Trillia Newbell et al. on Being Beautifully Distinct

Every month, The Good Book Company make available digital versions of one of their books at no charge. This month (June 2025) it’s Beautifully Distinct: Conversations with Friends on Faith, Life, and Culture, edited by Trillia Newbell, which is available in exchange for an email address here.

Evangelical Review of Theology 47, 4 (November 2023)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Introduction: Thank You!

Godfrey Yogarajah

Praying for the Persecuted: IDOP

Anna E. Hampton

Towards a Theology of Risk for the 21st Century

Risk is not always right! As threats against Christians intensify in many parts of the world, we must gain deeper understanding of when God is calling us into risky situations and be spiritually and emotionally prepared for the possible results. This article by an experienced risk consultant dispels common myths and offers a mature theological perspective.

Wanjiku M. Kihuha and Joshua Robert Barron

Introducing the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology

Is African Christianity theologically shallow? It is not, thanks in part to the Africa Society of Evangelical Theology. In this article, two ASET leaders describe the organization’s vision and accomplishments and encourage theologians everywhere to engage with the exciting work emerging from Africa.

Jeffrey S. Krohn

The ‘Third Mention’ of Apostles and Prophets: Ephesians 4:11 in Light of 2:20 and 3:5

Many Christian leaders (including Joseph Mattera in our May 2023 issue) see a role for apostles and prophets in the contemporary church. This article examines, with illustrative references to African interpreters and popular current practices, whether Paul’s references to ‘apostles and prophets’ in Ephesians support such an understanding.

Joshua Robert Barron

Is the Prosperity Gospel the Gospel? The Prosperity and Productivity Gospels in African Christianity

We know that some versions of the Prosperity Gospel are off the rails, as this article colourfully documents. But the article goes on to commend the positive impact of some African variants that often go unnoticed.

Amanda Jackson

Women in the Church Today

Disagreements over the appropriateness of female pastors often obscure the much broader agreement that women have important gifts that should be deployed for the kingdom of God. Yet those gifts are often overlooked. In this article, the WEA’s Senior Advisor on Diversity and former Director of its Women’s Commission lays out a pathway towards greater engagement of women for the benefit of all.

Thomas K. Johnson

Adam and Eve, Where Are You? A Missionary Philosophy of God’s Questions for Humanity

People who do not know God often believe illogical things about the world, either because they have not thought about the issues seriously, uncritically accept views from the culture around them, or are subconsciously hiding from God’s truth. Based on his many years of teaching in a secular context, the WEA’s senior theological advisor suggests 10 questions that we can use to help people question their assumptions and become open to God’s answers.

Evert Van de Poll

Protestantism, Early Baptists and the Emergence of Human Rights

The development of modern understandings of human rights is widely attributed to Enlightenment thinkers, but Christians had constructed similar arguments even earlier. This article traces that history with primary reference to three early Baptists whose worldviews were shaped by the intolerance they experienced.

Timoteo D. Gener

James McClendon’s Theology of Culture and Its Implications for Cultural Engagement

In this essay, a leading Filipino theologian reviews the work of James McClendon, including his interaction with Paul Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr and others, as a means of shedding light on the church’s opportunities for cultural transformation. Specific applications to the Philippine setting provide a model for applications in other contexts.

Book Review

Theos Report on Valuing Women

A new report from Theos has been published, this one on valuing women:

Kathryn Hodges and Sarah Burch, Valuing Women: Making Women Visible (London: Theos, 2022).

Here are some paragraphs from the Theos website:

‘The experience of abuse, trauma, mental health problems, homelessness, isolation, poverty, and sexual exploitation, is a reality for many women. These experiences, and the women who live through them, commonly go unrecognised, and the support available is often limited. When women are unable to access effective, trustworthy, and reliable helping services, there can be fatal consequences.

‘This report, written on behalf of Theos by Kathryn Hodges and Sarah Burch, explores what can be learned from how Christian charities provide support to women experiencing multiple and severe disadvantage. The in-depth study, undertaken during the pandemic, showcases the distinctive approach of staff and volunteers from six Christian organisations and how they made the women they worked with truly visible.

‘Four clear themes emerged from the research: the trusting relationships needed to support women experiencing multiple and severe disadvantage; the way the faith and values of staff and volunteers informed the way they met women; the utilisation of prayer by some in their work; and the tensions and opportunities found in resourcing helping services.’

More information can be found here, and a pdf of the full report is available here.

Centre for Public Christianity (March 2018)

Among other items of interest, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a ‘Life and Faith’ podcast on ‘how Florence Nightingale, Hannah Marshman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe changed the world’, and an audio interview with Brian Rosner on ‘one of our culture’s most urgent questions: Who am I?’ (picking up the topic of hist most-recent book, on identity).

Deeds Not Words

I wrote this week’s Connecting with Culture, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Queen Alexandra, George V’s mother, described it as a ‘sad accident caused through the abominable conduct of a brutal lunatic woman’. History has been kinder to suffragette Emily Wilding Davison who squeezed through the railings at the Epsom Derby to make a grab for the king’s horse as it raced past. Buried in Morpeth, her headstone is inscribed with the King James Version of John 15:13, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’, along with the maxim of the Women’s Social and Political Union – ‘Deeds Not Words’.

It was nearly five years later that the Representation of the People Act was given royal assent, granting the vote to women over the age of 30 who owned property, an act whose centenary has been marked this week. In the immediate wake of #metoo, the BBC equal pay debate, and the Presidents Club debacle, celebrations are mostly tinged with reflections on how much more needs to be done.

Earlier this week, The Guardian asked a panel whether parity between men and women would be achieved in the next 100 years. Economic inequality, the cost of childcare, and the objectification, even pornification, of women were all mentioned as issues to be tackled.

Christians have a stake in these debates. Christians also have a stake in demonstrating to those around us what renewed relationships in Christ look like, not least between men and women in different spheres of life.

Notable at the beginning of the biblical story is that men and women are equally and together created in the image of God, called to exercise dominion as representatives of God on earth. This gave men and women a status and responsibility not found in other cultures of the time. Notable, too, is the New Testament’s insistence – again, largely against the grain of its first-century world – that men and women are one in Christ, caught up together in God’s plan to reconstitute humanity.

As those living out this different story, we can start with the women we know, where we are – in our family, workplace, college and church, our colleagues and clients.

Originally the Suffragette slogan, ‘Deeds Not Words’, was a call to radical action, but it resonates with the biblical injunction that faith without works is dead, and is seen most remarkably in the supreme sacrifice of Jesus giving his life for his friends.

Mission Frontiers 38, 1 (January-February 2016)

The January-February 2016 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by the U.S. Center for World Mission, contains a number of articles on ‘Women Engaged in Church Planting Movements Among UPGs’.

Guest Editor Robby Butler writes:

‘While the story of most Disciple-Making Movements is written by and about men – featuring their roles and exploits – it is doubtful any movement in history has lacked the strategic involvement (as well as prayers) of women. Since women missionaries significantly outnumber men, and the vast majority of single missionaries are women, it is vital that CPM efforts welcome, encourage and empower the efforts and contribution of women.’

Individual articles can be accessed from here, and the whole issue (4.9 MB) can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Centre for Public Christianity (May 2013)

Among other items, the latest newsletter from the Centre for Public Christianity contains a link to a piece by Simon Smart on ‘the way the drugs in sport scandal reveals both the pervasiveness of utilitarian thinking in our society, as well as its limits’, a link to an audio interview with Lynn Cohick on ‘what life was like for women in the ancient world – and how their lives were changed in their encounter with Jesus’, and a link to a video interview with Erin Wilson on ‘the religious dimensions of contemporary political life’.

Christian Reflection on Women in the Bible

The latest issue of Christian Reflection, published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, is now available, this one devoted to ‘Women in the Bible’. The whole issue is available as a pdf here, and an accompanying Study Guide is available here. The main articles, with their abstracts, are as follows:

Robert B. Kruschwitz

Introduction

Studying the stories of women in the Bible can point us to the heart of the scriptural narrative. Without ignoring some of the difficult androcentric passages in the Bible, our contributors show us the liberating implications, for both men and women, of studying the women in the Bible.

Junia Pokrifka

Redeeming Women in the Grand Narrative of Scripture

In light of the biblical grand narrative of redemption and restorative justice, patriarchy and androcentrism can no longer be seen as normative, but as regrettable conditions that God and God’s human agents are working to overcome.

Mary Ann Beavis

Who is Mary Magdalene?

The traditional image of the Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, not to mention contemporary speculations about her being a priestess or goddess figure or bride of Christ, are quite mistaken. They fail to do justice to the biblical and historical woman behind the legend.

Mona Tokarek LaFosse

Women’s Roles in the Letters to Timothy and Titus

The letters to Timothy and Titus reveal a growing consciousness about reputation in early Christian communities. Behavior that outsiders might find distasteful – especially the behavior of women – could be perceived as immoral, compromising the honor of the group. How do these observations (and prescriptions) bear on the present?

Joy A. Schroeder

Deborah’s Daughters

As prophetess and judge, Deborah became a potent symbol of female authority and speech, an obvious exemplar for women aspiring to claim a public voice in the nineteenth century. These women – preachers, devotional writers, suffragists, and abolitionists – were Deborah’s daughters.

Other Voices

Heidi J. Hornik

Biblical Women in Christian Art

Jeanie Miley

Worship Service

Jocelyn Mathewes

Women with Icons

In the Orthodox tradition, icons – like the saints and stories they portray – point to the power of the larger story of Scripture, and show how great a God is our God. The photographs in the Women with Icons project reveal how the icons of patron saints, and the women who hold them close, point to Christ.

Katherine Callahan-Howell

Ripples of Freedom

God desires that the spiritual freedom that we receive in Christ Jesus should cascade into others’ lives. Sometimes this happens in unpredictable ways. In Acts 16:16-34, an unnamed slave woman sets in motion a course of wonderful, freeing events that we remember and celebrate today.

F. Scott Spencer

Preaching about Women in (and on) the Bible

Since women experience and interpret the world differently from men, it would be nice if the viewpoints of women scholars were seriously considered in preaching today – not least in dialogue with women’s stories in the Bible.

Sheila Klopfer

Feminist Scholarship on Women in the Bible

While acknowledging the difficult androcentrism of the Bible, the three books reviewed here also affirm its liberative and authoritative nature. They present a constructive way forward for modern interpreters who are committed to feminism and who maintain a high view of scriptural authority.