No More Holding Back: Emboldening Women to Move Past Barriers, See Their Worth, and Serve God Everywhere

Armstrong, cofounder of Christian networking organization Polished, explores how women can perform and thrive outside the confines of traditional roles in her convincing debut. Armstrong begins by describing how she believes the church upholds a patriarchal society that keeps women from leadership roles and relegates their influence to home and family life. Armstrong calls the Christian church’s obsession with marriage and motherhood dangerous, as it places unnecessary pressure on women to concentrate on family: “If we look closely again at Jesus’s priorities, there is nothing that speaks to a particular role of wife or mother, husband or father, boss or subordinate.” In careful readings, Armstrong mines scripture to demonstrate how women were just as influential as men in receiving and preaching the word of Christ, including a novel portrait of what a “Proverbs 31 woman” whose “passion for her work, success on the job, or willingness to follow Jesus is not a negative” looks like. The final section includes a call to reject misogynistic ideologies by helping women take on the agency, authority, and entrepreneurship normally championed as the domain of men by Christians. Readers interested in considering and reforming how Christianity regards women will find great value in Armstrong’s passionate work. (Aug.)