If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be, by Kendra Weddle & Melanie Springer Mock
If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be, by Kendra Weddle and Melanie Springer Mock, just came out! This is an important book that I highly recommend. Here are excerpts from my review in Christian Feminism Today.
If we ever question the great need for our work as Christian feminists, this book will re-energize and inspire us. In If Eve only Knew, Dr. Kendra Weddle and Dr. Melanie Springer Mock deconstruct evangelical popular culture’s messages that girls and women as descendants of Eve are sinful, weak, deceitful, and inferior, and that our hope is through being pure, passive, “pink” princesses who find the right man to marry and to please through serving him and his children. At the same time Kendra and Melanie construct positive messages with convincing biblical support, empowering us to be all we’re created to be in the divine image.
Countering the belief of many people that we live in a post-sexist world where feminism is no longer needed, Melanie and Kendra demonstrate through vivid examples and compelling stories that patriarchy is still all too prevalent and that indoctrination in gender inequality continues on a wide scale. Their voices ring with authenticity because they witness firsthand the destructive effects of this indoctrination on the college students they teach. All Christians and other justice-loving people should know and care about the distorted biblical messages on gender that come from evangelical popular culture because they remain a pervasive force in our society. Also, I’m delighted to recommend this book because it includes insightful biblical interpretations that free us to become all we’re meant to be in God’s own image.
The chapter on the importance of language and imagery to gender equality includes these statements: “Refusing to embrace feminine images and language for God endorses the sexism embedded within us: that women are inferior to men, that to speak of the ‘womb of God’ is somehow too earthy or messy, that to think of God as Mother produces unsettling images. . . .Until we take seriously the need for our language and images of God to be fully expressed, sexism will exist in our workplaces, educational institutions, and most prominently, in our churches.”
In If Eve Only Knew, Kendra and Melanie do an amazing job of weaving vivid illustrations from contemporary culture with cogent biblical scholarship—all in an engaging, witty style, as in their blog, “Ain’t I a Woman.” Their book, like their blog and their presentations at Christian Feminism Today Gatherings, makes me laugh at the ludicrous mandates for “biblical womanhood” while feeling profound sadness over all the ways evangelical popular culture harms people with stifling gender prescriptions. Melanie and Kendra also inspire hope that by overturning these damaging messages with biblical interpretations that nurture gender equality, we contribute to transforming culture. If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be is a must-read for everyone who wants to contribute to changing church and society so that all people have freedom to flourish in the divine image.
Read the complete review.