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J. Lee Grady tackles the lies that women have been told throughout the years. These lies include “God created women as inferior beings, destined to serve their husbands”; “A Woman should view her husband as the priest of the home’”; and “Women are more easily deceived than men.” If you are just beginning to study what the Bible says about women in leadership positions this is the first book you should read. |
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This should be the second book you read. Cunningham and Hamilton show how the cultures in the Biblical age viewed women from Jewish, Greek, and Roman perspective. They then show how both Jesus and Paul turned societal views of women on their heads. They also deal with several myths that have normally kept women subordinate in church settings. They do a great job of showing the historical and cultural settings behind Paul’s statements that women should stay silent and women should be in authority over men, and that these statements were meant for two congregations at that particular time and not for the entire church for all of time. |
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In this book Aida Besancon Spencer systematically studies the place of women in leadership positions through both the Old and New Testament. She looks at the women who were leaders in the Old Testament and does a wonderful job of describing Jesus’ attitude toward the women in his life. Her husband, David Spencer, wrote the final chapter on how he and Aida have balanced their callings, marriage, and raising children. |
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Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner are three women who came together after 9/11 to write a children’s book that showed what Judaism, Christianity, and Islam held in common. What began as a children’s project grew into a friendship where the three discovered that they had to also deal with their differences. Their honesty and candor of looking at their own beliefs is a insight into the what women can do when they are in honest relationships, and how their friendships can impact the world around them. |
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Stanley Grenz traces women in leadership positions in the New Testament and early Christian history. He shows how the Bible presents a consistent picture of women in leadership positions and concludes with an insightful chapter on why women should be ordained with no hesitations or misgivings. |
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This is a great introduction to feminist theology. Elizabeth Johnson covers the doctrine of God and the Trinity, Christology, women’s experience, and how all of this comes together in feminist theology to give us new images and symbols to picture God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. |
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1 Timothy 2:11-15 has been one of the classical biblical passages used to keep women out of leadership positions in the church. Husband and wife team Richard and Catherine Clark Kroeger examine the culture of Ephesus where Timothy’s church was. They explain the pagan beliefs that Paul is trying to correct. They also show the Greek wording of “I do not permit a woman to have authority over a man” can be translated in other ways. They also show that Paul’s counsel to this troubled church was not meant to be taken as the normal for all churches for all time. |