Holding Up Half the Sky: A Biblical Case for Women Leading and Teaching in the Church Women have played significant roles in ministry and leadership throughout the history of the church and the pages of the Bible. Today, women make up more than half the church, and do much of the mission, ministry, and discipleship in the life of the church. But women have often been held back from ministry roles. Graham Joseph Hill outlines the biblical vision for women in...
By Beth Allison Barr Biblical womanhood--the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers--pervades North American Christianity. From choices about careers to roles in local churches to relationship dynamics, this belief shapes the everyday lives of evangelical women. Yet biblical womanhood isn't biblical, says Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr. It arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments. This book moves the conversation about biblical womanhood beyond Greek grammar and into the realm of...
By Kristin Kobes Du Mez Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.†As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals...
By SARAH SENTILLES Women have been among the most dynamic and successful ministers in all Protestant denominations; but in divinity school, Sarah Sentilles discovered that some of the best and brightest were having trouble and even leaving the church altogether.What was happening? To find out, she entered the lives of female ministers - women of various ages, races, and denominations - and emerged with the first real portrait of what it's like to lead as a woman of faith today. Filled...
Grounded in the Body, in Time and Place, in Scripture: Papers by Australian Women Scholars in the Evangelical Tradition (Australian College of Theology Monograph Series) by Jill Firth (Author), Denise Cooper-Clarke (Editor) "In my bibliographies there are no women in the evangelical tradition, and no Australian women scholars." This unique volume addresses this gap, with eighteen biblically rich and academically rigorous chapters by established and emerging Australian women scholars in the evangelical tradition. The authors consider...
Amie Byrd uses the image of yellow wallpaper, an image in a 19th Century novella by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, where yellow wallpaper was trapping a woman and her gifts as a metaphor in her wonderfully titled Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The culture created and propagated by the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, she argues, is not a helpful model for today's Christians. The only true model is Jesus....
Alan F. Johnson’s compilation of narratives entitled How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership: Compelling Stories from Prominent Evangelicals is a particularly fresh, honest, and persuasive resource in the growing collection of books on gender equality and women in leadership. The recognizable evangelicals in this book speak humbly and clearly about how their theological convictions and understanding of Scripture, with reference to women in leadership, were transformed through personal experience. While maintaining a high view of the authority...
by Amanda Benckhuysen What does it mean to be male and female? Do women and men have different intellectual, spiritual, moral, or emotional capacities? Are women especially suited for serving and men for leading? Are women and men equal? While these may seem like relatively recent questions, they have been a topic of conversation throughout Christian history. At the center of this conversation is the biblical character Eve, the archetypal woman of Genesis 1-3. Not simply one woman among many, Eve comes...
What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women Kevin Giles, Cascade, 2018 Kevin Giles delights in Australia and its ideal of being an egalitarian nation. This ideal is not always present and for Kevin the subordination of women, as taught in certain Christian communities in Australia, is one such exception. A deeply offensive one. The teaching of the subordination of women upsets Kevin Giles deeply. He has advocated for equality between men and women for over 40 years. He has preached, spoken at conferences...
by Kevin Giles Kevin Giles latest, and he says, his final book is a challenging look at the practical outworking of a strongly complementarian view of gender relations in the church and home. You can order it online or directly from Kevin himslef if you have his contact details. Here is a link to a review from Jesus Creed, part of Christianity Today. ...
by Scot McKnight Zondervan, 2018 Scot McKnight’s wife Kris refers to his latest book, The Blue Parakeet, as “one of his readable ones.†The book is, in fact, one of his most readable, which is most fortunate given the importance of the subject matter. Although Scot McKnight is something of an avid birder, the book’s title is really only a metaphor, not a literal description of the subject at hand. For that, the books subtitle, “Rethinking How You Read the Bible†sums it...
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn Knopf (2009) By Irshad Manji (The New York Times), Sept. 17, 2009 An ancient Chinese proverb goes that women hold up half the sky. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn want that to be appreciated — on the ground. In the opening pages of this gripping call to conscience, the husband-and-wife team come out swinging: “Gendercide,†the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world, steals more lives...
By John Stackhouse Discussions about gender continue in many Christian denominations. With good people and solid arguments on each side of the divide, there seems to be little hope for a synthesis or even constructive dialogue. In this brief book, John Stackhouse proposes a way forward. Stackhouse provides biblical, theological, and practical arguments for his own understanding of the issue: Equality is the biblical ideal, but patriarchy is allowed and regulated by a God who has larger kingdom purposes in mind. Thought provoking...
The passing of Mary Daly last week brought back memories of my graduate class in Feminism and Christianity. In 1984, I was in a class of about 20 women, all of whom were post-Christian (as they defined themselves). They were convinced that Christianity, and even Christ, had nothing good to say to them as women. I hoped at that time I might have the opportunity to present the early church and the New Testament with historical sensitivity. That goal takes...