|
|
609 - Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition |
Her Story: Women in Christian Tradition
By Barbara J. MacHaffie
This lively survey of the history of Christianity helps redress an imbalance and recalls forgotten history. Directed to a general audience, it paints in broad strokes a picture of the status of women in the Christian tradition from biblical times to the present day, with special emphasis on North American Christianity.
The content is clearly focused on questions of fact and issues for interpretation. MacHaffie answers these factual questions: What leadership and liturgical roles did women play? What roles did they find for themselves outside of "official" structures? How were females and "the feminine" regarded in devotional and theological writing? MacHaffie draws careful yet tentative conclusions about the following matters of interpretation: What is the true source of misogyny (fear, hatred of women), with which the church is so often infused? Why do new movements frequently give wider roles to women only to retreat as the group becomes established? Were women silently protesting against their low status when they joined groups that deviated from the mainstream? Claims are modest when the evidence is ambiguous.
In contrast to feminist scholarship that discards the Christian past as hopelessly oppressive, MacHaffie affirms a usable past for Christian women. She demonstrates, in a powerful synthesis of feminist research, that women have benefited from Christian tradition and have actively contributed to it.
MacHaffie's careful method, excellent synthesis, and stimulating questions and answers have persuaded me to choose her book as a required text in my undergraduate courses.