The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth
USA Today
BestsellerA powerful work of skillful research and personal insight.
Publishers Weekly
Biblical womanhood the belief that God designed women to be submissive wives, virtuous mothers, and joyful homemakers pervades North American Christianity. From choices about careers to roles in local churches to relationship dynamics, this belief shapes the everyday lives of evangelical women. Yet biblical womanhood isn't biblical, says Baylor University historian Beth Allison Barr. It arose from a series of clearly definable historical moments.This book moves the conversation about biblical womanhood beyond Greek grammar and into the realm of church history ancient, medieval, and modern to show that this belief is not divinely ordained but a product of human civilization that continues to creep into the church. Barr's historical insights provide context for contemporary teachings about women's roles in the church and help move the conversation forward.Interweaving her story as a Baptist pastor's wife, Barr sheds light on the #ChurchToo movement and abuse scandals in Southern Baptist circles and the broader evangelical world, helping readers understand why biblical womanhood is about human power structures than the message of Christ.

When Stars Rain Down

When Stars Rain DownThis summer has the potential to change everything.

The summer of 1936 in Parsons, Georgia, is unseasonably hot, and Opal Pruitt can sense a nameless storm coming. She hopes this foreboding feeling won’t overshadow her upcoming eighteenth birthday or the annual Founder’s Day celebration in just a few weeks. As hard as she works in the home of the widow Miss Peggy, Opal enjoys having something to look forward to.

But when the Ku Klux Klan descends on Opal’s neighborhood of Colored Town, the tight knit community is shaken in every way. Parsons’s residents—both Black and white—are forced to acknowledge the unspoken codes of conduct in their post Reconstruction era town. To complicate matters, Opal finds herself torn between two unexpected romantic interests, awakening many new emotions. She never thought that becoming a woman would bring with it such complicated decisions about what type of person she wants to be.

In When Stars Rain Down, Angela Jackson Brown introduces us to a small Southern town grappling with haunting questions still relevant today—and to a young woman whose search for meaning resonates across the ages.

Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny

Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your DestinyA new perspective on the overused and misunderstood concept of karma that offers the key to happiness and enlightenment, from the New York Times bestselling author and world renowned spiritual master Sadhguru.

What is karma? Most people understand karma as a balance sheet of good and bad deeds, virtues and sins. The mechanism that decrees that we cannot evade the consequences of our own actions. In reality, karma has nothing to do with reward and punishment. Karma simply means action: your action, your responsibility. It isn't some external system of crime and punishment, but an internal cycle generated by you. Accumulation of karma is determined only by your intention and the way you respond to what is happening to you. Over time, it's possible to become ensnared by your own unconscious patterns of behavior.

In Karma, Sadhguru seeks to put you back in the driver's seat, turning you from a terror struck passenger to a confident driver navigating the course of your own destiny. By living consciously and fully inhabiting each moment, you can free yourself from the cycle. Karma is an exploration and a manual, restoring our understanding of karma to its original potential for freedom and empowerment instead of a source of entanglement. Through Sadhguru's teachings, you will learn how to live intelligently and joyfully in a challenging world.

The Well-Watered Woman: Rooted in Truth, Growing in Grace, Flourishing in Faith

The Well-Watered Woman: Rooted in Truth, Growing in Grace, Flourishing in FaithDiscover the bottomless, refreshing Well of God's Word and experience a fullness and peace beyond your circumstances.In the chaos of our everyday, it can be difficult to live out and apply the truths of Scripture. We want of Jesus, but we find ourselves looking to our own lives and accomplishments for our worth and identity. And while that may buoy us for a time, we're often left feeling dried up, discouraged, and longing for .Gretchen Saffles knows what it's like to feel overwhelmed and unable to flourish. In The Well Watered Woman, Gretchen leads us to the Well of fullness, the Word of freedom, and the Way of fruitfulness. She teaches that God's Word will satisfy us for all eternity.Using Scripture and her own personal story of surrender, Gretchen offers spiritually hungry women tangible tools to not only know Jesus but to live a life that thoroughly enjoys Him, seeks Him, and follows Him into freedom.

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your MindA step by step plan clinically proven to break the cycle of worry and fear that drives anxiety and addictive habits

We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.

We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.

Distilling than 20 years of research and hands on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution oriented program that anyone can use to feel better no matter how anxious they feel.

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage

Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and CourageAnne Lamott is my Oprah. Chicago Tribune

From the bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow comes an inspiring guide to restoring hope and joy in our lives.

In Dusk Night Dawn, Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad newspiles up from climate crises to daily assaults on civility how can we cope? Where, she asks, do we start to our world and joy and hope and our faith in life itself back . with our sore feet, hearing loss, stiff fingers, poor digestion, stunned minds, broken hearts?

We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.

Drawing from her own experiences, Lamott shows us the intimate and human ways we can adopt to move through life's dark places and toward the light of hope that still burns ahead for all of us.

As she does in Help, Thanks, Wow and her other bestselling books, Lamott explores the thorny issues of life and faith by breaking them down into manageable, human sized questions for readers to ponder, in the process showing us how we can amplify life's small moments of joy by staying open to love and connection. As Lamott notes in Dusk Night Dawn, I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me. Marrying for the first time with a grown son and a grandson, Lamott explains that finding happiness with a partner isn't a function of age or beauty but of outlook and perspective.

Full of the honesty, humor, and humanity that have made Lamott beloved by millions of readers, Dusk Night Dawn is classic Anne Lamott thoughtful and comic, warm and wise and further proof that Lamott truly speaks to the better angels in all of us.

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and BeyondThe world's leading expert on near death experiences reveals his journey toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness.

Cases of remarkable experiences on the threshold of death have been reported since ancient times, and are described today by 10% of people whose hearts stop. The medical world has generally ignored these “near death experiences,” dismissing them as “tricks of the brain” or wishful thinking. But after his patients started describing events that he could not just sweep under the rug, Dr. Bruce Greyson began to investigate.

As a physician without a religious belief system, he approached near death experiences from a scientific perspective. In After, he shares the transformative lessons he has learned over four decades of research. Our culture has tended to view dying as the end of our consciousness, the end of our existence—a dreaded prospect that for many people evokes fear and anxiety.

But Dr. Greyson shows how scientific revelations about the dying process can support an alternative theory. Dying could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another, not an ending but a transition. This new perspective on the nature of death can transform the fear of dying that pervades our culture into a healthy view of it as one milestone in the course of our lives. After challenges us to open our minds to these experiences and to what they can teach us, and in so doing, expand our understanding of consciousness and of what it means to be human.

God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World

God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday WorldAbstract theology is overrated, for God can be found in even the most ordinary of things.

Jesus used things like a lily, sparrow, and sheep to teach about the kingdom of God. And in the Old Testament, God repeatedly describes himself and his saving work in relation to physical things such as a rock, horn, or eagle.

In God of All Things, pastor and author Andrew Wilson invites you to rediscover God in this way, too through ordinary, everyday things. He explores the idea of a material world and presents a variety of created marvels that reveal the gospel in everyday life and fuel worship and joy in God marvels like:



Dust: the image of God

Horns: the salvation of God

Donkeys: the peace of God

Water: the life of God

Viruses: the problem of God

Cities: the kingdom of God
God of All Things will leave you with a deeper understanding of Scripture, the world you live in, and the God who made it all.

The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul

The Truth at the Heart of the Lie: How the Catholic Church Lost Its SoulCourageous and inspiring. Karen Armstrong, author of The Case for GodJames Carroll takes us to the heart of one of the great crises of our times. Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve

An eloquent memoir by a former priest and National Book Award winning writer who traces the roots of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal back to the power structure of the Church itself, as he explores his own crisis of faith and journey to renewal

James Carroll weaves together the story of his quest to understand his personal beliefs and his relationship to the Catholic Church with the history of the Church itself. From his first awakening of faith as a boy to his gradual disillusionment as a Catholic, Carroll offers a razor sharp examination both of himself and of how the Church became an institution that places power and dominance over people through an all male clergy.

Carroll argues that a male supremacist clericalism is both the root cause and the ongoing enabler of the sexual abuse crisis. The power structure of clericalism poses an existential threat to the Church and compromises the ability of even a progressive pope like Pope Francis to advance change in an institution accountable only to itself. Carroll traces this dilemma back to the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, when Scripture, Jesus Christ, and His teachings were reinterpreted as the Church became an empire. In a deeply personal re examination of self, Carroll grapples with his own feelings of being chosen, his experiences as a priest, and the moments of doubt that made him leave the priesthood and embark on a long personal journey toward renewal including his tenure as an op ed columnist at The Boston Globe writing about sexual abuse in the Church.

Ultimately, Carroll calls on the Church and all reform minded Catholics to revive the culture from within by embracing anti clerical, anti misogynist resistance and staying grounded in the spirit of love that is the essential truth at the heart of Christian belief and Christian life.

#Churchtoo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing

#Churchtoo: How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find HealingWhen Emily Joy Allison outed her abuser on Twitter, she launched #ChurchToo, a movement to expose the culture of sexual abuse and assault utterly rampant in Christian churches in America. Not a single denomination is unaffected. And the reasons are somewhat different than those you might find in the #MeToo stories coming out of Hollywood or Washington. While patriarchy and misogyny are problems everywhere, they take on a particularly pernicious form in Christian churches where those with power have been insisting, since many decades before #MeToo, that this sexually dysfunctional environment is, in fact, exactly how God wants it to be.

#ChurchToo turns over the rocks of the church's sexual dysfunction, revealing just what makes sexualized violence in religious contexts both ubiquitous and uniquely traumatizing. It also lays the groundwork for not one but many paths of healing from a religious culture of sexual shame, secrecy, and control, and for victims of assault to live full, free, healthy lives.

You're Not Dying You're Just Waking Up

You're Not Dying You're Just Waking UpHello curious soul.

There’s a reason you were drawn to this book. Maybe you’re dissatisfied with what you’ve been told you “should be.” Maybe you know there’s something bigger out there, waiting for you, but the people in your life just don’t understand. Maybe you feel crazy or alone, like part of you is dying. You’re not dying. You’re just waking up. Even if you have seen my content before, it's time to strap in and hold on tight because this is not your average text. It’s your soul’s reminder of how powerful you are, and of how much you already know! Stop living your life in safety and stagnation. Stop making choices through obligation and attachment. Step up, live your life to the fullest.

You are ready, and the world is waiting.

Tarot Deciphered: Decoding Esoteric Symbolism in Modern Tarot

Tarot Deciphered: Decoding Esoteric Symbolism in Modern TarotUnlock the Symbols, Meanings Magic of the Cards

Discover the esoteric roots underlying the Rider Waite Smith Tarot, the Thoth Tarot, and contemporary decks that share their symbols. This illustrated, card by card analysis reveals detailed insights drawn from the multi layered traditions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the magical order that most strongly influenced modern tarot, helping you give better readings informed by the history of spiritual practice.

For each card, you will discover how astrology, mythology, alchemy, the elements, and Qabalah contribute to the card's overall meaning. Authors T. Susan Chang and M. M. Meleen, co hosts of the popular Fortune's Wheelhouse podcast, decipher the symbols and stories of tarot. Their carefully researched synthesis of esoteric ideas is designed to foster a deeper connection with the wisdom of the cards.