The Woman They Wanted Audiobook By Shannon Harris cover art

The Woman They Wanted

Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife

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The Woman They Wanted

By: Shannon Harris
Narrated by: Shannon Harris
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About this listen

As a twenty-three-year-old singer and the soon-to-be wife of youth pastor Joshua Harris, nothing in Shannon Harris's secular upbringing prepared her to enter the world of conservative Christianity. Soon Joshua's bestselling book I Kissed Dating Goodbye helped inspire a national purity movement, and Shannon's identity became "pastor's wife."

The Woman They Wanted recounts Shannon's 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. 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.

©2023 Shannon Harris (P)2023 eChristian
Religious Women Marriage Inspiring Heartfelt
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Honest Storytelling • Compelling Personal Story • Compelling Narration • Relatable Experiences • Courageous Vulnerability
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Very clear and thoughtful examination of the trauma from church. Helpful in understanding how one might end up in a life never imagined.

A Must Read

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Because I come from a religiously conservative background, I found her story to be very relatable and interesting. It helped me to hear her personal story and the changes she made in her life to come into her own person. I’m glad she shared her story.

Compelling, personal story

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Personal story of how an ultra conservative church pidgeon holes and disenfranchises women. rather than protecting peoples faith they push believers to a crisis of faith. Important memoir that answers most of the questions people have about this couple. Minus stars for literary style and reading.

Important wake up

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Thank you for sharing your story and living courageously. This message needs to be spoken.

The fruit of truth

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A riveting and enlightening description of what Shannon encountered in a cult like church. It is a clear warning of many pitfalls one might encounter in the church. Her words resonated so much for me, a deconstructing millenial with religious trauma.

Great look into extreme Evangelical Christianity

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This is the experience, to some degree or another of many, many women in church. It was extremely relatable.

I Couldn’t Put It Down

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This is an ideal read for someone who is starting to question their faith or Evangelical faith community. It’s a safe and balanced book.

A nice take on American Evangelism.

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I am gratefully sad that Shannon Bonne (Harris) wrote this account…grateful for her courage and honesty, and also sad for her experiences and forced entry into a farce of Christianity. While I cannot come close to grasping her experience, I can also say she was truly misled into a “faith” that was spoon forced (not fed) to her, which means I am sadly unsurprised at her painful story. I can disagree with some of her biblical and theological assertions, but I can also understand why she believes (or doesn’t believe) as she does.

Gratefully sad

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3.5-3.75

Fortunately, I grew up outside the specific culture and environment Shannon Harris mentions here, but I grew up in on adjacent to and very similar to it.

I went into this very curious about what Shannon would mention. Deconstructing faith and beliefs is no easy fit. Part memoir, part advice, part self-help book. Shannon is clearly working through what she believes now, what she believed then, and how her life came to be what it was. There were definite parts that really resonated and I thought were well done. I was hoping for a bit more from this book. But I thought it was well written.

This book has certainly received no shortage of criticism. I think some of that is because people don't like what Shannon has to say. I think other criticism is because they were hoping for more from the book.

This quote and many others stood out to me: “The ‘biblical woman’ was not a real woman, she was a picture, a projection, a product! A man-made product, literally. An ideal to achieve. You can order whole books on Amazon and become her too. But she wasn’t me and she wasn’t tons of women. She was the woman they wanted. That’s all. The woman they wanted.”

Interesting

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Being a woman minister who has worked hard to obtain and maintain her identity, I had hoped this testimony would provide more biblical theology to support the role of the woman in the church and ministry. Sadly, I find it misrepresents God’s heart because men have misrepresented God. I do believe there is a way to be free from man-made constructs and still embrace the truth of the Word of God. I’m glad she was able to free herself from legalism, but in doing so she also freed herself from Truth. There are some good insights, but I couldn’t agree with some of her theology.

Not biblical

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