Priscilla Papers | Academic Journal | Spring 2026
An interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed academic journal exploring Bible interpretation, theology, church history, and other disciplines as they address a biblical view of women’s equality and justice in the home, church, and world.
"Priscilla and Aquila instructed Apollos more perfectly in the way of the Lord." (Acts 18:26)
Academic JournalsThe opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of CBE International or its members.
Spring 2026
Volume: 40 | Number: 2
Excluded, Executed.
Genderized exclusion, in its extreme, takes the form of execution as illustrated in the case of so-called witches, menstruating women, women who dared to swim against unbiblical political and cultural currents.
Contents
Across history and across cultures, it appears that women are not difficult to exclude or even to execute. Women are to stay within circles that men chalk out for them. This issue illustrates this stark story, repeatedly played out within the history of Christianity.
Joe Early traces the trajectory of witch-hunting across the Middle Ages into the centuries beyond, to arrive at what it might look like in the Church today in terms of victimizing women by excluding them.
Christy Hemphill and Marissa Burt look at the preconceptions that surround menstruation, leading to associating a natural and neutral process of female physiology with sin.
Nick O’Brien lays out the chilling roots and possible ongoing liaison between genderized exclusion and racial exclusion in Western Christianity.
Michelle Dawn Meyer presents Anne Boleyn of the proverbial “Thousand Days,” who, within that brief period exerted a pro-Reformation influence in the court of Henry VIII, and was schemed against, at least in part, for it.
Taylor Yoder surveys women of the early centuries of the Church—Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas, and Macrina—who tenaciously stood their ground against the expectations of the culture of their time, and paid for it with either exclusion or execution both.