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A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism
A New Gospel for Women tells the story of Katharine Bushnell (1855-1946), author of God's Word to Women, one of the most innovative and comprehensive feminist theologies ever written. An internationally-known social reformer and women's rights activist, Bushnell rose to prominence through her highly publicized campaigns against prostitution and the trafficking of women in America, in colonial India, and throughout East Asia. In each of these cases, the intrepid reformer struggled to come to terms with the fact that it was Christian men who were guilty of committing acts of appalling cruelty against women. Ultimately, Bushnell concluded that Christianity itself - or rather, the patriarchal distortion of true Christianity - must be to blame.
A work of history, biography, and historical theology, Kristin Kobes DuMez's book provides a vivid account of Bushnell's life. It maps a concise introduction to her fascinating theology, revealing, for example, Bushnell's belief that gender bias tainted both the King James and the Revised Versions of the English Bible. As Du Mez demonstrates, Bushnell insisted that God created women to be strong and independent, that Adam, not Eve, bore responsibility for the Fall, and that it was through Christ, "the great emancipator of women," that women would achieve spiritual and social redemption.
A New Gospel for Women restores Bushnell to her rightful place in history. It illuminates the dynamic and often thorny relationship between faith and feminism in modern America by mapping Bushnell's story and her subsequent disappearance from the historical record. Most pointedly, the book reveals the challenges confronting Christian feminists today who wish to construct a sexual ethic that is both Christian and feminist, one rooted not in the Victorian era, but rather one suited to the modern world.
A work of history, biography, and historical theology, Kristin Kobes DuMez's book provides a vivid account of Bushnell's life. It maps a concise introduction to her fascinating theology, revealing, for example, Bushnell's belief that gender bias tainted both the King James and the Revised Versions of the English Bible. As Du Mez demonstrates, Bushnell insisted that God created women to be strong and independent, that Adam, not Eve, bore responsibility for the Fall, and that it was through Christ, "the great emancipator of women," that women would achieve spiritual and social redemption.
A New Gospel for Women restores Bushnell to her rightful place in history. It illuminates the dynamic and often thorny relationship between faith and feminism in modern America by mapping Bushnell's story and her subsequent disappearance from the historical record. Most pointedly, the book reveals the challenges confronting Christian feminists today who wish to construct a sexual ethic that is both Christian and feminist, one rooted not in the Victorian era, but rather one suited to the modern world.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2015
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1503 people want to read
About the author
Kristin Kobes Du Mez
5 books667 followersBorn and raised in Iowa with brief sojourns in Tallahassee, FL, and Ostfriesland, Germany. PhD from the University of Notre Dame, and now I reside in Grand Rapids, MI. I have 3 kids, 2 chickens, and a dog, and I write on gender, religion, and politics.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 22, 2015
In an era when churches continue to wrestle with how gender roles/differences/categories should be addressed in the light of the Bible’s teachings, Kristin Kobes Dumez’s work on Katherine Bushnell (1855-1946) is a welcome retreat for the mind and spirit. KKD’s biography of Bushnell is efficient and accessible—and this non-specialist reader was especially grateful for this.
Bushnell was a 19th century Pentecostal holiness physician missionary who advocated throughout her career for women’s rights. She did this within the traditions of the social reformers of the Progressive era, making common cause with the Victorian feminists and evangelical missionaries who represent the high point of Christian activism. But Bushnell also out-lived her contemporaries and finished her life in a time when feminists had divorced themselves from evangelicals and conservative Christians had abandoned much of the work of social reform. She especially though that sexual restraint was the best way to work for equality—women not being defined by their sexual fallenness or purity, but alongside men, acting virtuously with their bodies to accomplish a better world. This idea became seen as repressive and old fashioned by the next generation of feminist reformers and contributed to the discounting of Bushnell’s ideas as the twentieth century unfolded.
What makes Bushnell so astonishing was that she never wavered in her strong commitment to conservative theology—and yet, Kobes Dumez points out, she differed from many of her fellow evangelical Christian missionaries and activists in that she was happy to participate in self-criticism. She believed that Christianity had negatively impacted women. While many Christian missionaries were happy to see themselves as advocates of the women they worked for in “pagan” cultures, they saw civilized Westerners as being the answer (along with Christianity) for their woes. Bushnell was never so optimistic about her own culture, observing how exploited women in the US and Europe were by so-called Christian men.
It was mission work and the effort of translation that made her realize that interpretation of the Bible might have been part of what was at fault. She decided to learn biblical languages and read the Scriptures in the tongue they were written in for herself so that she could find out what “God’s Word to Women” was. The resultant book by the same title was the outcome of that effort. KKD assesses God’s Word to Women as poorly edited and clunky, but still a nuanced and thoughtful assessment of what had been the primary attacks on women’s equality by churchmen and theologians. Starting with Eve and ending with Paul, Bushnell used conservative theological techniques to show how the Bible had been a liberating document for women. Men, Bushnell argued, were so blinded by their own cultural prejudices that they had translated and interpreted it in ways that contributed to their own power and the suppression of women.
Her work was underappreciated in its own time, but KKD argues that conservative women in the majority Christian world, especially the global South, still use these ideas and even Bushnell’s book to promote a biblically-based gospel of liberation. Bushnell rejected both higher criticism and Darwinism so her feminism wasn’t tainted by the secular modernism that so much of the movement for equality partook of.
Kobes Dumez has cleverly used this story to cast a vision for how much more imaginative both Christians and secular feminists could be in accomplishing their shared goals of working for the betterment of humankind. We need more creativity, more working across lines, and less assuming that anyone who takes the Bible seriously must be interested in assigning women to a domestic and sexual sphere. Concomitantly, Christians should be open to the way a conservative hermeneutic might still lead to unexpected ideas about the possibilities for liberation and gender equality.
Bushnell was a 19th century Pentecostal holiness physician missionary who advocated throughout her career for women’s rights. She did this within the traditions of the social reformers of the Progressive era, making common cause with the Victorian feminists and evangelical missionaries who represent the high point of Christian activism. But Bushnell also out-lived her contemporaries and finished her life in a time when feminists had divorced themselves from evangelicals and conservative Christians had abandoned much of the work of social reform. She especially though that sexual restraint was the best way to work for equality—women not being defined by their sexual fallenness or purity, but alongside men, acting virtuously with their bodies to accomplish a better world. This idea became seen as repressive and old fashioned by the next generation of feminist reformers and contributed to the discounting of Bushnell’s ideas as the twentieth century unfolded.
What makes Bushnell so astonishing was that she never wavered in her strong commitment to conservative theology—and yet, Kobes Dumez points out, she differed from many of her fellow evangelical Christian missionaries and activists in that she was happy to participate in self-criticism. She believed that Christianity had negatively impacted women. While many Christian missionaries were happy to see themselves as advocates of the women they worked for in “pagan” cultures, they saw civilized Westerners as being the answer (along with Christianity) for their woes. Bushnell was never so optimistic about her own culture, observing how exploited women in the US and Europe were by so-called Christian men.
It was mission work and the effort of translation that made her realize that interpretation of the Bible might have been part of what was at fault. She decided to learn biblical languages and read the Scriptures in the tongue they were written in for herself so that she could find out what “God’s Word to Women” was. The resultant book by the same title was the outcome of that effort. KKD assesses God’s Word to Women as poorly edited and clunky, but still a nuanced and thoughtful assessment of what had been the primary attacks on women’s equality by churchmen and theologians. Starting with Eve and ending with Paul, Bushnell used conservative theological techniques to show how the Bible had been a liberating document for women. Men, Bushnell argued, were so blinded by their own cultural prejudices that they had translated and interpreted it in ways that contributed to their own power and the suppression of women.
Her work was underappreciated in its own time, but KKD argues that conservative women in the majority Christian world, especially the global South, still use these ideas and even Bushnell’s book to promote a biblically-based gospel of liberation. Bushnell rejected both higher criticism and Darwinism so her feminism wasn’t tainted by the secular modernism that so much of the movement for equality partook of.
Kobes Dumez has cleverly used this story to cast a vision for how much more imaginative both Christians and secular feminists could be in accomplishing their shared goals of working for the betterment of humankind. We need more creativity, more working across lines, and less assuming that anyone who takes the Bible seriously must be interested in assigning women to a domestic and sexual sphere. Concomitantly, Christians should be open to the way a conservative hermeneutic might still lead to unexpected ideas about the possibilities for liberation and gender equality.
April 2, 2022
In this book, Du Mez outlines the life of an extraordinary woman who, 100 years ahead of her time, identified deep-running issues with how Western Christianity treated women: Katharine Bushnell. She spent several decades fighting abusive prostitution rings run by and legitimatized by Christian men from Wisconsin to British India. Bushnell ultimately came to the conclusion that for Christian attitudes toward and treatment of women to be so deeply flawed, something must be wrong with their version of Christianity. She then took it upon herself to learn ancient Greek and Hebrew, diving into the original texts to search for where the disconnect occurred. Ultimately, Bushnell concluded that man's interpretation and translation of the Bible over hundreds of years concealed God's word to women so much that it was all but unrecognizable. Du Mez says that "what was perhaps most notable about Bushnell's work was that she achieved her radical results while upholding the Scriptures as the inspired and authoritative word of God."
Du Mez' book not only summarizes Bushnell's life and work, but also presents a summery of her theology and interpretation of key passages. Du Mez accomplishes this in a readable and engaging way that does not require much background in theology or Victorian culture to understand and appreciate. I highly recommend this book both as an introduction to feminist theology and as a reminder that "progressive" perspectives can sometimes also be rooted in traditional hermeneutics that place a high view of the Word of God.
Du Mez' book not only summarizes Bushnell's life and work, but also presents a summery of her theology and interpretation of key passages. Du Mez accomplishes this in a readable and engaging way that does not require much background in theology or Victorian culture to understand and appreciate. I highly recommend this book both as an introduction to feminist theology and as a reminder that "progressive" perspectives can sometimes also be rooted in traditional hermeneutics that place a high view of the Word of God.
March 7, 2021
I'm grateful to be introduced to this woman who lived fully as herself. A single woman of extraordinary skill and determination, Katharine Bushnell was a medical doctor and world traveling medical missionary at the turn of the 20th Century. She was also capable in the original languages of the Bible.
Bushnell became a courageous and indefatigable women's advocate and feminist thinker. The book shows the development of Bushnell's thought through her medical work with women in China and India, where, for example, women were forced to be medically evaluated for STIs against their will in order to protect British soldiers who sought them for sex.
Bushnell came to a shattering and trailblazing conviction that incorrect understanding of the Bible on women undergirded female oppression in Christendom.
The author shows Bushnell's passion and unrelenting push for truth, concisely explaining Bushnell's explanations of NT scriptures and the book of Genesis. These turn on their head historically interpreted texts about a woman's sphere and agency in the family and the church.
Bushnell's study was published in A New Gospel for Women which was well received, but the author writes that even so, Bushnell lost standing in the women's movement. A widening rift between conservative and progressive movements within the Church, and the rise of first wave feminism in the early 20th century were key factors.
Kobes Du Mez work will help to bring a new generation of readers to Bushnell's New Gospel for Women, which will be a good thing.
Bushnell became a courageous and indefatigable women's advocate and feminist thinker. The book shows the development of Bushnell's thought through her medical work with women in China and India, where, for example, women were forced to be medically evaluated for STIs against their will in order to protect British soldiers who sought them for sex.
Bushnell came to a shattering and trailblazing conviction that incorrect understanding of the Bible on women undergirded female oppression in Christendom.
The author shows Bushnell's passion and unrelenting push for truth, concisely explaining Bushnell's explanations of NT scriptures and the book of Genesis. These turn on their head historically interpreted texts about a woman's sphere and agency in the family and the church.
Bushnell's study was published in A New Gospel for Women which was well received, but the author writes that even so, Bushnell lost standing in the women's movement. A widening rift between conservative and progressive movements within the Church, and the rise of first wave feminism in the early 20th century were key factors.
Kobes Du Mez work will help to bring a new generation of readers to Bushnell's New Gospel for Women, which will be a good thing.
Read
February 12, 2020I assigned this in my women’s history class and the students totally engaged with it. Katherine Bushnell was one of those particular Victorian women who you can’t stereotype. She was devout and yet fiercely concerned for women’s equality. Her missionary work helped her realize how cultural norms had shaped European Christianity. She decided to work on translating and exigeting the Bible passages that had been used to keep control over women. Du Mex puts her and her work in context, showing how Bushnell goes from being at the helm of leadership for Christian feminists in the US to being a curmudgeon and on the outskirts. In the end, feminism and conservative Christianity went their separate ways and only recently gave feminists who also take the Bible seriously and read it conservatively looked to women like Bushnell for models of how this can be done.
July 27, 2015
A fascinating account of the life and work of Katharine Bushnell, a too-long-forgotten pioneer of Christian feminism. Du Mez's engaging prose makes this a highly readable book, as well as a nuanced critique with much relevance for Christians, feminists, and Christian feminists today.
January 3, 2019
Read this for a class in college and absolutely loved Du Mez's combination of history and commentary. Her track of the feminist movement in Christianity and the role of biblical translation and interpretation is both surprising and easy to follow if you know little of the feminist movement. I recommend this to all young women who are Christian, feminist, or both.
February 18, 2022
This book is easily a 3.5. Katherine Bushnell was an amazing woman—a Christian woman whose life spanned from 1855 to 1946. She never married and was very outspoken about the negative impact that the patriarchal model had on both secular, and especially Christian, culture. Not satisfied with studying the KJV Bible and then the Revised English Bible, she studied Greek and Hebrew in order to root out the gender-bias that she believed was inherent in those versions. She was also a medical doctor and fought for women that society had deemed “fallen” and a lost cause—going to China and India to investigate and report on forced prostitution and child sex slaves. The audience of this book is probably limited to Christian women that believe there is more to what they can do as a Christian woman than teach Sunday School and be a support to male leadership in their church.
June 9, 2023
Wow, What an amazing woman! I can't believe I've never heard of her. It's so sad how someone can be a worldwide name not that long ago only to be practically written out of out memories.
I loved this biography because It not only gave a look at the life of Katharine Bushnell, her beliefs, and her work but it also showed it how they were set in a particular time including cultural bias's. I think she has many lessons for us today in how to fight for a better world for women based in our Christian beliefs. I just kept taking pictures on my phone of pages (It was a library book) because I'm like "oh, I love this quote! Wait, it takes up the whole page. oh well!" If it was my own copy and I had a highlighter the whole book would have been colored. Maybe that will happen when I finally buy it.....
I especially love how Du Mez summarized a lot of Bushnell's work from "God's Word to Women". Although, if I hadn't already read a book on gender bias in Bible translation and a academic woman's translation on the Pauline passages I may have been a lot more skeptical of the validity of her translations. As it was I was greatly impressed that a woman from the Victorian era was actually able to come out with these life altering translations.
I love this book and can't recommend it enough!
I loved this biography because It not only gave a look at the life of Katharine Bushnell, her beliefs, and her work but it also showed it how they were set in a particular time including cultural bias's. I think she has many lessons for us today in how to fight for a better world for women based in our Christian beliefs. I just kept taking pictures on my phone of pages (It was a library book) because I'm like "oh, I love this quote! Wait, it takes up the whole page. oh well!" If it was my own copy and I had a highlighter the whole book would have been colored. Maybe that will happen when I finally buy it.....
I especially love how Du Mez summarized a lot of Bushnell's work from "God's Word to Women". Although, if I hadn't already read a book on gender bias in Bible translation and a academic woman's translation on the Pauline passages I may have been a lot more skeptical of the validity of her translations. As it was I was greatly impressed that a woman from the Victorian era was actually able to come out with these life altering translations.
I love this book and can't recommend it enough!
August 25, 2017
A revelation that Katharine Bushnell, an evangelical feminist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed a complete theological reconstruction and new interpretation of the Bible that anticipated developments of the 1970's sometimes as often as 80 years before. Dumez is trying to recover this forgotten figure and use her as a resource to help 21st century Christian women in the global church to draw simultaneously upon Christian faith from an evangelical hermeneutic and the feminist reconstruction of the faith.
This is a clearly written, well researched book, about a fascinating figure and an entire movement in American political and religious life of which I knew very little.
This is a clearly written, well researched book, about a fascinating figure and an entire movement in American political and religious life of which I knew very little.
May 27, 2021
Very interesting book for our times. First off, Katharine Bushnell is a rather remarkable individual: doctor, theologian, master of multiple ancient & modern languages ... I was really impressed to learn about her missionary work as well as her theological interpretations (some of which did seem to be informed by the answer she wanted to find as opposed to the words on the page -- but then, she didn't have the benefit of knowing that some of Paul's letters (and even one troublesome passage) were forgeries inserted by later Christian scholars who needed to get women out of church leadership).
This book feels so relevant now because the rise/fall of Bushnell's influence presents a lesson for all activists. It is fascinating to see how the cultural shifts resulted in the sidelining of Bushnell and how feminists, by narrowing the definition of feminism to exclude activists like Bushnell, actually may have limited their movement. The last chapter presents an interesting perspective on how excluding feminists who didn't hew tightly to their views of reproductive/sexual freedom may have actually hurt the feminist movement in the long term. I wish the progressive liberals who have created an orthodoxy out of race/gender speech policing would pay attention to the way movements lose force and cultural relevancy -- and ultimately, their ability to persuade people and change society for the better.
This book feels so relevant now because the rise/fall of Bushnell's influence presents a lesson for all activists. It is fascinating to see how the cultural shifts resulted in the sidelining of Bushnell and how feminists, by narrowing the definition of feminism to exclude activists like Bushnell, actually may have limited their movement. The last chapter presents an interesting perspective on how excluding feminists who didn't hew tightly to their views of reproductive/sexual freedom may have actually hurt the feminist movement in the long term. I wish the progressive liberals who have created an orthodoxy out of race/gender speech policing would pay attention to the way movements lose force and cultural relevancy -- and ultimately, their ability to persuade people and change society for the better.
January 29, 2023
Very interesting history of Katherine Bushnell and early Christian Feminism with great source material. Bushnell was interesting in that she clung to the inspiration of the Scriptures while at the same time challenging many of the traditional, biblical viewpoints on women.
The issues that Bushnell confronted 100 years ago were surprising to me. Her form of Christian Feminism was not in my historical framework for that time period, and this has opened up a whole new avenue of thinking for me.
As a Christian male, I consider this book to be a helpful checkpoint to rethink my understanding of the biblical passages. Although I do not fully agree with Bushnell or Du Mez (Author of this book), there are an abundance of helpful considerations. My biggest helpful take-away is that church history is full of examples of a double standard between men and women, and it is easy for Christian men to overlook this.
The issues that Bushnell confronted 100 years ago were surprising to me. Her form of Christian Feminism was not in my historical framework for that time period, and this has opened up a whole new avenue of thinking for me.
As a Christian male, I consider this book to be a helpful checkpoint to rethink my understanding of the biblical passages. Although I do not fully agree with Bushnell or Du Mez (Author of this book), there are an abundance of helpful considerations. My biggest helpful take-away is that church history is full of examples of a double standard between men and women, and it is easy for Christian men to overlook this.
May 29, 2021
Wonderfully researched and well balanced. It’s academic read of history that can be slow going to soak up all the information and conclusions,but well worth it. It is inspiring and sad this history has been lost and the work of Bushnell ignored. Her theology is fascinating, well thought out and well supported by her research in biblical translation. She clearly shows how much of the Bible’s verses and chapters on women and how they should live were translated into English with a patriarchal bias! We have some work to do as Christians to really look at our Bibles to truly be true to the Word of God! And to thus take a close look at our cultural double standards and finally uplift women to their true equal status as Humans under Gods love!
June 14, 2022
If your introduction to Kristin Kobes du Mez was by reading Jesus and John Wayne, you will find this heady going. It reads like an adapted dissertation so it's very focused on the life and mission of Katharine Bushnell and quotes wide ranging references non stop. What I found most fascinating were Bushnell's translations and exegesis of Biblical passages that have long been used to oppress women within Christianity and wider society. I haven't read enough commentaries to know how singular her conclusions were, but I had never heard some of them and was impressed. And her devotion to the support of women in Christianity and outside of it is unparalleled. I'm glad to know she has been rescued from obscurity.
June 30, 2023
A New Gospel for Women was an enthralling read. Du Mez explores the life of bushnel with painstaking detail. I was especially fascinated by Bushnel's exploration of the role of women in Scripture and how misinterpretation has demeaned women throughout history. It was refreshing to explore how easily Scripture can be taken out of context and twisted. I loved the exploration of Eve and how she is portrayed in a much more sympathetic light. Although there are aspects of the book with which I am uncertain that I agree, I overall found the topic to be well-researched and interesting. Du Mez is a gifted writer, and I am enjoying her books very much.
God bless you all.
God bless you all.
May 20, 2021
I happily gobble up anything Kristen Kobes Du Mez writes. She is one of those women in our time who uses the lense of history to point us in the direction we are headed, and this book is no exception. I recommend reading “A New Gospel for Women” and Bushnell’s “God’s Word to Women” simultaneously to step into the full impact of this Victorian Feminist Theology that can still liberate women and inform our trajectory of feminism today.
September 20, 2021
Katharine Bushnell should be more famous. I think this book will help make her more famous. She pioneered a Christian feminism and a Biblical feminism that is still mostly buried. This reflects the amount of shallow exegesis in the current churches that still follow outdated and non Biblical traditions. Since the Kingdom of God is growing, like the mustard seed, egalitarianism should eventually prevail.
June 17, 2025
A pretty fascinating history of evangelical feminism. I had some issues with Jesus & John Wayne, but I think when Kobes Du Mez writes for a more specialist audience, as in this case, she’s excellent. This is a multifaceted, essential work, looking at the intersection between faith and activism in the 19th century, and how Victorian feminists understood their roles and battles. Would recommend especially if you, like me, read and adored Sarah Moss’s Bodies of Light.
March 25, 2024
Kristin Kobes Du Mez offers an exhaustive biography of the brilliant, trail-blazing, courageous, unrelenting Dr. Katherine Bushnell and her remarkable critique of Victorian morality, feminism, and gender-biased Bible translating. Dr. Bushnell's inspiring legacy ought not be forgotten. It offers a lot to be considered by modern Christians and feminists alike.
April 25, 2021
This should be required reading.
April 3, 2022
An excellent examination of one woman's life and work, touching on the history of feminism and Christianity as they were deeply entwined for decades then parted ways.
January 7, 2024
Great book on K Bushnell, a pioneering figure in biblical studies, who deserves to be known and read far more widely than she is.
January 13, 2026
A terrific piece of scholarship
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews