male, would find in my critical, yet what I hope loving reimaginings of women’s lives.

I am grateful to my friend and current publisher, Denise Stinson of Walk Worthy Press, for bringing up the idea of revising Just A Sister Away and offering me the chance to revisit my first love. (A special thanks to Frances Jalet-Miller at Warner Books for her deft editorial skills.) I am happy to report that I am as smitten today by the women here in Just A Sister Away and the telling of their stories as I was eighteen years ago when I first set out to write these women’s lives. That readers continue to write thanking me for inspiration they’ve gained from the book attests to the ongoing fascination with the life stories of ancient biblical women which contemporary readers continue to have. Indeed, it’s not presumptuous on my part to suggest that the groundswell of books on women in the Bible that have been published over the past eighteen years aimed at thinking women of faith who are not specialists in biblical studies, books about women in the Bible which attempt to combine critical reflection with devotional affection, owe some of their inspiration, at least in part, to the publication of Just A Sister Away in 1987.

Here you will find that four new chapters have been to this new and revised edition of Just A Sister Away. The biblical women themselves demanded a fresh new interpretation in light of recent discussions in the larger culture about women and biblical heritage and wouldn’t let me go to print without including their stories in this new edition (Mary Magdalene, the Queen of Sheba, Achsah, and Zelophehad’s daughters). I’ve contented myself to go over the original chapters of Just A Sister Away and add new insights here and there where needed, but have resisted the temptation to completely rewrite the book. The translations of the Hebrew and Greek texts continue to be largely my own, although I must admit that there are some places where the King James’s translation of the story (though often archaic and idiosyncatic) are irresistibly more poetic. And although I thought long about deleting the questions after each chapter, I want to honor the fact that Just A Sister Away has been a staple in the many women’s Bible study and reading circles that have sprung up over the last two decades. Readers have made clear to me that the questions after each chapter are what have made the book a popular text in their reading circles. Readers appreciate the guidance that questions offer them to sit back and reflect not only on what they read, but also on how their own autobiographies as women intersect (or collide) with that of other women’s lives.

Finally, writing continues to be a form of prayer for me. Writing and revising Just A Sister Away is my way of hailing God and saying " See, I’m still here , albeit treading water and screaming at the top of my lungs,. Although I continue to flail madly against the banal and tyrannical, you can still find me grasping for dear life to the things sacred and liberating in grandmother’s faith. Don’t give up on me. I’m still here, still believing in believing." I offer Just A Sister Away in new and revised form to those of you, like me, who just can’t shake our love for stories, especially ones in the Bible, even those that raise more questions than they answer.

Renita J. Weems

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