The Genesis of Gender

Author: Abigail Favale
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1642292176
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
The question of gender—who we are as men and women—has never been more pressing, or more misunderstood. Weaving personal experience with expert knowledge, Dr. Abigail Favale provides an in-depth yet accessible account of the gender paradigm: a framework for understanding reality and identity that has recently risen to prominence. Favale traces the genealogy of gender to its origins in feminism and postmodern thought, describing how gender has come to eclipse sex, and how that shift is reshaping language, law, medicine, sexuality, and our own self-perceptions. With substance, clarity, and compassion, Favale teases out the hidden assumptions of the gender paradigm and exposes its effects. Yet this book is not merely an exposé—it is also a powerful, moving articulation of a Christian understanding of reality: a holistic paradigm that proclaims the dignity of the body, the sacramental meaning of sexual difference, and the interconnectedness of all creation. The Genesis of Gender is a vital, timely resource for anyone seeking to better understand the gender paradigm—and how to live beyond it.

Into the Deep

Author: Abigail Rine Favale
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532605021
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
Into the Deep traces one woman's spiritual odyssey from birthright evangelicalism through postmodern feminism and, ultimately, into the Roman Catholic Church. As a college student, Abigail Favale experienced a feminist awakening that reshaped her life and faith. A decade later, on the verge of atheism, she found herself entering the oldest male-helmed institution on the planet--the last place she expected to be. With humor and insight, the author describes her gradual exodus from Christian orthodoxy and surprising swerve into Catholicism. She writes candidly about grappling with wounds from her past, Catholic sexual morality, the male priesthood, and an interfaith marriage. Her vivid prose brings to life the wrenching tumult of conversion--a conversion that began after she entered the Church and began to pry open its mysteries. There, she discovered the startling beauty of a sacramental cosmos, a vision of reality that upended her notions of gender, sexuality, identity, and authority. Into the Deep is a thoroughly twenty-first-century conversion, a compelling account of recovering an ancient faith after a decade of doubt.

Eve & Adam

Author: Kristen E. Kvam
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253109035
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 538

Book Description
"The editors have performed a great service in making widely available a documentary history of the interpretation of the Eve and Adam story." —Publishers Weekly "This fascinating volume examines Genesis 1-3 and the different ways that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim interpreters have used these passages to define and enforce gender roles. . . . a 'must' . . . " —Choice "Wonderful! A marvelous introduction to the ways in which the three major Western religious traditions are both like, and unlike one another." —Ellen Umansky, Fairfield University No other text has affected women in the western world as much as the story of Eve and Adam. This remarkable anthology surveys more than 2,000 years of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim commentary and debate on the biblical story that continues to raise fundamental questions about what it means to be a man or to be a woman. The selections range widely from early postbiblical interpretations in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha to the Qur'an, from Thomas Aquinas to medieval Jewish commentaries, from Christian texts to 19th-century antebellum slavery writings, and on to pieces written especially for this volume.

Gender, Power, and Persuasion

Author: Mignon R. Jacobs
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : th
Pages : 276

Book Description
Through her insightful reading of the Genesis narratives, Jacobs opens up new perspectives on the struggle to achieve and maintain equitable relationships between women and men.

What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women

Author: Kevin Giles
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532633696
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Kevin Giles has been writing on women in the Bible for over forty years. In this book, What the Bible Actually Teaches on Women, he gives the most comprehensive account to date of the competing conclusions to this question and the issues surrounding it. To understand the bitter and divisive debate among evangelicals over the status and ministry of women, it needs to be understood that those who since 1990 have called themselves "complementarians" argue that in creation before the fall God set the man over the woman. Thus, the leadership of the man and the subordination of the woman in the home, the church, and wherever possible in the world (the whole creation) is the God-given ideal that is pleasing to God. It is this "theology" that Kevin Giles deconstructs and shows to be without a biblical foundation. Giles shows that he is fully conversant with the complementarian position and yet is unpersuaded by it. He sees it as an appeal to the Bible to preserve male privilege, similar to the appeals to the Bible to validate slavery and Apartheid; appeals to the Bible made by some of the best Reformed and evangelical biblical scholars, and now seen to be special pleading. Carefully studying the limited number of texts on which complementarians predicate their theology of the sexes, Giles finds not one of them actually teaches what complementarians claim. Furthermore, complementarians too often ignore the texts that are very difficult for them. In this book the ordination of women gets only passing mention. The constant focus is on whether or not the Bible subordinates women to men as an abiding theological principle.

Genesis and Gender

Author: William E. Phipps
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
This book is a lively and provocative treatment of the Genesis stories, which are considered to be of central importance in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The author maintains that crucial points pertaining to gender have been overlooked in the Genesis stories because of faulty interpretations that have been accepted by society uncritically. Examining the history of biblical interpretations, the study focuses on both past impact and potential for human relationships in the future, and offers a broader concept in which the creation stories are seen not as attempts to disclose early history or doctrine but as reflections of male/female relationships as well as those between both genders and their Creator. The biblical God was neither masculine nor feminine, but transcended traits which various cultures have assigned to one gender or another. The Bible reaffirms the major theme that what the sexes share in common is more fundamental than what differentiates them, and Phipps contends that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have failed during most of their authoritative early traditions. This volume is clearly a feminist treatment of biblical topics, and presents the view that, after cultural prejudices are removed, powerful insights for contemporary life are revealed. In addition, anthropological and psychological perceptions are brought to bear on the biblical literature, and some of the complexities are explored, such as the exclusion of the female image of God throughout Judeo-Christian history, interpretations of the Genesis rib story, and the myths of Eve and Pandora. A refreshing approach to an age old controversy, this work deals evenhandedly with both genders, and should prove of particular interest to scholars of women's studies and religious studies, historians, classicists, pastors, and the educated religious person.

The Shape of Sex

Author: Leah DeVun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551363
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Book Description
Winner, 2024 Haskins Medal, Medieval Academy of America Winner, 2023 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, History of Science Society Winner, 2022 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies, American Academy of Religion Honorable Mention, 2023 John Boswell Prize, The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) Longlisted, 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies, Lambda Literary Awards The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex. The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions. In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

God's Design for Man and Woman

Author: Andreas J. Köstenberger
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433537028
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
Equipping a New Generation to Live Out God’s Design This thorough study of the Bible’s teaching on men and women aims to help a new generation of Christians live for Christ in today’s world. Moving beyond other treatments that primarily focus on select passages, this winsome volume traces Scripture’s overarching pattern related to male-female relationships in both the Old and New Testaments. Those interested in careful discussion rather than caustic debate will discover that God’s design is not confining or discriminatory but beautiful, wise, liberating, and good.

Mothers of Promise

Author: Tammi J. Schneider
Publisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 080102949X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
A prominent scholar of the Hebrew Bible offers a close reading of the women in Genesis to discover their roles in shaping ancient Israel.

Robert E. Lee

Author: Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 1101946229
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 625

Book Description
A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the award-winning historian and best-selling author of Gettysburg comes the definitive biography of Robert E. Lee. An intimate look at the Confederate general in all his complexity—his hypocrisy and courage, his inner turmoil and outward calm, his disloyalty and his honor. "An important contribution to reconciling the myths with the facts." —New York Times Book Review Robert E. Lee is one of the most confounding figures in American history. Lee betrayed his nation in order to defend his home state and uphold the slave system he claimed to oppose. He was a traitor to the country he swore to serve as an Army officer, and yet he was admired even by his enemies for his composure and leadership. He considered slavery immoral, but benefited from inherited slaves and fought to defend the institution. And behind his genteel demeanor and perfectionism lurked the insecurities of a man haunted by the legacy of a father who stained the family name by declaring bankruptcy and who disappeared when Robert was just six years old. In Robert E. Lee, the award-winning historian Allen Guelzo has written the definitive biography of the general, following him from his refined upbringing in Virginia high society, to his long career in the U.S. Army, his agonized decision to side with Virginia when it seceded from the Union, and his leadership during the Civil War. Above all, Guelzo captures Robert E. Lee in all his complexity--his hypocrisy and courage, his outward calm and inner turmoil, his honor and his disloyalty.