The Hero and the Whore: Reclaiming Healing and Liberation Through Stories of Sexual Exploitation in the Bible (Camille Hernandez) -- Review
If you
looked simply at the title—The Hero and Whore—without looking more
closely at the book you might wonder what this book is about. Could it be a
retelling of the Samson and Delilah story? If that’s your first impression, I hope
to disabuse you have that idea. The subtitle of the book helps enlighten us,
but first let us acknowledge that the Bible is filled with stories that can be
challenging to our modern sensibilities, especially when it comes to how the
Bible portrays women. Unfortunately, some of these biblical stories feature sexual
exploitation. We may find such stories distasteful and seek to avoid them. In
fact, preachers may seek to avoid dealing with them because they aren't warm
and fuzzy. Nevertheless, should pay attention to them because at least some in
the pews may find something in these stories that is liberating. That’s because
such stories may help them examine their own experiences of exploitation.
However, such stories need to be approached carefully so as not to further
exploit women.
The title of Camille Hernandez’s
book The Hero and the Whore may sound like some kind of romance novel where
the hero is a knight in shining armor who rescues the whore, who is a woman in
distress (think Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman). That
isn’t the intent here. Rather Hernandez invites us to take a new look at the biblical
stories where women who face sexual exploitation are both the hero and at times
the whore (think Rahab of Jericho). The author of this book, Camille Hernandez,
is herself a bi-racial (Filipina/African American) woman who has dealt with the
traumatic effects of sexual exploitation, in large part related to her
racial/ethnic heritage. She is also a post-evangelical woman who is trained in
trauma-informed pastoral care, such that she seeks to help survivors heal from
sexual exploitation.
Camille Hernandez describes herself
as an abolitionist (human trafficking), theological ethicist, community
facilitator, and poet. She identifies as post-evangelical and speaks of serving
as a doula, blending leadership development with trauma-informed pastoral care.
Practical theologian Chanequa Walker Barnes writes the foreword to the book, in
which she writes that while Hernandez doesn’t “identify as a biblical scholar
or a theologian, but here she is both, and in the best sense” (p. xii). What
Hernandez does in this book is connect the biblical stories with the realities
faced by contemporary women, who, like the women in the biblical stories, face
forms of sexual exploitation.
While The Hero and the Whore focuses
on the stories of biblical women, Hernandez connects her own story to the biblical
stories. Thus, this is a very personal exploration of these stories. She begins
her exploration of these stories the story of Eve and moves forward until we
reach the story of the unnamed “Woman Caught in Adultery.” Even as she brings
her own story into the stories of the women of the Bible, she also starts each
chapter with her own poetry, which represents her take on these biblical
stories.
Hernandez begins by sharing her own
story, that of being a Black/Filipina woman married to a Chicano man, who was
deeply immersed in white evangelical churches. She would eventually migrate out
of that context largely because she was made to feel uncomfortable due to her
racial/ethnic identity. She writes that in that context she “learned to deny
myself, my parentage, my cultures, my ancestry, my intelligence, and my
sexuality, and I severed my nonevangelical relationships” (p. 2). While being
trained to serve as a missionary, she would eventually discover that the
message she was imbibing didn’t work. This revelation took place while working
with her husband in ministry with people who experienced trauma and violence. This
book emerged out of her discoveries concerning her faith and the way she
related to the world which was, in her experience, often oppressive, racist,
and misogynistic. When it comes to the Bible, which is the context for this
book, she writes, poignantly: “I believe holy texts do not provide us with
answers; instead, they provide an invitation to find our own narratives and ask
deeper questions. To believe in the infallibility of leaders and trust in their
interpretation without questioning will only lead to destruction” (p. 10). This
is in many ways an invitation to deconstruct destructive interpretations of
biblical stories and their implications for the modern context. Thus, the Bible
serves as a liberating text.
Each chapter in the book engages
with a particular woman’s story, beginning with Eve. When it comes to Eve, she
speaks of the role that blame plays in the story, something she experienced
herself. It is in exploring this story that Hernandez tells of her own calling
to participate in advocacy. From Eve, we move to Hagar, a story that also
involves another woman, Sarai. It is a story of rivalry rooted in competing
forces. There is a chapter on Leah and her daughter Dinah, the latter of whom
is raped. There is Potiphar's Wife who plays a significant role in Joseph’s
story, as well as Rahab, who appears to be a sex worker who helps the Hebrew
invaders. There is Jael who kills an enemy general in the age of the Judges,
along with Bathsheba, the one who is sexually exploited by David. There is the
story of Hegai (Esther) and Vashti, and Gomer, the wife of Hosea. Then there
are two New Testament stories, those of Salome who is a pawn in a power
struggle between her mother and stepfather, and the woman caught in adultery. Hernandez
interweaves her story and the story of others who have faced similar kinds of
exploitation.
As you read The Hero and the Whore,
you will discover that Hernandez has a deep love for the Bible, but she
also understands the challenges of reading it in a way that is liberating and
healing for those who have been exploited and oppressed. She came to understand
that Scripture is not infallible, but it can speak to real concerns. She brings
to the text her discovery of Womanist theology and a Filapinx perspective known
as Kapwa, which addresses the effects of colonization and Western
individualism. Working from these dual realities of her own heritage, she engages
these stories, some of which will be well-known and others not so well-known.
In doing so, she invites us to ponder the realities facing women today, many of
whom are experiencing religiously inspired oppression. Thus, without delving
into each story, we learn something about Hernandez, her realities, and the
biblical women, whose stories offer us insight not only into the Bible but the
lives of contemporary women seeking to find their way forward in life.
Although The Hero and the Whore
was published in 2023 (and sat on my review pile for too long), before Kamala
Harris became the Democratic candidate for President, the debate over Harris'
multi-ethnic identity as Indian and Black has come to the fore. Harris’ story has
some parallels to that of Hernandez, so this book may speak to how we perceive
a woman pursuing political leadership in a country that is home to a myriad of mixed-race
families, and yet struggles to make sense of that reality. This is not to say
that Kamala Harris is either a hero or a whore, but rather this current story offers
a poignant reason for reading Hernandez’s book at this particular moment in
history. As with any book that deals with a topic like this, The Hero andthe Whore will likely challenge, upset, subvert, and anger the reader. It
will also, I believe, offer a word of hope to women whose stories mirror those
found in this book. It will enlighten those who do not share these realities—including
white male cisgender males like me.
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