Book Review

"Author Jim Wallis has astutely observed what happened. 'On September 11 American joined the world'. Our membership was long overdue. Painful as the process has been for us, the benefits of widening our perspective to include the rest of the world are earthshaking, especially the relevance of this development to the conversation we are about to commence concerning God's vision for his daughters."
Carolyn Custis James in Half the Church

I picked up this book because a group of women at my work are reading it and will be discussing it at the end of this month. Having grown up in church, and grown up reading all sorts of books for women in the church, I have to be honest that I was skeptical about reading this book. I was intrigued, but also wary. I have read too many books that tell women what their place is and is not. At the end of the book, there is a sense of declared destiny that is not encouraging or hopeful but more like a life sentence. I was afraid this book was going to be another of those.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. The global perspective of this book is very refreshing. She doesn't focus on American Christians and the American church, but focuses on the church worldwide and the struggles of woman across the world. That was my first clue that this wasn't a typical book. The discussion begins with how the church's message to woman might not relate to woman across the world who are feeling trapped and suppressed through cultural traditions, sex trafficking, and the like. The meat of the book comes from a long discussion of what it means that man and woman are both made in the image of God and are therefore his image bearers in this world. She spends much of the book talking about what is means for woman to be his image bearers in particular, but never reduces the importance of both men and woman.

For those of use who have heard the term "ezer kenegdo" and have tried to understand how it applies to us, both in and out of marriage, James gives us a good description that brings strength and help to the term poorly translated "help meet." She reminders woman that ezer is a term most often applied to God himself in the Old Testament and it isn't a lesser term of any kind. At this point, some woman may be rolling their eyes with a "not again..." type reaction. I almost did too, but her presentation of the ezer concept was good and Biblical.

If you are looking for a book to define the role of women in the church or to continue the complementarian vs egalitarian debate, this is the not the book for you.  If you are looking for some encouraging insight about women's role from a Biblical stance, then you will find this book a good read.