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Pages and Tunes

God's Women Then and Now

By Deborah M. Gill and Barbara Cavaness
©2007 Grace and Truth

In 2004, God’s Women Then and Now made its debut. Not for the casual reader, it is a thorough exegetical treatment of what has become a “hot button” topic in many Christian circles: women in leadership in the church.  Now a study guide is available to help walk the reader through it.

The authors give solid pointers for how to interpret biblical passages, distinguishing literary context from historical context. According to Gill and Cavaness, Bible texts can be divided into several categories according to their purpose: standards or timeless truths, records of history, and rules for people where they were at that time in history.

Both the book and the study guide take the reader chronologically through the Bible. Beginning with Genesis—where God demonstrated His ideal for men and women—the authors trace how that ideal became perverted through the Fall into sin, and how misguided perceptions have tainted people’s views ever since.

Though streamlined into five lessons, this guide for individual or group study could easily be stretched to fit a 13-week Sunday School curriculum. Lesson topics include male and femaleness in the Old and New Testaments; Greco-Roman, Jewish and Christian contexts; Jesus’ treatment of women; husband-wife relationships; and those sticky passages from 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy that often launch heated discussions about a woman’s role in the church.

I encourage the reader to delve into the actual book before attempting the study guide. I began by just thumbing through the study guide, and quickly realized I was missing way too much of the richness and depth one can only glean by reading the book.

PATTY KENNEDY is assistant web content editor for the national Women’s Ministries Department. She also writes book and music reviews for Pages and Tunes, a free e-newsletter provided by the national Women’s Ministries Department.

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