Review: The Hero and the Whore

THE HERO AND THE WHORE: Restoring Healing and Deliverance 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 pp.

If you just look at the title — The Hero and the Whore — Without taking a closer look at the book, you might be wondering what this book is about. Could it be a retelling of the story of Samson and Delilah? If that’s your first impression, I hope I can disabuse you of that idea. The subtitle of the book helps enlighten us, but first let’s 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 involve sexual exploitation. We may find such stories off-putting and try to avoid them. In fact, pastors may try to avoid them because they’re not warm and fuzzy. Still, you should pay attention because at least some in the pews may find something liberating in these stories. That’s because such stories can help them examine their own experiences with exploitation. However, such stories must be approached with caution so as not to further exploit women.

Robert D. Cornwall

The title of the book by Camille Hernandez The Hero and the Whore may sound like some kind of romance novel where the hero is a knight in shining armor who rescues a whore, who is a damsel in distress (think Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Beautiful woman). That’s not the point here. Rather, Hernandez invites us to take a fresh look at the biblical stories in which women who experience sexual exploitation are both the hero and sometimes the whore (think Rahab of Jericho). The author of this book, Camille Hernandez, is herself a biracial (Filipino/African American) woman who has dealt with the traumatic effects of sexual exploitation, much of it related to her racial/ethnic heritage. She is also a post-evangelical woman trained in trauma-informed pastoral care, seeking to help survivors heal from sexual exploitation.

Camille Hernandez is a self-described abolitionist, theological ethicist, community counselor, and poet. She identifies as post-evangelical and speaks about serving as a doula, combining leadership development with trauma-informed pastoral care. Practical theologian Chanequa Walker Barnes pens the book’s foreword, writing that while Hernandez “does not identify as a biblical scholar or a theologian, here she is both, and in the best sense of the word” (p. xii). What Hernandez does in this book is connect the biblical stories to 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. This is thus a very personal exploration of these stories. She begins her exploration of these stories with the story of Eve and continues until we reach the story of the unnamed “Woman Caught in Adultery.” As she brings her own story into the stories of the women of the Bible, she also begins each chapter with her own poetry, which represents her take on these Biblical stories.

Hernandez begins by sharing her own story, that of a Black/Filipino woman married to a Chicano man, deeply immersed in white evangelical churches. She would eventually migrate out of that context, largely because she felt uncomfortable with her racial/ethnic identity. She writes that in that context, she “learned to deny myself, my parentage, my cultures, my heritage, my intelligence, and my sexuality, and I severed my non-evangelical relationships” (p. 2). While she was training to serve as a missionary, she would eventually discover that the message she was absorbing was not working. This epiphany came while working with her husband in ministry with people who had experienced trauma and violence. This book grew out of her discoveries about her faith and the ways in which she related to a world that, in her experience, was often oppressive, racist, and misogynistic. When it comes to the Bible, which is the context for this book, she poignantly writes, “I believe that sacred texts do not give us answers; instead, they invite us to find our own stories and ask deeper questions. Believing in the infallibility of leaders and trusting their interpretation without questioning will only lead to destruction” (p. 10). In many ways, this is an invitation to deconstruct destructive interpretations of biblical stories and their implications for the modern context. In this way, the Bible serves as a liberating text.

Each chapter in the book focuses on a particular woman’s story, beginning with Eve. In the case of Eve, she speaks of the role that guilt plays in the story, something she herself has experienced. It is through exploring this story that Hernandez speaks of her own calling to engage in advocacy. From Eve we move to Hagar, a story that also includes another woman, Sarai. It is a story of rivalry rooted in competing forces. There is a chapter about Leah and her daughter Dinah, the latter of whom is raped. There is Potiphar’s wife who plays a major role in the story of Joseph, as well as Rahab, who appears to be a sex worker who aids the Hebrew invaders. There is Jael who kills an enemy general in the period 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 stories from the New Testament, that 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 with the stories of others who have experienced similar forms of exploitation.

While you read The hero and the whore, You will find 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 has come to understand that Scripture is not infallible, but that it can speak to real concerns. She brings her discovery of Womanist theology and a Filapinx perspective, known as Kapwawhich addresses the effects of colonization and Western individualism. Working from these dual realities of her own heritage, she engages with these stories, some of which will be familiar and others less so. In doing so, she invites us to consider the realities facing women today, many of whom experience religiously inspired oppression. Thus, without delving into each story, we learn something about Hernandez, her realities, and the women of the Bible, whose stories offer us insight not only into the Bible, but also into the lives of contemporary women trying to find their way forward in life.

Although The Hero and the Whore was published in 2023 (and sat on my review pile for far too long), before Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, the debate over Harris’s multi-ethnic identity as Indian and Black has come to the fore. Harris’s story shares similarities with Hernandez’s, so this book may say something about how we view a woman aspiring to political leadership in a country that is home to countless mixed-race families, yet struggling to make sense of that reality. This is not to say that Kamala Harris is a hero or a whore, but rather this contemporary story offers a poignant reason to read Hernandez’s book at this particular moment in history. As with any book dealing with a subject like this, The Hero and the Whore will likely challenge, upset, undermine, and anger the reader. It will also, I believe, offer a word of hope to women whose stories echo those in this book. It will enlighten those who do not share this reality — including white, cisgender male men 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 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, co-authored with Ronald J. Allen. His blog, Ponderings on a Faith Journey, can be found at www.bobcornwall.com.