In this, her fourth book, Half the Church, James writes with passion and intensity to encourage women to fulfill God's call on their lives. She says that women make up at least half the church; in fact, she says that women make up 80 percent of the church in China and about 90 percent in Japan (27). James encourages women to be an active force in the world by stepping out and using the gifts and abilities that God has given them.
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Book Review
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is intended for a broad readership with the aim of uniting those who might otherwise be divided because of their religious and political convictions. The authors, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism on an earlier project.
When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe during the United States Civil War, he reportedly quipped, “So you’re the little woman who started this big war.” In Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life, Nancy Koester presents a biography of the famed author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that bounds with delight from page to page. The book is easily accessible to a popular audience and moves chronologically through her life and the lives of those closest to her, yet is thoroughly researched and offers rich sources for the interested academic.
It is a tragic story that is repeated thousands of times: believers leaving Christianity completely when they leave a church or faith tradition that has wounded or abused them. This dynamic is what makes Carol Howard Merritt’s Healing Spiritual Wounds: Reconnecting With a Loving God After Experiencing a Hurtful Church such a welcome book. Merritt writes from the very core of her being as she recounts her journey from being submerged in a toxic, abusive church culture to redeeming her faith by traveling a difficult path to healing. She speaks with the wisdom of a lifetime of
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I highly recommend this book to those that are entering the missionary field, men and women alike. It is also a perfect source of inspiration and encouragement for those weighed down by the challenges life brings. Hearts of Fire will lead the reader into a space of gratitude that will cause a shift in the core of their humanity. These stories will renew in readers a reverent love for Christ and truly set their hearts on fire.
Reading Her Own Story is like looking through an ancient, rusty trunk in your great-grandmother’s attic and finding, hidden under yellowing linens and fading daguerreotypes, the journals of a forgotten female relative. The journals make this unheard-of kinswoman come to life in such a way that you feel you know her intimately. She writes of her spiritual journey in all of its joy, splendor, pain, and frustration. Reading these newfound journals is like sitting at the feet of a wise female mentor, listening to her tell her life stories and the spiritual lessons she has learned from
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In Hermanas, the authors share their lives and the lives of characters in the Bible who were beautifully marked by a divine encounter with God. Their stories inspire readers to strongly pushback against a patriarchal focus and unapologetically teach the benefits of a healthy missional collaboration between males and females. The book explores the ramifications of colorism within our own communities and the emotional anguish of being among the few who are making it in the academic world. Readers may find their hearts pierced by the conviction that we rob others of their
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How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to know more about the basics of gender equality because it presents a coherent scriptural basis for women's leadership in simple and approachable ways. It also describes the hard and often painful struggle many have undertaken to accept and spread women's full and equal place in all spheres of life, while offering redemptive glimpses into the success of this message and insights into how it might be spread further. Thus, How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership is a
Read MoreAlan Johnson, emeritus professor of New Testament and Christian ethics at Wheaton College (Illinois), has put together autobiographical accounts of twenty-seven evangelical leaders, both men and women, from many denominations. These stories recount journeys from belief in a restrictive role for women to a realization of freedom for women to use all their gifts and callings for God’s kingdom. In many of these accounts, the implications for Christian marriage are brought out: a side-by-side partnership of mutual love and submission, where no one is “boss” and no one needs to dominate.
Until now, this reviewer had to acknowledge he simply did not understand Paul's statement: "I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man" (1Tim 2:12).
No explanation rang scripturally true: e.g. "rabbinical male bias" or "a local cultural problem." Exceptions for women teaching or preaching ("only occasionally" or "under male authority" or "if there aren't male missionaries") sounded like semantics.
Now Richard and Catherine Clark Kroeger have opened a window of
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