For over 2,000 years, Christian women have struggled with inequities between the genders. This certainly has been true in matters religious. Christian women have shown ethical, moral and spiritual strength, while being deprived of leadership or power positions reserved for their male counterparts. In this tome, the authors celebrate a wide variety of such female heroines, drawn from early Christian, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Charismatic groups, as well as a sprinkling of so-called "heretical" individuals. These women often have become saints, martyrs, visionaries, missionaries, and spiritual voices-models to all generations. At the same time, it must be remembered that many of them also carried and gave birth to children, raised them, and fulfilled the other functions required of them in their social contexts. The emphasis is on celebrating these memorable individuals.
For nearly two millennia, despite repeated prohibitions, Christian women have preached. Some have preached in official settings; others have found alternative routes for expression. Prophecy, teaching, writing, and song have all filled a broad definition of preaching. This anthology, with essays by an international group of scholars from several disciplines, investigates the diverse voices of Christian women who claimed the authority to preach and prophesy. The contributors examine the centuries of arguments, grounded in Pauline injunctions, against women's public speech and the different ways women from the early years of the church through the twentieth century have nonetheless exercised religious leadership in their communities. Some of them based their authority solely on divine inspiration; others were authorized by independent-minded communities; a few were even recognized by the church hierarchy. With its lively accounts of women preachers and prophets in the Christian tradition, this exceptionally well-documented collection will interest scholars and general readers alike.
Women have been central to the work of Christian ministry from the time of Jesus to the twenty-first century. Yet the story of Christianity is too often told as a story of men. This accessibly written book tells the story of women throughout church history, demonstrating their integral participation in the church's mission. It highlights the legacies of a wide variety of women, showing how they have overcome obstacles to their ministries and have transformed cultural constraints to spread the gospel and build the church.
The role of women in positions of worship and church leadership is one of the most divisive and inconclusive biblical debates. Two Views on Women in Ministry furnishes you with a clear and thorough presentation of the two primary exegetical arguments so you can better understand each one's strengths, weaknesses, and complexities. Egalitarian - equal ministry opportunity for both genders (represented by Linda L. Belleville and Craig S. Keener) Complementarian - men and women fill distinctive ministry roles (represented by Craig L. Blomberg and Thomas R. Schreiner) This revised edition brings the exchange of ideas and perspectives into the traditional Counterpoints format. Each author states his or her case and is then critiqued by the other contributors. The fair-minded, interactive Counterpoints forum allows you to compare and contrast the two different positions and form your own opinion concerning the practical and often deeply personal subject of women in ministry. The Counterpoints series presents a comparison and critique of scholarly views on topics important to Christians that are both fair-minded and respectful of the biblical text. Each volume is a one-stop reference that allows readers to evaluate the different positions on a specific issue and form their own, educated opinion.
History has, until recently, minimized the role of nuns over the centuries. In this volume, their rich lives, their work, and their importance to the Church are finally acknowledged. Jo Ann Kay McNamara introduces us to women scholars, mystics, artists, political activists, healers, and teachers - individuals whose religious vocation enabled them to pursue goals beyond traditional gender roles.
This intriguing study introduces multi-generations of males as they were affected by travels and adventures. First the patriarchs set the framework for those who followed. Then insider tales illuminate how the hearts and souls of these modern- day males live out their heritage mantas from childhood to the future land where little is known. This tome addresses the lives and contribution of the men in our families, a companion to Spirited Sisters (2014) which introduced the outstanding women who carried the Vassar-Burgess heritage from generation to generation. This tome begins with the results of genetic testing, leading to pre-historic male roots. It then turns to known historical connections, following which it deals with more recent and contemporary leading men. It is rich with primary materials, including numerous poems, letters, remembrances, and a wide variety of adventures. No longer are they untold legacies for the men have spoken!
OVER 100,000 COPIES SOLD! Winner of the 2018 Christian Book Award® (Bible Study Category) Known for her wisdom, warmth, and knowledge of Scripture, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has encouraged millions through her books, radio programs, and conferences. Now she’s back with a legacy work on Titus 2 and its powerful vision for women: Woman to woman. Older to younger. Day to day. Life to life. This is God’s beautiful plan. The Titus 2 model of older women living out the gospel alongside younger women is vital for us all to thrive. It is mutually strengthening, glorifies God, and makes His truth believable to our world. Imagine older women investing themselves in the lives of younger women, blessing whole families and churches. Imagine young wives, moms, and singles gaining wisdom and encouragement from women who’ve been there and have found God’s ways to be true and good. Imagine all women—from older women to young girls—living out His transforming gospel together, growing the entire body of Christ to be more beautiful. This is Christian community as God designed it. Read this book and take your relationships to new depths, that your life might find its fullest meaning as you adorn the gospel of Christ.
Uncovers women's participation and impact on defining historical moments and themes of Christian traditions Women in Christian Traditions offers a concise and accessible examination of the roles women have played in the construction and practice of Christian traditions, revealing the enormous debt that this major world religion owes to its female followers. It recovers forgotten and obscured moments in church history to help us to realize a richer and fuller understanding of Christianity. This text provides an overview of the complete sweep of Christian history through the lens of feminist scholarship. Yet it also departs from some of the assumptions of that scholarship, raising questions that challenge our thinking about how women have shaped beliefs and practices during two thousand years of church history. Did the emphasis on virginity in the early church empower Christian women? Did the emphasis on marriage during the Reformations of the sixteenth century improve their status? These questions and others have important implications for women in Christianity in particular, and for women in religion in general, since they go to the heart of the human condition. This work examines themes, movements, and events in their historical contexts and locates churchwomen within the broader developments that have been pivotal in the evolution of Christianity. From the earliest disciples to the latest theologians, from the missionaries to the martyrs, women have been instrumental in keeping the faith alive. Women in Christian Traditions shows how they did so.
The eleven essays included in this collective volume examine a range of textual genres produced by Christians and Muslims throughout the Mediterranean, including materials from the Corpus Islamolatinum, Christian propaganda and polemical works targeting Muslims and Jews, Inquisition records, and Christian and Muslim sermons. Despite the diversity of the works under consideration and the variety of methodological and disciplinary approaches employed in their analysis, the volume is bound together by the common goals of exploring the propaganda strategies premodern authors deployed for specific aims, be it the unification of religious, cultural, and political groups through discourses of self-representation, or the invention of the political, cultural, religious, or gendered other. Many of the essays offer critical re-readings of works that are obscure or have never been studied, while others shed new light on the cultural and textual interactions between Christians, Muslims and Jews. The volume is divided into four sections, the first of which is comprised of three chapters on the Corpus Islamolatinum that furnish new evidence showing the important role this “encyclopedia” played in spreading knowledge about Islam and contributing to the creation of propaganda and polemics against Islam among European intellectual circles. The chapters in section two offer novel interpretations of the hermeneutical strategies underlying the composition of polemical works such as the lives of Muhammad and Pedro de la Cavalleria’s Zelus Christi. The essays in section three identify some common hermeneutical strategies in the use of anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic arguments to polemicize against religious others or edify Christians and illuminate intertextual relations between authors and genres (disputatio and praedicatio). Finally, section four introduces the gender perspective: the genered nature of the accusations of Judaizing in the analysis of the transcripts of the inquisitorial court of three sisters who were tried in Barcelona in 1496, on the one hand, and two studies that explore the constructions of identities and gender relations reflected in various Islamic sources from opposite ends of the Mediterranean. They offer glimpses of women as subject (s) and as object (s) of preaching and show how such texts can reify or subvert traditional binary gender roles.
This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.
