ABSTRACT
This chapter features Ruth Everhart, a white Christian woman who changed her faith community, details Evangelical Christian women's experiences and discusses how race impacts the ways Christian women of color experience sexual misconduct and abuse of power. Decades before Everhart became a pioneering religious leader, she was raped twice, leaving her feeling ruined, the title of her memoir. The first rape was committed by a white hiker in Yellowstone Park the summer between her junior and senior years of college. While Everhart remained a devout Christian woman, the sexual assault by a black man, along with her belief that God's will could include women being involved in church leadership, contributed to her spiritual meandering from the Christian Reformed Church to a small Lutheran congregation and ultimately to the much larger and more inclusive Presbyterian Church. In addition to healing themselves and finding love based on equality, women are redefining Christianity.
