No Will Of My Own: How Patriarchy Smothers Female Dignity & Personhood

by Jon Zens, Wade Burleson (Foreword)

In 1912 Jesse Penn-Lewis noted from Genesis 3 that it was the serpent, not the woman, who was "The serpent is cursed, but, in effect, the beguiled victim [Eve] is blest, for through her will come the 'Seed' which will triumph over the devil and his seed; and through her will arise a new race through the promised Seed ( . . . . Henceforth it is also war by Satan upon the womanhood of the world, in malignant revenge for the verdict of the garden" ( War On the Saints ).
 
Church history reveals that Roman Catholicism and Protestantism taught and practiced forms of patriarchy that essentially sided with the evil one's disdain for females. Women were not allowed to function or speak in the church, were viewed as existing to serve males, and were seen as conduits of sin and error. John Calvin, for example, rashly affirmed " Therefore all women are born to submit to the pre-eminence of the male sex . . . . Let the woman be content in her position of subjection, and not feel indignant because she has to play second fiddle to the superior sex."
 
In No Will of My Own , author Jon Zens compares the patriarchy taught to families by the Roman Catholic and Dutch Reformed churches in Holland with an aggressive patriarchal wing of the home-schooling movement in America. He shows that the earmarks of patriarchy doctrine result in varying levels of abuse of young girls and wives. This book serves as a vital warning concerning the misuse of  Scripture and church tradition to smother female worth and dignity.   
 
 
In almost every religion around the world, the hearts, souls, and bodies of women are sacrificed on the altar of fundamentalism. In No Will of My Own , Jon Zens takes a sobering look at abuse within patriarchal Christianity. An important book. -- Hillary McFarland, author of Quivering Hope and Healing for the Daughters of Patriarchy

Genres: Feminism

82 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2011

Reviews

[David Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No Will of My Own" is a disturbing look into some of the Patriarchy movement's darkest rooms. Zens breaks down for the reader two studies of strongly patriarchal groups and draws the curtains back to light upon the incest, physical abuse, and emotional torture leveled upon innocent women (including one frightening internment camp in Indiana used for the coercion and reprogramming women who have begun to question male authority or seek higher education — the "Hephzibah House").

A brief book in itself, my hope is that "No Will of My Own" is will serve an immense role in revealing the hidden deceptions and human rights' violations committed among extreme patriarchal families, veiled in the guise of supposed "godliness".

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This very short but very disturbing book pulls a lot of material from other sources and doesn't have a tremendous amount of original material written by the author. But it was an excellent book, documenting the harm that Christian patriarchy movements do to women. It only took me about an hour to read, but it raised a lot of disturbing questions about certain types of Christianity and their harm to women

[Heila · Rating 2 out of 5]

In almost every religion around the world, the hearts, souls, and bodies of women are sacrificed on the altar of fundamentalism. In "No Will of My Own," Jon Zens takes a sobering look at abuse within patriarchal Christianity. An important book. -- Hillary McFarland