An anchoress was a woman vowed to chastity and stability of abode. She was enclosed in an anchorhold for life. There was no release from her cell until death, on pain of excommunication. The object of her life was contemplation, the unceasing concentration upon God in prayer.

In prayer this congregation asks for an out pouring of the Holy Spirit, but with an unspoken proviso, that God honor their gender bias: God may pour out His Spirit, but men alone may exhibit the Spirit’s empowering. Yet nothing seems further from the tenor of revival and the passage in Acts where the Holy Spirit was poured out not only on…

Seven women. Four men. They called themselves The Jubilee Singers. One of America’s most astonishing successes, their music once rang out across the land. They changed the fabric of our culture by introducing spirituals to the American public for the first time. Yet their stories have been hushed.

Self-esteem is often very simply defined as “feeling good about yourself.” In reality, self-esteem is much more complicated than that. To understand self-esteem we must first start with another term, self-concept.

When Desiree Washington charged that Mike Tyson had raped her, some Christians retorted that it was her fault for getting herself into the situation. While blaming the victim may accord with some of the ethics of our culture, it does not accord with the Bible.

As I examine the interrelatedness of religion, prejudice and abuse, I am aware that abuse—whether physical, sexual or psychological—is a profoundly gendered concept. The majority of abusers are male and the majority of victims are women and children. And prejudice—the unjustifiably negative attitude toward a group and its members, with…