Jesus Feminist, ten years later

Behind the scenes stories, my own evolving journey, a few regrets, precious memories, and our shared testimony

Hi friends,

This week marks ten years since my very first book Jesus Feminist was released into the world. Ten years! To celebrate, this week’s Field Notes newsletter shares a few of your stories and testimonies, my gratitude for a formative friendship, behind-the-scenes memories from that season, throw-back photos of tinies(!), my own evolving journey and even regrets, and much more. I know it’s a bit navel-gaze-y or self-indulgent, but you know what, sometimes we can get so busy in our lives, we don’t just stop to look around now and then and give thanks. That’s what I hope to do today: just to stop for one minute, take a look around, and be grateful.

(Housekeeping note: I do think the number of pictures might mean the post is too big for your email provider so if you’re receiving this through email, you might need to click through to the Internet and read it here.)

Photo by my friend, Stephanie Hall of Retrospect Photography (Saskatoon).

Jesus Feminist was released on November 3, 2013. We had a little social media campaign that day where people took photos of themselves with the book or a homemade sign, proclaiming themselves “Jesus feminists.” I still have so many of those screenshots. Here’s mine from that day in 2013:

sarahbessey

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Lipstick game, still strong. Requisite Christian-progressive-blogger chunky black glasses, in place.

In the ten years since then, the “little yellow book” as I used to refer to it, has gone on a journey I could never have imagined. It’s become a shared testimony.

On the day it released, it wasn’t yet carried in Canadian stores so we loaded up the tinies that following week to drive over the border so that we could crash a Barnes and Noble in Bellingham, WA. We just wanted to see it on an actual book shelf in a real book store. It was everything I ever imagined, a dream come true.

sarahbessey

A post shared by @sarahbessey

Then on the way home, one of the tinies threw up all over the minivan.

Because, of course.

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Behind the Scenes

A lot changes in ten years. For instance, we added one more baby to our brood just a couple years later, experienced a life-changing car accident, received diagnoses around neurodivergence within our family which opened up a whole new world. I wrote four more books including my first New York Times bestseller. We created Evolving Faith, which became such a huge and unexpected part of my life and vocation. I started a newsletter called Field Notes in 2014, but then moved it here to Substack in 2019 as an early adopter of the platform, and then this newsletter became one of the vocational rhythms of my life. Like many of you, we lost our church and community along the way. Eventually, we ended up leaving BC and moving back home to Alberta. My husband Brian’s work shifted and changed a few times. My own theology evolved - and keeps evolving. The then-tinies became three tall teenagers, that last little baby is eight and a half now, even as their lives receded from my public life on social media and books, out of my protective instincts. Relationships changed, some ended, others grew in depth, new ones were formed. We also experienced hundreds of non-public sorrows, losses, victories, and joys.

No wonder Madeline L’Engle described that stage of life as “the tired thirties.” (Can confirm that one’s forties should be included in that description.)

So yes, I wrote Jesus Feminist when I was in my early thirties, primarily while on maternity leave with our third baby.

I mean, who gave me permission, other than my own sheer audacity?¹ I have no idea.

This was my stage of life when I was writing Jesus Feminist. As I used to say, it was definitely a “full hands, full heart” season as we had just had three babies in four years.

I had worked for twelve years in financial services marketing and then non-profit strategic development while blogging on the early versions of the Internet (#RIPXanga) through my own messy deconstruction and rebuilding on my lunch breaks and after bedtime for many of those years. (Hardly an overnight success, only about a dozen people read my blog for the first seven years.) I didn’t quit my day job until I had signed that first book contract. And even then, it wasn’t enough to live on, money was incredibly tight, and I was the primary caregiver to our kids while homeschooling our eldest, so I was only ever writing during nap times for a while there, until we hired a babysitter² with the publisher’s advance for two or three afternoons a week.

To every caregiver of tinies still trying to create in the tight margins, oh, I see you.

I have such a vivid memory of one day in particular. I was trying to finish a chapter - I’m pretty sure it was chapter 8 on Reclaiming the Church Ladies - so when Evelynn went down for a nap, I put our older two tinies into what we used to call a “Play Bath” in our family bathroom in Abbotsford. I then sat cross-legged on the floor by the toilet, laptop open, to try to wrestle a few more paragraphs down. I had this moment when the tinies were in the tepid tub splashing and the baby was in her crib and my milk came crashing in because it was past time to nurse, and it just fully dawned on me how hilarious it was to be trying to write down some Very Big Thoughts About Patriarchy in such circumstances. I had to laugh.

I love that memory now.

(To be honest, almost my entire career has been searching for some a non-existent “balance” between mothering and writing.)

This was the day in August 2012 when I mailed in my first signed book contract. We were in the post office at the now-closed Zellers in Abbotsford together. So Evie would have been about 16 months, Joe was three, Anne was five. And we were about to start homeschooling kindergarten while I wrote the book.

Yet, even though it was such an intense season of life, writing that book felt urgent, joyful, and deeply important to me. I felt part of a vast company of people who were doing important work to see God’s goodness for equality embodied in our actual lives. I wasn’t just writing alongside of folks like Rachel Held Evans, but also now-shuttered communities like SheLoves Magazine and A Deeper Story and local churches like Relate Church to name just a few, plus the whole community bloggers/writers/friends who were just emerging as formidable voices in those years. Many of the dearest relationships of my life to this day had their origin in that season.

Now that I’ve written a few more books since then, I know that the magic I sensed while writing Jesus Feminist was rare. I’ve loved all of my books but this one? This was the one that was an absolute joy to write. I loved every page, every edit, every paragraph at the time. I felt such a clear sense of direction and purpose. I felt the cooperation of the Spirit in a way that I’ve learned by now not to take for granted. I wrote this book in public library study carrels and homely coffee shops and our second-hand kitchen table from IKEA. It honestly remains my favourite book writing experience to date.

An oldie but a goodie, eh?

One of my sweetest memories from the book’s release happened just a few weeks before. I had given an early advanced copy of the book to my mother to read for the first time. A day or two later, I had a dentist appointment for a teeth cleaning. When I came out of the building after my appointment, she was waiting for me in the parking lot with tears streaming down her face. She had just finished the book, that final chapter called The Commissioning, and she needed to hug me in person and could not wait another minute. Still with fluoride taste in my mouth, we held each other in the parking lot of the dentist and cried our hearts out.

I went into writing Jesus Feminist knowing that I was writing it for ordinary lay-readers, not theologians or academics. I was writing for the ones like me who would never go to/have access to seminary, let alone read theological treatises about egalitarianism - all while our daily walking-around lives were being deeply formed by common patriarchal readings of the Bible from our marriages to our callings to our sense of self. A homemade theologian-wannabe, the more I read about egalitarianism and feminism in academic work, the more I wanted to make sure that it jumped that ivory tower (which was how I thought of seminary back then) and landed in our church pews, dorm rooms, kitchens, public parks, friendships, and families. I remember thinking of the girls in our youth group years before a lot: I wanted to be able to put something in their hands that affirmed and celebrated them, the way I knew God did, something that made a theology of their value and worth accessible and practical and embodied, yes, but also helped them see that you didn’t have to choose between loving Jesus and moving through your life in the fullness of your own soul. To me, it was never really a book about Christian feminism - others had already written that work and much better than I could - so it was a book about the Kin-dom of God and what it looks like for all of us to be able to step fully into our gifts, our agency, our power, our cooperation with the Spirit, to allow all of us to flourish.

That final chapter, The Commissioning, remains one of my favourite things I’ve ever written. If no one else was going to commission you for your own life, well, I would and did.

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Rachel’s Influence

One of the more bittersweet things about this milestone, of course, is that Rachel Held Evans was such a force behind and within the book. Rachel and I became friends because our paths crossed on the Internet in about 2008-ish. Our shared work/passions around women’s stories, experiences, and voices in the Church united us as well as our passion for writing, but we quickly became more than allies on Twitter. She became my co-conspirator and a dear friend and a sister of my heart. (When we first met in person, we recreated Thelma and Louise in a bathroom in Nashville. I laugh about this still.)

sarahbessey

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When my little blog caught the eye of an acquisitions editor who asked for a book proposal, it was Rachel that I called in a panic of hope and fear. It was Rachel who talked me through the process of publishing, taught me how to write a book proposal by literally giving me her own proposal from Evolving in Monkey Town,³ and called her own literary agent Rachelle Gardner on my behalf (who remains my own agent, advocate, and friend to this very day). It was Rachel who introduced me to Jim Chaffee who became my own booking agent back when I still was travelling to speak and then who co-founded Evolving Faith with us, a warm friend still. It was Rachel who helped midwife this book and my books afterwards into the world with her encouragement, wisdom, sage advice, and laughter. It was Rachel who helped me realise how much I still had to learn and encouraged me to be more ambitious. It was Rachel who introduced me to a dozen folks whom I now count as dear friends. Rachel wrote the foreword for the book and championed me - among many others - constantly. I owe so much to her, in so many ways. I know she’d hate that I’m saying all this, but I can’t celebrate this milestone without acknowledging that Jesus Feminist wouldn’t have existed without Rachel’s influence and friendship.

I was the luckiest to be alongside her for those years. I will miss her for my whole life.

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Since then

Sometimes these days my path crosses with other women who tell me that their own origin story includes this imperfect book somehow and for that, I will always be humbled and grateful. I love that it’s in the background of so many testimonies.

Of course the world has changed a lot since Jesus Feminist was written. Back then, it was considered super controversial and electrifying to claim that “f-word” in Christian spaces but now it’s more common.⁴ The feminist movement has shifted and evolved in both secular and sacred spaces with its own share of controversies, growing pains, and deepening. There was the advent of the long-awaited #MeToo (and #ChurchToo) movements. There has been a growing backlash against egalitarianism in evangelical spaces as a result in particular. After all, there are few lashings-out like the panic of religious patriarchy when its power starts to wobble.

In 2013 when it released, I remember feeling exhilarated and triumphant, like we were all witnessing the slow death of religious patriarchy in real time and I got to play a small part, but now I know that I was naive.⁵ I grieve that the doubling down has been so swift, vicious, and punishing even as the horrifying truth of abuse and the toll of patriarchy within the Church became more public. As I said to Heather on this FB post, it is my dearest wish that the book would become irrelevant but so far, no such luck.

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Always evolving

I’m grateful for dozens of other folks who dealt with many aspects of feminism and religion in better ways that I ever did or could. I’ve particularly learned a ton about and from womanist, BIPOC, and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ writers and theologians who are engaged in this work with a strength, hopefulness, and faithfulness that inspires me in the decade since this book was published.⁶

But you know what? let’s get honest. Even as I do look back on the work with joy, pride, and gratitude, I do that while knowing Jesus Feminist is far from perfect. There are definitely things I’d change if I had the opportunity to write it again from this vantage point in my life and learning. For instance, the book isn’t intersectional in my (non-)approach to race, gender, and sexuality, especially within the Church. I remember feeling ill-equipped for that conversation, yes, but also like it was “out of scope” for the book’s length, purpose, and audience. Now, from this vantage point, I wonder if I wasn’t also unconsciously choosing to make the book more palatable to white heteronormative evangelicals. I have deep regrets there and I’ve tried to right some of those wrongs in my work ever since.⁷

I suppose it stands as an altar of remembrance and an invitation for repentance for us, even in imperfection. Books can bear witness to a stage of our lives, a moment in time, when we were growing, changing, creating, trying, and loving. And any gaps that exist in my work, then and now, have hopefully invited us all into conversations with other, wiser, stronger leaders who keep taking us “further up and further in” to God’s goodness. Publishing can be a humbling, risky, in-print reminder of the journey us writers are also on.

In a comment on my last Field Notes post, Katherine described Jesus Feminist as a “gentle on-ramp to deeper waters” book for her. I loved that characterization (I think it was accurate for me as well!). I’ve always believed that for anything to change, we need to create real avenues and meaningful invitations for actual people to consider transformative change. I think Jesus Feminist did that for a lot of us - and that’s not a small thing. Being someone’s imperfect but vital on-ramp to the goodness and welcome, inclusion and generosity of God’s love matters to me. Jesus Feminist was never the whole road, just an on-ramp for so many of us, and that knowledge makes me grateful (and that knowledge also helps when all I can see are the regrets over what I would do differently now).

By this point in my life, I’ve learned that regrets aren’t always our enemy. Rather, they are often an invitation and opportunity to do better, get honest, learn more, deepen our understanding, embrace agency and freedom, and become more courageous.

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Your Stories

This past weekend, I put out a call on social media and here at Field Notes for stories about the legacy of Jesus Feminist in your own life. Thank you to everyone who shared what this book meant in your life. I’ve spent years cherishing the stories of how this book intersected with your own stories, but spending time anew with your stories over the weekend was deeply humbling.

This was a photo on social media from ages ago I found in my archives but I’m afraid I’ve lost the original poster’s name.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of stories that came in this weekend:

Reading this book (for the first time) is one of my adult core memories. It was the welcoming door that beckoned me to a bigger table and wilder God than the one I accepted in a box. I remember being at the DFW airport and sprinting to all the Hudsons to find a highlighter, I NEEDED TO HIGHLIGHT IT WAS IMPORTANT. That book midwifed so many of us. It is such a gift, Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. ❤️ -

Erin H Moon

I came across Jesus Feminist while I was attending a conservative Christian college. I was already questioning many of the social and political beliefs I had been brought up with and that were being reinforced at the school, but I was at a loss of how to incorporate those changing ideas into my faith. Jesus Feminist brought it all together for me and truly, without hyperbole, changed my life. It opened up a whole word of authors, creators, voices, and teachers who I had never considered or known existed. Reading that book brought me to tears more than once and set me on a new path that I'm still exploring today. I am forever grateful for that little yellow book and for you, Sarah, for your teaching, your community building, and your consistent showing-up-ness to do this life thing in community with other people of evolving faiths. Thank you. - Micah

Sarah, when you first sent me a copy of Jesus Feminist for review, you know I was in a different place theologically and I always respected that you still engaged me (even, maybe, liked me?). I remember reading the book, looking for spaces to critique for my review and I couldn't find one. In fact, the book was a seed of sorts for my way out of complementation theology. I couldn't shake the way you talked about Jesus and women. I still can't. The way Jesus was with women in the Bible is the same way Jesus is with us now and that brings such freedom. My journey took months and years, while I tried to read and consult and study and listen my way through a different position on women in the church, but I am so confidently a Jesus Feminist now without caveat. And your continual kindness and beautiful book helped plant that seed and I'll never forget it, not ever. So much love to you. -

Lore Wilbert

It was one of the "beginning" books for me. I felt alone and then suddenly I wasn't. - Rachel

The short answer is that I'm in seminary now because of Jesus Feminist. When I was in undergrad first starting to feel a call to ministry, I didn't know what God was stirring in me because I grew up in a church context were women could not be in ministry. Jesus Feminist is the book my mentor handed me when I started to ask questions about my role in the church and didn't have language to describe what God was preparing me for. When I told my dad (a pastor) that I thought God was calling me to be a pastor, he told me he wasn't sure he could support me. I asked him to read Jesus Feminist, and it was the beginning of lots of hard and important conversations. Today he fully supports my calling and is proud to have another pastor in the family. - Eliza

My comment is a sweet memory, Sarah. My late husband and I often read books to each other, and several years ago we read Jesus Feminist. He was a pastor, and I don't believe he had known of you before. All I can say is, when I finished reading it, he just said, "Wow." - Iris

I remember being a young girl that was told that “women can’t be pastors” but I knew the call of the Spirit on my life. I’m grateful for this book and the badass pastor woman who gave it to me. I’ve given it to so many students over the years in my ministry! - @kristiaoney

I was introduced to "Jesus Feminist" while serving as the VP for Student Development at Cornerstone University (Grand Rapids, MI). Some of our female student leaders courageously approached me with their concerns about the attitudes displayed by some of their male counterparts. They asked to host a discussion on Christian feminism and recommended "Jesus Feminist" as background reading for me. It was transformative, playing a key role in shifting my perspective and approach as a leader, not only completely shifting my perspective from soft complementarian to egalitarian but propelling me to reconsider numerous other perspectives that marked my identity and leadership. It continues to bear good fruit in my marriage, my relationship with my sons and my daughters-in-law, my friendships, and my approach to ministry. I am deeply grateful, Sarah, for your work and for the courageous advocacy of some undergraduate students who were willing to challenge and sharpen me as a leader. - Gerald

Actually my husband made a "Jesus Feminist" of me. Before we dated I attended a church that actually demoted it's women pastors, telling them it was unbiblical to continue to teach the greater church population. Having no desire to stand in front of a group of people myself and teach I didn't think much of it. During a conversation with my then boyfriend, I mentioned what had happened at my church and he challenged me saying "Why on earth couldn't I learn from a women? It seems like I would have to be quite prideful not to." And then he introduced me to "Jesus Feminist". Which Rocked. My. World. And opened me up to so much beauty in the Jesus story. It continues to impact me years later as it was the first moment in my personal faith journey that I saw my beliefs were wrong. It was the gateway for me to ask so many more questions. - Jill

Several years ago, I worked as a librarian at a school for missionary kids in the Black Forest region of Germany. The library had acquired "Jesus Feminist" for our collection, and the book became very popular among many in our school community. We asked our students to tell us about their favourite book, and we created a display with those books, next to the student endorsements. My favourite submission came from a quiet, shy Grade 9 girl, who wrote how "Jesus Feminist" had taught her that girls are humans too, and that girls are just as worthy of love and respect as boys. It was a simple yet powerful revelation, and for this girl, it was an introduction to a Jesus who not only saw her as human, but as equal to anyone else, "despite being a girl" (her precise phrasing). Sadly, in recent years, and bending to the will of a small group of angry and fearful parents, the school pulled this book from the library collection, along with many others that contained apparently dangerous messages (or were written by "pro-LGBTQ" authors). Sarah, you and your book fit both of those categories. ;) This, of course, is a familiar tale which has swept across American libraries and schools. However, that too, is part of the ongoing legacy of "Jesus Feminist". This book, that is so feared that it must be taken out of circulation, must certainly have something important and profound to say. I have lost touch with that Grade 9 girl, however I know that "Jesus Feminist" was a catalyst for her. She, like so many of us, was changed. - Lisa

"Jesus Feminist" was an eye-popping revolutionary book for this Bill Gothard indoctrinated, umbrella theology, patriarchal gal! It was the catalyst in enabling me to fully understand that no man stood between me and God. After reading it I felt like I had been saved all over again into a deeper love relationship with my amazing God! The book led me to identify sexual harassment and sexual assault that had happened to me in working in the church and it enabled me to have courage to report my abusers to the church and to the RCMP. How can I ever thank you enough for being faithful to write 'Jesus Feminist ' and bring light into my darkness! ❤️ - Name Withheld

I remember sitting in an Extreme Pita on my lunch break, Jan 2014 and getting to page 77 of Jesus Feminist where you talk about single women and bursting into tears right there at that tiny table. I am not someone who cries in public but I couldn’t help myself. I found my Facebook post from that day which reads, “ For the first time in my life I'm reading a book on Christian living that acknowledges that unmarried women exist & dares to suggest that God has plans for us too.” For pretty much all of my life as a Christian, unmarried women have been spoken about as dusty leftovers, if they are ever mentioned at all. This was the first time we got to be people. I have attended more than one church that had “A place for families to grow” painted on the walls of the sanctuary and wished it could be a place for me too. You were the first to suggest that it could be. Thank you. - Claire

A trusted friend, who referred to you as "Mama Sarah" told me to follow you on social media. I obeyed. One day you posted about a 1.99 sale on both of your books. I bought both. It took me a while to read them, but I started with Jesus Feminist. In those days, the title made me flinch ever so slightly. But, when I tell you how things changed for me after that book. I don't even have the words. The book was a catalyst for change for me. It put me into action and I haven't stopped since. I have read many books, but none that put the movement to my feet like this one. I took the huge step of leaving a non-affirming non -egalitarian church shortly after. Your book re-told me the words my heart was already saying all along. It gave me confirmation and encouragement and I will forever love it, and you for it. - Jen

Thank you to everyone who wrote in to share your story. We read every single one.

Not going to lie, I did print off so many of your comments to tuck into my keepsake box.

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Finally, thank you

Thank you for reading Jesus Feminist. Thank you for passing it along to your friends, asking your libraries to stock it, leading bible studies and book groups, smuggling it to friends under the watchful eyes of folks who saw it as dangerous. Thanks to those of you who always rearrange the bookstore shelves so it’s front-facing to other curious readers (I’m sure that’s improper somehow but I’m grateful). Thank you for all the social media posts with photos in your homes and schools and churches. Thank you for your letters, cards, emails, testimonies: I kept them all. Thank you to the reviewers who loved it and the ones who hated it, I think you both sold some books for me. Thank you to the good-faith critiques that changed me, challenged me, and deepened my understanding, I hope my work continues to reflect your refining. Thank you for reading it on public transit and striking up conversations with seat mates. Thank you for the dog-eared pages and the highlighted passages, for the smudges from your kids and scribbled notes in the margins and broken book spines. Thank you for showing up to elder meetings and church board discussions with the yellow book tucked into your bag. Thank you for advocating for women’s voices and experiences to be welcomed at the table. Thank you for writing lines of it in your journals. I’ve even seen a few tattoos over the years, if you can believe it. Thank you for your letters, comments, emails, and conversations in hallways of churches and airports and restaurants in the years since then. Thank you for letting me be one of many doulas of what our good God was up to in your life. Thank you for being someone who, like Hafiz wrote, keeps dropping keys like this to the rowdy prisoners in your life.

Thanks for letting me go on this little trip down memory lane with you. As I gear up to release yet another new book(!) in just a couple of months, I want you to know that it is the honour of my life to serve you. Truly. It is such a joy to be alongside of you all through pages and pixels as we all keep journeying. What a gift to do good work alongside good people.

I guess that social media selfie from that first release date ten years ago is holding true: I am grateful and I am a Jesus Feminist.

Alongside you still,

S.

Website | Books | Field Notes | Evolving Faith | Instagram | Facebook | Threads

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And in case you missed these recent Field Notes:

• Ordinary Work: All I know to do when I don’t know what to do.

• When hope and love don't feel like enough: And starting to wrap up Evolving Faith 2023

• We become a parable of untamed grace: If Jesus lived today, we might be surprised by how often he uses the ordinary metaphors of our lives to repair our imagination about God.

• 👀 Book Cover Sneak Peek: "Field Notes for the Wilderness"

1. And that was definitely the tone of a few critiques: “Who gave this woman permission? HOW DARE SHE write about God without a degree in God?” lol

2. “Babysitter” can hardly sum up who Sally became in our life. For many years, she loved and served our family with tremendous care. While trying to find childcare, I remember praying that God would “send us someone who would love us” and sure enough, God answered that prayer in Sally.

3. That was when I realised just how good of a writer Rach was: the sample chapters in that book proposal were nearly identical to the final product. She wrote so clearly, her first drafts were basically publishable…which is not a claim that I can make.

4. More behind the scenes: Jesus Feminist wasn’t the original title of the book! It was originally a very artsy title with a poetry reference. Jesus Feminist was simply a chapter title in the proposal at first, but it was my agent Rachelle who plucked that chapter title out and plunked it into the proposal’s book title with a “trust me” look. What a mercy!

5. I’ve since heard similar stories from Second Wave Christian feminists of the 1970s. They truly thought that they had reset the reality for so many of us but then came the backlash of the 1980s with statements and councils and coordinated attacks against feminism both inside and outside of the Church. They were set back decades. Then along came us, another round of hopefuls. I think the 2010s feel similar to me now from this vantage point: I genuinely thought we were turning the tide but sadly, the backlash has once again been swift and merciless.

6. I could list no less than 100 books to recommend here but I’ll try to keep it short (some of these are more academic in nature, so they were a heavier lift for me, but all are were so valuable!):

• Pretty much all of bell hooks’ work but All About Love in particular as well as Feminist Theory.

• Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God by Delores S. Williams

• Hope Abundant: Third World and Indigenous Women's Theology by Kwok Pui-lan

• A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband 'Master' by Rachel Held Evans

• Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne by Dr. Wilda C. Gafney

• Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough by Candice Marie Benbow

• The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

• Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength by Kat Armas

• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

• Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz

• An Introduction to Womanist Biblical Interpretation by Nyasha Junior

• Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay K. Gupta

7. A few others: back then, I couldn’t even fathom a world where access to safe and legal abortion would be at risk, so I think I tried to minimize the conversation or arguments around abortion within the book for reasons that feel opaque to me now. Did I think that the issue of abortion was more theological than actually literal? I’m not entirely sure, but as the erosion of rights for women’s bodily autonomy has gained legislative steam, I have regretted my lack of an attempt on why one can be a Christian and pro-choice, too. And I named a few organizations that I worked with or knew of back then that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend any longer (and with whom I’m no longer connected - and who likely wouldn’t claim me either!). Even the fact that I exclusively used male pronouns for God back then feels weird now that I’ve fully integrated a more generous understanding of God, even in my daily language. I could keep going.