Five Books On Christianity and Women

There's something very important you should know about traditional conservative biblical scholarship on the status and the roles of women in the Bible, and that is, it doesn't exist anymore. Poof! It's gone. Find me a book defending male patriarchal headship in the home or church or society and it's either not written by legitimate biblical scholars, or it gives way too much ground to current scholarship, such that traditional authors would've rejected it--or I'll be damned!

Theologians need not apply. Apologists need not apply.
There is a reason why. The traditional male headship position can no longer be maintained under critical study or research. That's because the Bible is a sexist, misogynistic book and honest biblical scholars cannot in good conscience say otherwise. Everyone should be a feminist. I am, as much as a male can be. Since the Bible is anti-feminist we should reject the Bible and the Christian faith. But many of these moderates and liberals are trying to reinvent the Christian faith, trying to force their faith into a Procrustean Bed of their own making.

Galatians 3:28, says: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The same guy who wrote Galatians 3:28 also told women not to speak in church (I Corinthians 14:34) and is believed to have said they are to submit to their husbands "in everything" (Ephesians 5:22-24). Seriously now, in a patriarchal society why would a perfectly good god merely say women were equally valuable to him? Even Muslims say this, and better, that women are even MORE special, and so they have to be protected...blah blah blah...while believing in an utterly misogynistic religion. The only reason Christians see more in Galatians 3:28 than is actually there, is because of social changes that opened their eyes to see it. Now for the five recommended books:

--Carol A. Newsom,‎ Sharon H. Ringe,‎ and Jacqueline E. Lapsley The Women's Bible Commentary, 3rd Edition. Newsom is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Old Testament at Candler and a senior fellow at Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Ringe is Professor Emerita of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Lapsley is associate professor of Old Testament, and director of The Center for Theology, Women, and Gender at Princeton Theological Seminary.

--Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality, and The Catholic Church. Ranke-Heinemann studied under Rudolph Bultmann and is chair of History of Religion at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen.

--Susanne Scholz, Sacred Witness: Rape in the Hebrew Bible.

--Susanne Scholz, Introducing the Women's Hebrew Bible: Feminism, Gender Justice, and the Study of the Old Testament. Scholz is professor of Old Testament at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas.

--Michael Coogan, God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says. Coogan is lecturer on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School, and author/editor of many tomes.

The trend from traditionalism to moderate Christianity to liberalism and beyond to Deism, agnosticism, and atheism continues. As Christians change their views on women, amnesia sets in where they soon forget how they used to treat women , just as they've done with their ever changing views of theology.

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