To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re featuring some posts and reviews related to important historical women and their work in the world.
Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s...
You can expect to be jolted from laughter to tears to anger in every chapter of this book. Beth Allison Barr has written a manifesto against male domination in institutional churches through her second book for a popular audience...
There’s Room for All the Colors
Maybe God is the colors, the cracks, the things that don’t fit into the perfect outline. Maybe God’s the messy, uncontainable spectrum of creation itself.
Jesus and Magda in Outer Space
Imagine a world that is truly egalitarian, where “otherness” and “difference” are celebrated, not feared. Where everyone’s first question each morning is, “Whom can I help today?”
Tobit Detours
Mehl Greene’s vast knowledge of art and poetry, ancient and modern storytelling, as well as instinct for a deeper reality, is evident throughout and begs the reader to stop and pay attention.
Buoyancy and Splash: The Legacy of Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
"True mutuality is not possible in patriarchy. So either you’re going after the whole ball of wax, all the injustices, as one common front–not dividing off justice for just us–but justice for the whole of everybody. Otherwise, you’re not really doing anything.”
Batabas: Communicating the Language of Christian Feminism’s Past and Future
Oppression is baked into vocabulary and our grammar. Marginalized groups are not given vocabulary in the common discourse to name our experiences. And that makes our experiences harder to recognize, harder to value, and harder to act upon.
Great Women in Church History
Central to all of these women's lives was their love for God, their devotion to Christ, and their compassion for others. Love. Christ commanded that we love God with all our heart. These women did so, often with an intensity and selflessness that affronts us the the post-Freudian, narcissistic world in which we live.
A Strange Stirring: “The Feminine Mystique” and American Women at the...
Women who stayed home and raised their families and yet did not feel the corresponding presumed bliss were grateful to Friedan for enabling them to see beyond their self-imposed guilt and their anxieties that 'something was wrong' with them.
The Ordination of the St. Lawrence Nine
Those who are part of the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement "along with women in the Anglican (Episcopal) and Evangelical and Protestant traditions, share the common vision of reforming the church structures from within, of re-imaging and designing a new model of priesthood..."
The Invention of Wings: A Novel
The combination of engaging fictional narrative with the outlines of the historical record provide an enjoyable means of learning more about the Grimké sisters, the early abolitionist movement, and the early women’s rights movements during this period.
American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman who...
Are believers “elect” from the beginning of time? Can we know whether we are one of the elect—or whether someone else is? Does sanctification (the outward appearance of grace) prove we are saved, or are outward appearances simply “works,” not evidence of a heart that is right with God?
A History of the World in 21 Women
Jenni Murray's book 'History of the World in 21 Women' provides a look at several women, each of whom has, as Murray puts it, 'faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve her ambition...'
Suffragette
We encounter the women’s suffrage movement in Britain through the eyes of a fictional young woman working in an industrial laundry about 1911–13. Maud Watts is movingly portrayed by Carey Mulligan as she transforms from an overworked laborer, wife, and mother into a woman repeatedly jailed for attending demonstrations.
Vision – The Music of Hildegard Von Bingen
Hildegard's words are in Latin, and translated I can glimpse a little of her philosophical genius. But for me, I find the magic in her melody. It's a soft stream flowing over rocks and roots, carrying leaves and tiny insects along, sparkling in sunlight, reflecting the sky.
Clarina Nichols: Godly Woman – Revolutionary Voice
While some of the other women's rights leaders gave up on organized religion, Nichols did not, for she knew that many women would not support women's rights if they thought the Bible said otherwise.
Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership
In her book Kateusz is able to expose “the intentional scribal activity associated with the redaction of the markers of female religious authority, the attempt to erase the memory of powerful historical women has weakened.”
Untold Volumes Poetry
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Fruitful Embraces: Sexuality, Love, and Justice
The authors recognize that for Catholics, who live within “an institution… wedded to historical precedent” (p. 185), it can be terrifying to be challenged to make moves never made before. Yet many Catholic Christians, “their imaginations shaped by biblical convictions, see immigrants, homosexuals, and transgender persons in a new light” (p. 186).
Feminist Bible Studies and Related Material
1 Timothy 5:16 and Acts 9:36-43 — A “Believing Woman” with...
Lesson 13: "As widows, these unattached women needed to make a living. Most likely, Tabitha had a house and enough resources to supply the tools of the trade, so the women could work together as an economic collective. That is why her death was so catastrophic for these widows, and why Peter made the effort to walk all the way to her house and pray for her resuscitation."
Coming Back from Coming Out
"Coming out ruined my life. At least, that’s the way it seemed. To claim my identity as a lesbian meant sacrificing everything on the altar of my own selfishness, of my need to be “true to myself.” To come out as a 43- year- old woman meant walking away from a tolerable twenty- year marriage, leaving behind a career in church ministry, and learning to negotiate custody arrangements and a new solo life. To come out, for me, meant walking away from God."
True Inclusion: Creating Communities of Radical Embrace
Unfortunately, many Christian churches have made marginalizing others into an entire theology. “The . . . evangelical theological paradigm depends upon patriarchy,” which must, therefore, be “completely deconstructed” (p. 68).
My First Gay Pride Parade— #ResistMarch
My Episcopal church participated, as did many other churches. Quite a few signs were carried by people coming from a specifically Christian perspective. “This is the gay that the Lord hath made” was my favorite, carried by a young man.
Immortal Moral Reminders of Henrietta Lacks
One might ask how differently Lack’s story would have gone if the social injustices that disregarded her as a person with agency had long ago been undone. The science and healthcare industries must help address unjust socioeconomic structures that deny the basic humanity and rights of disempowered groups of people before any lasting changes in care can be expected.
Silenced/Unsilenced: My Christian Feminist Journey
While I broadly perceive my calling as helping others, particularly marginalized others, to find and use their authentic voice—to become unsilenced—if my actions, in whatever manner God sees fit, can contribute in any way toward the building of God’s kingdom here on earth, then I am all in.
I Am Not Your Negro
I urge all of you, as Christians and feminists, to watch 'I Am Not Your Negro' and live with Baldwin through these difficult years of American history. Our struggle for gender justice depends on understanding the many other ways our society oppresses people.
Most Recent Book Reviews
Tobit Detours
Mehl Greene’s vast knowledge of art and poetry, ancient and modern storytelling, as well as instinct for a deeper reality, is evident throughout and begs the reader to stop and pay attention.
From the Archives
The Wisdom of Daughters: Two Decades of Christian Feminism
edited by Reta Halteman Finger and Kari Sandhaas.
Innisfree Press: Philadelphia, 2004.
269 pp, $17.95 softcover.
Reviewed by Anne Linstatter
In September, 1974, a daughter was born in Chicago....
