Book Review: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present

Excerpt: This premise—that so much has changed, and that so much work still needs to be done— resides at the heart of Gail Collins’s excellent book, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present. Collins, a columnist for the New York Times, uses her significant authority and her accessible writing style to breathe life into a half-century of women’s history, and the result is a fascinating narrative about women’s strength, resilience, and hope for a more equitable future

On Becoming a Family: Melanie\u27s Story of Benjamin\u27s Adoption, 2002

Excerpt: I became a mother in the back of a taxi cab. No sit-com cliché, this. The taxi was a late-model, jacked up Honda, its plush chairs bedecked by delicate white doilies. Traffic dared not impede my driver, a silently brooding young man who weaved between Cyclos and motorcycles freighted by fruit, vegetables, live chickens, entire families. I sat tensely in the backseat, holding my son, incredulously wondering into what I had just gotten myself

Book Review: Fat and Faithful: Learning to Love Our Bodies, Our Neighbors, and Ourselves

Excerpt: Patterson is the former president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, fired in May because of his misogynistic comments and mishandling of sexual abuse claims. He chose in his return to preaching last week to question the legitimacy of the #MeToo movement, and apparently thought the pulpit was the best place to body-shame women, in particular those who are fat. In a sermon during a Christian revival, Patterson described a woman who “filled the door,” made a joke about the baptistery and her weight, and said that she could play linebacker for an NFL team. The audience, there ostensibly to express their love for Jesus, laughed. Let that sink in: a pastor, let go from his job four months ago for his misogyny, chooses to body-shame a woman, and people laugh because, apparently, fat jokes are still funny in church and can lead people to the Lord

Life Is Not a Pro/Con Proposition: A Review of Kassi Underwood’s “May Cause Love”

Excerpt: In many ways, contemporary abortion debates have managed to do just that: objectifying women who have abortions by politicizing their experiences. May Cause Love compellingly reveals that life doesn’t always follow ideology, as Adichie says, and that sometimes, when faced with a monumental decision, women need support, guidance, and a safe community who will listen closely, rather than judge harshly. Because every woman’s story about abortion has the power to change the world, if only we have the ears, and the heart, to listen

Book Review: Walking Gently on the Earth

Excerpt: For that reason, I approached Walking Gently on the Earth with a healthy sense of skepticism, ready to be preached at again regarding the choices I’ve made about my family and lifestyle. Yet a few pages into Lisa Graham McMinn’s new book, I knew this exploration of sustainability would be different: more gentle, as the title itself suggests. McMinn, along with her daughter and co-writer Megan Anna Neff, examines the ways we can more readily nurture “God’s good gift”—that is, the earth and everything in it— through what McMinn calls “an ethic of care.” Although McMinn and Neff challenge readers to be more considerate of the earth and its people, their challenge is measured by the sense that living sustainably should not create a heavy burden to be suffered through, but instead provide a richer existence, one worth celebrating

Reigniting the Firebrand Heart

Excerpt: From the very first pages of her memoir, Assimilate or Go Home, I felt an affinity with D.L. Mayfield. Perhaps I recognized my students in Mayfield’s idealism and innocence, a missionary fervor that burns brightly in many undergraduates who attend Christian universities like the one where I teach. Perhaps I saw in her narrative my own youthful firebrand heart when, as a senior in college, I longed to get arrested protesting injustice; imagined sitting in a jail, even, believing such activism would show how deeply my convictions ran and how ardently I loved Jesus