A prominent evangelical author believes her memoir is not being stocked in a major US Christian book chain because it includes the word "vagina".

Rachel Held Evans's second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, is her account of the year she spent taking every instruction from the Bible as literally as possible, from calling her husband "master" to camping in the garden during her period. Out later this month, it includes two instances where the word vagina is used: once where she is describing the rape of a Congolese teenager, and once where she talks about her own decision to sign an abstinence pledge at the age of 15: "I used the back of my metal chair to scribble my name across the dotted line before marching to the front of the room to pin my promise to God and to my vagina onto a giant corkboard for all to see."

The author first realised there might be an issue over her use of the anatomical word earlier this year, when she was told by her publisher Thomas Nelson that she shouldn't include the second instance because Christian book stores "apparently have a thing against vaginas".

"I make a big scene about it and say that if Christian bookstores stuck to their own ridiculous standards, they wouldn't be able carry the freaking Bible," she wrote on her popular blog in March. "I tell everyone that I'm going to fight it out of principle, but I cave within a few days because I want Christian bookstores to carry the sanitised version of my book because I want to make a lot of money, because we've needed a new roof on our house for four years now, and because I really want a Mac so I can fit in at the mega-churches. I feel like such a fraud … What's frustrating about all of this, of course, is that I can use the word 'vagina' when the context involves rape, but I cannot use the word 'vagina' when the context involves a certain degree of ownership and power over my own body."

But supporters rallied to her cause – there was a petition on Amazon, and "Team Vagina" t-shirts were made – and Evans decided to ask her editor to put her vagina back into her memoir. "I figured it was more important to listen to the voices of an impassioned readership than to objections within the Christian industry," she said at the time.

With the book's publication date of 30 October rapidly approaching, however, Evans has now found that Christian resources company LifeWay – which has 160 stores across America – will not be stocking it. "I recently received word that LifeWay has decided not to carry A Year of Biblical Womanhood in stores, presumably in the wake of the 'vagina' controversy over the summer," Evans blogged. "I'm disappointed, of course, and not just because I'll take a hit in sales. While LifeWay certainly has every right to choose its own inventory, I think the notion that Christians should dance carefully around reality, that we should speak in euphemisms and only tell comfortable, sanitised stories, is a destructive one that has profoundly affected the evangelical culture as a whole."

The author told Slate on Tuesday that someone senior at the book chain had since suggested that her use of the word "vagina" was not the main issue that LifeWay had with her book. "I don't know if they were more offended by my vagina or my brain," she said. "The only thing I know is that my editor said, if you leave this word in, there's a good chance LifeWay won't carry it."

A spokesman for LifeWay told Slate: "We select resources that are consistent with the expectations of our customers based on several issues, including things like alignment with evangelical beliefs, LifeWay's values and vision, and past sales by an author", adding that Evans' first book, Evolving in Monkey Town, did not sell well for the chain. "As Ms Evans pointed out [online], there are a lot of places to sell books, and LifeWay is not the only outlet," he said.