Ex-wife of pastor Joshua Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye) Shannon Harris recounts her story of entering conservative Christianity as a young woman, its limiting and oppressive views on womanhood, and her own awakening to her true self after the ministrys downfall and her divorce.
"No one is coming to rescue me. I am going to have to rescue me."
As a twenty-three-year-old singer and the soon-to-be wife of youth pastor Joshua Harris, nothing in Shannon Harriss secular upbringing prepared her to enter the world of conservative Christianity. Soon Joshuas bestselling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped inspire a national purity movement, and Shannons identity became "pastors wife."
The Woman They Wanted recounts Shannons remarkable experience inside Big Church--where she was asked to live within a narrow definition of womanhood for almost two decades--and her subsequent journey out of that world and into a more authentic version of herself. Entering conservative American Christianity was like being drawn out to sea, she writes, inexorable and all consuming. Slowly, her worldview was narrowed, her motivations questioned, her behavior examined, until she had been whittled down to an idealized version of femininity envisioned as an extension of her husband and the church. This decidedly patriarchal world, perpetuated even by the other women, began to feel like a slow death. However, when Sovereign Grace Ministries fell apart due to leadership conflicts and Shannon found herself outside church circles for the first time in years, she heard her intuition calling to her again. As she began to shake off the fog of depression and confusion, that voice grew louder. In honoring it, she awakened to the realities in which she had been trapped and found her truest self.
Singular and compelling, The Woman They Wanted will inspire women looking to reestablish connection with themselves, their inner wisdom, and their purpose.
