302 - New Eyes for Reading: Biblical and Theological Reflections by Women from the Third World

New Eyes for Reading: Biblical and Theological Reflections by Women from the Third World

By John S. Pobee and Barbel von Wartenberg-Potter

Geneva, World Council of Churches, 1986. 108 Pp. $5.95.

"Theology from the Underside," "Epistemological Privilege of the Oppressed," "The Option for the Poor," all these phrases from the theologies of liberation are given flesh and life in the simplicity and pain of these essays. Seventeen women, Ghanaian, Mexican, Korean, Guatemalan, Egyptian, Camerounian, Uruguayan, Filipino, Syrian, Kenyan, Chinese, and Indonesian tell the reader what the good news of the biblical message is for poor women, women of color.

Sometimes the good news these women heard from missionaries was not so good. Bette Ekeya writes from the Iteso experience in the Teso District of Uganda that marriages have become more violent since the introduction of the pseudo-Pauline injunction to women's subjection has been heard. Sometimes the "new eyes for reading" have seen through to the heart of the biblical message: "God Weeps with Our Pain" (Pui Lan Kwok). Read this book. You'll not read the Bible the same way again.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Ill.