THE HERO AND THE WHORE: Reclaiming Healing and Liberation Through Stories of Sexual Exploitation in the Bible. By Camille Hernandez. Foreword by Chanequa Walker Barnes. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023. Xiii + 206 pages.
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 of 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.
Robert D. Cornwall
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’s multi-ethnic identity as Indian and Black has come to the fore. Harris’s 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 and the 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.
This review originally appeared on BobCornwall.com.
Robert D. Cornwall is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Now retired from his ministry at Central Woodward Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Troy, Michigan, he serves as Minister-at-Large in Troy. He holds a Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and is the author of numerous books including his latest “Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope” coauthored with Ronald J. Allen. His blog Ponderings on a Faith Journey can be found at www.bobcornwall.com.
