New book explores the church’s role in advocating for women’s equality

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LOUISVILLE — Westminster John Knox Press is pleased to announce the release of Resist and Persist: Faith and the Fight for Equality. What role does the church play in advocating for women’s equality? Pastor Erin Wathen argues it must play a much larger role than it historically has. While the rhetoric against women and their bodies has changed as women’s roles in public life have evolved, so too has misogyny. It is still evident in double standards, microaggressions, and impossible expectations. The patriarchy is still sanctioned by every institution: capitalism, government, and even—maybe especially—the church itself where women are welcomed but hold few leadership positions or preaching roles.

To address this irony, that a religion based on radical justice and liberation of Jesus’ teaching has been complicit in the narrative against equality, Erin Wathen offers a new language of resistance: the push for equality must now come from within the church. “If we believe in equality in the boardroom and the halls of Congress,” Wathen writes, “we can’t let the church off the hook.”

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly states, “Wathen looks at society and Christianity through a feminist and antiracist lens, mounting powerful arguments about why it’s essential to raise boys as feminists and how social media can be especially dangerous for women. Each of Wathen’s chapters ends with a set of questions for discussion, a helpful tool for teachers and professors. This trenchant book is a much-needed manifesto for twenty-first-century Christian feminism.”

Resist and Persist: Faith and the Fight for Equality will interest both men and women, religious or secular, who are already in the fight for equality or are ready to join it. It is now available for purchase through Westminster John Knox Press and other major retailers.

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Erin Wathen is Senior Pastor of Saint Andrew Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Olathe, Kansas, and writes the popular blog Irreverin on the Patheos network. She is the author of ‘More Than Words: 10 Values for the Modern Family’.