Lydia's Impatient Sisters: A Feminist Social History of Early Christianity

This is clearly an important book, and it is going to make many Christians distinctly uncomfortable. Schottroff makes the splendidly researched argument that women in the early church were fully participating members in the body of Christ, and that it was only as the church institutionalized that they were relegated to the role of serving and merely swelling the ranks of the traditional church. Her careful documentation of the first generation of Christian women provides wonderful testimony to the courage and spirit-filled possibilities of the early church. But this is more than just narrative; Schottroff provides an illuminating methodology for how we might understand the Bible as a source of life-giving power for the everyday life of women. As a result Lydia's Impatient Sisters is that rare combination; a scholarly text accessible to both the clergy and the layperson. (Nov.)