Bible Teaching in Nepal

Studying the Bible with Illiterate Women

Throughout my twenties I nurtured a growing interest in the plight of women around the world. I also spent a handful of years teaching in a Christian Bible school, seizing the opportunity to go to Nepal in 2018 for a Bible-teaching trip. I wondered if my twin interests of empowering women and Bible study could be combined. It’s no secret that girls around the world are statistically more likely to be held back from school than boys. More women than men are illiterate. What effect is this having on the worldwide Church? Are girls being held back from the richness of studying God and Biblical history for themselves?

I planned and hosted a trip to Nepal with the exclusive intent of teaching Bible study tools to Nepali women, taking a student from the Bible class with me. We taught the story of the Bible and how to study the Bible to groups who were majority women. We even had a female translator. I was humbled by the women’s hunger to learn. One of our students bussed for four hours a day to join our seminars.

We had two illiterate women attend our classes and their presence was most impactful for me. For cultural or circumstantial reasons these women, now in their forties, never learned to read or write. Their ability to grapple with studying the Bible for themselves is severely limited by their lack of ability to read. In our classes they quietly fumbled through pages of the Bible to find passages whilst everyone else found the right page with ease. Describing concepts like historical background and context was hard because these women weren’t familiar with those Nepali words. Whilst my student and I spent time passionately convincing our group that Bible study is hugely important, one of the illiterate ladies asked us, “What if you want to study the Bible but you can’t read. Does God understand?”. We wept. One of these ladies drew a picture of and for me (pictured below).

Since going to Nepal I am convinced that access to education is a cause that Christians should engage in. We’re asked by Jesus to love the Lord with all our mind (Luke 10:27) and receiving a full education allows us to do that well. Discipleship is robust and interesting when coupled with the ability to read and write and study for oneself. It is important.

You can see photos of these teachings here