Isabel Wilkerson, a former journalist for the New York Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for her previous work, The Warmth of Other Sons: The Epic Story of America’s great Migration.

Author Profile

Ben Witherington III is Jean R. Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, near Lexington, Kentucky, where he has taught since 1995. He is the author of over sixty academic and popular books, including the Christianity Today award-winning The Jesus Quest (1995) and The Paul Quest (1998) as well as commentaries on the entire NT.

I wish I had read this book the very first day I assumed leadership at CBE International. Trained as a historical theologian, there was very little in seminary or graduate studies that prepared me for the spiritual, emotional, and psychological challenges of this work. What is worse, every weakness I had innately possessed or acquired through my upbringing and beyond added to the sinkholes I faced. Nearly at a breaking point, a board member suggested this book. It was exactly what I needed.

In his book, Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination, William Witt offers a comprehensive challenge to the theological basis for male-only leadership in Protestant and Catholic traditions. While each tradition differs in its theological support for male-only church leaders, Witt exposes the devaluations of women at the level of being (ontological), a failure fundamental to both camps.

In Parable of the Brown Girl: The Sacred Lives of Girls of Color, ordained minister, speaker, and author, Khristi Lauren Adams shares the stories of girls of color to spotlight their dreams, struggles, and worlds.

The first sentence of the introduction clearly and concisely lays out the issue When Others Shuddered hopes to address: “we have too few female heroes of the faith” (11).

Andrew Bartlett’s Men and Women in Christ is a tremendously helpful contribution to the debate that rages in evangelicalism over the “roles” of women. Bartlett is concerned that the sharp divide between complementarian and egalitarian viewpoints has harmed the unity and witness of the church. He has a degree in theology, but his career has been in the field of law and his specialty has become arbitration. A judge or arbitrator is different from a lawyer.

The gospel is indeed good news for women. However, as Dr. Amanda W. Benckhuysen observes, it also “tends to come to women with strings attached.” Men may be free in Christ, yet “women assume the yoke of a new law—restrictions and requirements assigned to them” by virtue of their gendered status as the “weaker vessel.” To depart from this gender ideology “is to reject God’s divine commands and undermine the authority of God’s Word, the Bible” (1–2).

Aimee Byrd’s book, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is an invitation for churches to identify and move beyond the negative impact of the biblical manhood and womanhood movement. In Byrd’s opinion, this movement was the response of some Christian denominations to the sexual revolution of the 1960s that sought to create parameters around appropriate expressions of what it means to be male and female. She is inviting church leaders to identify and correct any areas of inequality in training women to participate in church ministry.

In her foreword, Sarah Bessey offers a concise summary of Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us about Freedom: