The Feminine Face of Christianity

by Margaret Starbird

Book Overview

Even though feminine values have always been at the core of Christianity, its long history has often ignored or marginalized women's key role in it. Margaret Starbird's unique view from the feminine... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0835608271
• ISBN13: 9780835608275
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: Quest Books (IL)
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.8" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

How Lovely and Informative! Inspiring!

This book is so wonderful. Presenting Feminine icons throughout the realm of Christianity and their overlapping with other female religious deities, etc. This book packs alot of material into a very easy to read format, it also offers suggestions for personal prayer/meditation, such as using a rosary, prayer veils etc. This is a great book to use as an introduction to all of Starbird's books to follow, I read it in one night! The pictures throughout are great too. Excellent!

Tactile document of hope

For women questioning their diminished presence in a largely patriarchal religion, Margaret Starbird's The Feminine Face of Christianity is affirmation, inspiration and retrospection, a call for involvement and an enlightened history lesson asserting with great conviction the unequivocal importance of the feminine in Christian worship. Starting with the holy mother and the example of Mary Magdalene, Starbird observes that some of Christ's most steadfast examples of unconditional faith and virtue were women; they were, in effect, a sort of template for Christ's ideas on true faith. The paradigm of selflessness was discovered when Mary Magdalene washed Jesus' feet and dried them with her hair; the pinnacle of faithfulness was found in the near-penniless doyenne who gave what few pennies she owned to the church offertory; and was there a more complete vision of generosity and gentleness in contemporary Christianity than Mother Theresa? More than just a survival guide for negotiating the complex contradictions and reinterpretations of the church's often-exclusive view of Christ's teachings, this book thoughtfully includes meditations to connect with God on an individual and spiritual level. In this sense, Starbird's text seeks to give women a choice: re-immerse yourself in the church with a greater understanding and directed passion or apply this newfound knowledge in a personal spiritual journey. Essentially-one gets the feeling-what's most important to Starbird viz. the female reader is a heightened sense of value and purpose; in what forum this inchoate enlightenment is refined is nearly irrelevant. This emphasis on the spiritual journey as a sort of meritocracy by grace stands in brave defiance to the de rigeur standard of uninspired and often materialistic worship found in many protestant churches.