Imagine that you’re a rural African woman. Born in poverty, you attended school for several years when you could be spared from farm work, studying without books under a tree with a hundred classmates on the days when your teacher showed up. In your early teen years, your family was relieved to marry you off to the man who impregnated you, leaving them with one less mouth to feed. Now you yourself are struggling to feed a houseful of little ones, with your husband’s meager resources divided between your children and those he has fathered with other women.
One day, your congregation’s women’s leader brings a surprise. She has attended a meeting with two ladies who traveled from the provincial capital. She presents a manual with instructions for a new program: all the women in the congregation are to read one chapter from the Bible per week during the next year.
You’ve heard of the Bible, of course. The pastor says it is the Word of God that you must obey in order to go to Heaven. He even has a tattered copy that he brings to services. You’ve never seen one up close, never owned any book, and never desired to read anything. Those reading lessons on a chalkboard under a tree were a long time ago, and were in a different language than the one you speak every day. Why would you even attempt to read the Bible?
Because everyone is doing it. The leader announces that at your Thursday afternoon meetings, each woman should share what she learned in that week’s chapter of Genesis. She says that those without Bibles can walk to her home to read, and that illiterate women can ask someone to read to them. That sounds like a lot of trouble. You don’t want to feel left out, so you decide you’ll simply affirm you did the reading, then giggle shyly when asked what you learned. The leader will wink and dutifully fill in the manual to ensure that everyone receives pretty certificates at the end of the year.