Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women

After hearing and reading Mardi Keyes and reading John Temple Bristol’s, What Paul Really Said About Women, I clearly put myself in the camp of Christians who firmly believe that feminism is not only Christian, but a Biblical principle. I’m always eager to read books that privilege Biblical and ancient cultural scholarship over daily experience. It is obvious why I would be interested in a book called Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women.
Instead Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women privileges experience and assumes that the readers are already well versed in these Bible passages. Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women is more memoir about Sarah Bessey’s personal spiritual journey through the North American Christian experience sprinkled with brief vignettes from fellow Christians on the same journey. Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women provides real world examples of how Christian women are crucial members of the body of Christ-a living breathing feminism, not just theoretical. Because Bessey is a better person than I, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women isn’t what I was looking for. “Stop holding your breath, working to earn through your apologetics and memorized arguments, through your quietness, your submission, your home, your children and your “correct” doctrine that God has ALREADY (not caps, but italicized in book) freely given to you.” pg 193. Um, I’m a lawyer. We argue. Maybe when I retire.
So the campfire, touchy feely approach does not work for me no matter how much I may appreciate it in others. I want things organized and topics approached a certain way. Jumping from one person’s story to the other does not provide me with the detail that I desire no matter how much I may empathize with that story.
I still value Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women, but I probably would not have read it if I had known that it was so Christian in spirit and approach. “Choose freedom. Choose the freedom of living loved, far from their debates and fence lines and name callings, and the belittling, divisive stereotypes. Extend the gift of freedom and grace, second chances, and more grace, just as you have received them. As E.E. Cummings wrote, it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. Live countercultural when the culture, baptized or secular, does not affirm truth, love, faith, mercy, and justice.” pg. 194