If Eve Only Knew ─ Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be

"She is a godly woman." "True love waits." Are these phrases and many others about gender truly based in scripture, or based on dusty, outdated stereotypes? And how do these perceptions repress people, especially women, from fully expressing their faith? If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood and Becoming All God Means for You to Be offers a fresh perspective on gender and the Bible, destroying trumped-up, captive-creating messages with the freeing proclamation grounded in Jesus' ministry and found everywhere in scripture: that we are all created in God's image, and by relying on our gifts and skills - rather than on gender-designed roles - we become all God means for us to be.

Kendra Weddle Irons teaches in the Religion and Humanities Department at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas. She is a frequent contributor to the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus website (eewc.com). Her first book is Preaching on the Plains: Methodist Women Preachers in Kansas, 1920-1956 (University Press of America, 2007). She blogs with Melanie at Ain't I a Woman? and has recently published essays about teaching religion in The Christian Century and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. One of the perks of college teaching for Kendra is getting to travel abroad with students; her most recent trip was to Ireland in May 2014. Kendra lives in Irving, TX, with her husband and their yellow Labrador retriever, Pippi.Melanie Springer Mock is a Professor of English at George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. She has published three books: Writing Peace: The Unheard Voices of Great War Mennonite Objectors (Cascadia, 2003); Just Moms: Conveying Justice in an Unjust World (Barclay, 2011); and The Spirit of Adoption: Writers on Religion, Adoption, Faith, and More (Cascade Books, forthcoming). She blogs about (and deconstructs) images of women embedded in evangelical popular culture at Ain't I a Woman?. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The Nation, Christian Feminism Today, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Mennonite World Review, among other places. She lives in Dundee, OR, with her husband and two middle school boys; she also has two adult stepchildren, and two grandsons.