This is a long over­due review of a book project that I have heartily endorsed since I first heard about it in 2009 despite my stormy rela­tion­ship with it. More about that later…

The Res­ig­na­tion of Eve : What if Adam’s Rib is No Longer Will­ing to be The Church’s Back­bone by Jim Hen­der­son is a book that gar­nered crit­i­cism before the man­u­script was barely begun. Jim, who is some­one I have a warm rela­tion­ship with, has authored sev­eral books. When he announced that his next book project would be about the sta­tus of women in the church I was an enthu­si­as­tic sup­porter. In my sphere of friends, how­ever, there were plenty of crit­ics who thought Jim was crazy.

“How can he write about women in the church when he’s a man? He ought to at least have a women coau­thor!” exclaimed more than one woman. “Jim will look like an idiot if he goes through with this,” fore­warned another. Jim him­self once sent ane­mail to me that he’d received from one woman so con­cerned about his project that she had con­tacted him in earnest to plead her case: don’t do this with­out                   a                                                                                 a woman beside you.                    Even­tu­ally Jim did invite a woman to be his coauthor.

I was that woman.

We worked together for about six months. The book seemed to be tak­ing shape. Jim took some of my sug­ges­tions to heart and I intro­duced him to a num­ber of women who were inter­viewed for the book.Some of those women’s sto­ries are found within the pages of ROE…but not my story. I was fired by the pub­lisher after my stance  of sup­port for same-​​sex mar­riage was dis­cov­ered as well as the occa­sional F bomb dropped at my blog. I was not the kind of author they could have on board and so, as sud­den as the oppor­tu­nity arrived to co-​​write with an author I admired, the oppor­tu­nity evap­o­rated. That was a hard moment on my writ­ing path.

Jim Hen­der­son: we dis­cov­ered we both lived in Hong Kong (though years apart) and even have a mutual Hong Kong friend. It really is a small world after all…!

I never stopped believ­ing in Jim and this project despite my abrupt dis­place­ment from it.

Why it’s taken me this long to review it is due in part to my pro­cras­ti­na­tion as well as revis­it­ing a place that was, in all hon­esty, a great dis­ap­point­ment in my life that I’d pre­fer to for­get about.

So that’s my full dis­clo­sure of my inti­mate his­tory with this book. I wanted you to know that as I write this. It is not just a  review.

With that out of the way, let me (finally!) get to the review!  The book is clas­sic Hen­der­son. Jim is a sto­ry­teller and he loves to tell the sto­ries of oth­ers. He is a self-​​described “spir­i­tual anthro­pol­o­gist,” some­one who is keenly inter­ested in the role reli­gion plays in the lives of every­day people.

I asked him one time, “Why this topic, Jim? Why women?”

“Because of my mom,” he said. Jim’s mom was a huge influ­ence in his life. I met her once at an Off the Map event that Jim pro­duced. Body frail, but eyes flash­ing with vital­ity as she shook my hand with a firm grip. There was a feisty spirit  about her that  res­onated with me. It is my hope to be a spunky white-​​haired woman some­day. It was sad news to learn of her pass­ing shortly after ROE was published.

Jim approached ROE like he has many of his past projects: he began seek­ing out peo­ple who were will­ing to tell him their story. He knew some  sto­ries within his field of vision, like Kelly Bean, a min­istry leader here in my city of Port­land. She and Jim have been col­lab­o­ra­tors on sev­eral occa­sions. And then Helen Milden­hall, a self-​​described athe­ist in Chicago who has been a sup­porter of Jim’s past escapades in bridg­ing dia­log between the faith­ful with  non-​​believers. (Any­one remem­ber the Con­ver­sa­tions from the Edge forum Jim set up with Helen as mod­er­a­tor?)

Jim could have stuck with women within his field of vision, but he didn’t. He searched for dif­fer­ent sto­ries in an effort to pro­vide a field report of the mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives that women of faith have about our­selves. From women who are fiercely ded­i­cated to an egal­i­tar­ian point of view, as well as women who are con­tent in their role as the sub­servient sex, Jim’s book was writ­ten to high­light what women have to say about our­selves.  He accom­plished this — that is the promise of the book — yet I found myself want­ing more depth to the sto­ries I was read­ing. This is where per­haps the absence of a woman co-​​author, any woman co-​​author, could have been beneficial.

As won­der­ful as men can be with women, there is a dynamic among women that can­not be repli­cated just as there is a dynamic in the fel­low­ship of men that women can­not dupli­cate. I appre­ci­ate Jim’s heart­felt efforts in lis­ten­ing to a woman’s story and then doc­u­ment­ing it in his book. Yet with each pro­file I hoped for more depth. This could also just be me and  my insa­tiable curiosity.

Like Chap­ter Six, titled, Sat­is­fied with the Sta­tus Quo : The Lee Mer­rill Story. In this chap­ter, Jim pro­files a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian woman who is con­tent with the tra­di­tional com­ple­men­tar­ian view of women and men. Jim respect­fully ques­tions her to give the reader a glimpse from Lee’s point of view of how she is con­tent with women hav­ing cer­tain roles. He did this with a gen­tle hand as the major­ity of women in the book are decid­edly not com­ple­men­tar­ian, and he did it well.

By the end of the chap­ter I am famil­iar with Lee’s comfy rela­tion­ship with Com­ple­men­tar­i­an­ism (or Chris­tian­ized sex­ism as I pre­fer to call it) yet I want to know more,like how  does she feel as a woman who’s iden­tity has been shaped and informed by the church? How does she view her­self?  Has she ever known a woman who was egal­i­tar­ian in view and practice?

This is not a heavy crit­i­cism lev­eled at Jim and his inter­view­ing skill. It is more like get­ting a nice meal you enjoy so much that you’d really like sec­onds. I would have loved sec­onds on most of the chap­ters.  But really, I am hon­estly like that with many books I read. I am like the Pen­te­costal woman at the front of the prayer line plead­ing, “More, Lord, more!”

My fave chap­ter in the whole book is about a good friend of mine : Sand­wich Lady Meets Men of God : The Denie Tack­ett Story.

I intro­duced Denie and her  home­less min­istry to Jim early on in the project.  I hoped  he would keep her chap­ter in the book despite my absence. I was pleased to see that he did.

Denie’s story is much dif­fer­ent than Lee’s. Denie felt a dis­tinct call to min­is­ter the love of God to the home­less men and women who con­gre­gate in her city’s down­town parks. She began to do this on her own, despite her faith com­mu­nity dis­cour­ag­ing her because she was a woman. Denie’s min­istry began to grow and flour­ish and with it came dif­fer­ent men who wanted to help…only the help they wanted to give was to push Denie out of lead­er­ship and instead Be The Leader since her min­istry lacked male head­ship. Denie held firm. In every case these help­ful broth­ers quickly moved on.

But there was one male leader who came along side Denie and truly respected her author­ity. Jim high­lights the rela­tion­ship that devel­oped between Denie and for­mer Vine­yard pres­i­dent, Todd Hunter, and how Todd’s accep­tance of Denie’s min­istry lead­er­ship pro­vided the space for true col­lab­o­ra­tion to occur.

Denie’s story in ROE is impor­tant for she is an exam­ple of a com­mon chal­lenge for women who are in min­istry lead­er­ship.  It can be  a great big GRRR… when a holy roller of a brother comes along to “help.” Denie and I had many phone calls about these things.

Jim did a good job hon­or­ing her story and giv­ing read­ers a view of the unique chal­lenges women like Denie face who have the courage to lead with­out per­mis­sion from men.

The Res­ig­na­tion of Eve is a timely book for Christ fol­low­ers. Coin­ci­den­tally it was released within a month of my own book. And yes, my pas­sion for women’s equal­ity was fanned into an even big­ger flame from my short involve­ment with ROE. It would be accu­rate to say that Unla­dy­like was born when my role in ROE died, though I would not real­ize this for two more years.

I love that on Ama­zon our books often come up linked together. Hen­der­son and Hogeweide. Even though we didn’t co-​​author ROE together, we are both push­ing the bound­aries back for women in the spheres that we travel in.

I rec­om­mend The Res­ig­na­tion of Eve, espe­cially to those read­ers who are still unsure what the big deal is about women and the church. ROE will show you  what the big deal is.

One last thought, my absolute fave part of the book is the ded­i­ca­tion. It made me cry as it spoke directly to me. Lit­er­ally. And you’ll just have to read the book to see what I mean by that.

The Res­ig­na­tion of Eve: What if Adam’s Rib is No Longer Will­ing to be the Church’s Back­bone? is avail­able in print and for Kin­dle at Ama​zon​.com 

**HAVE YOU READ THE RESIGNATION OF EVE? WHATAYA  THINK??