A Review Of Jen Wilkin. "Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds." Wheaton, IL: Crossway. 2014. 180pp. $12.99. -- By: Megan Hill

Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 20:1 (Spring 2015)
Article: A Review Of Jen Wilkin. "Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds." Wheaton, IL: Crossway. 2014. 180pp. $12.99.
Author: Megan Hill


A Review Of Jen Wilkin. Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds. Wheaton, IL: Crossway. 2014. 180pp. $12.99.

Megan Hill

Pastor’s wife, freelance writer, and blogger
Clinton, Mississippi

Studying the Bible is hard work. But Jen Wilkin is adamant that women are up for the task. In fact, in her excellent new book Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds, she challenges women living in an age of swipes and clicks, to study God’s word with purpose, perspective, patience, process, prayer. With these five P’s, she guides women to take the radical step of taking time and effort to study the Bible.

Reading In A Pixelated Age

We live in an era of the screen, and screens impact the way we interact with text. In April of last year, a Washington Post article summarized the recent body of research on our changing reading habits: “Before the Internet, the brain read in mostly linear ways—one page led to the next page, and so on. . .The Internet is different. With so much information, hyperlinked text, videos alongside words and interactivity everywhere, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all—scanning, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly.”1

The research suggests that scanning and skimming digital content makes us less able to read deeply off-screen. Cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf was quoted in the Post article: “I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing.”

And this surely has implications for our Bible reading. A national survey reported that of adult Americans who increased their Bible reading last year, 26% attributed their additional time in the Word to downloading the Bible onto their phone or tablet.2 And The New York Times reported that on Sunday mornings Bible app YouVersion receives more than 600,000 search requests every minute.3 And the Word became pixels.

Learning To Feed On The Word

Of course, from the first speaking of God, to the printing press of Gutenberg, to the common-language translation of Tyndale, the Bible has always been on the cutting edge of communication technology. The capability of digital Bibles to encourage cross-referencing, word- and phrase-searching, and translations in parallel has been a great boon for modern Bible students. But quick and e...

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