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Extraordinary Women of Christian History: What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs
Christianity has long been criticized as a patriarchal religion. But during its two-thousand-year history, the faith has been influenced and passed down by faithful women. Martyrs and nuns, mystics and scholars, writers and reformers, preachers and missionaries, abolitionists and evangelists, these women are examples to us of faith, perseverance, forgiveness, and fortitude.
With gracious irreverence, Ruth Tucker offers engaging and candid profiles of some of the most fascinating women of Christian history. From the famous to the infamous to the obscure, women like Perpetua, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Anne Hutchinson, Susanna Wesley, Ann Judson, Harriet Tubman, Fanny Crosby, Hannah Whitehall Smith, Corrie ten Boom, and Mother Teresa, along with dozens of others, come to vivid life. Perfect for small groups, these portraits of women who changed the world in their own significant way will spark lively discussion and inspire today's Christians to lives of faithful witness.
With gracious irreverence, Ruth Tucker offers engaging and candid profiles of some of the most fascinating women of Christian history. From the famous to the infamous to the obscure, women like Perpetua, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, Anne Hutchinson, Susanna Wesley, Ann Judson, Harriet Tubman, Fanny Crosby, Hannah Whitehall Smith, Corrie ten Boom, and Mother Teresa, along with dozens of others, come to vivid life. Perfect for small groups, these portraits of women who changed the world in their own significant way will spark lively discussion and inspire today's Christians to lives of faithful witness.
286 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2016
61 people are currently reading
883 people want to read
About the author
Ruth A. Tucker
35 books40 followersRuth A. Tucker (PhD, Northern Illinois University) has taught mission studies and church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Calvin Theological Seminary. She is the author of dozens of articles and eighteen books, including the award-winning From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya. Visit her website at www.RuthTucker.com.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 2, 2023
This book had so much potential. I value that the author gave complete portrayals of the women with their fatal flaws right along with their strengths. But I got frustrated with the author's inane commentary in the introductions and conclusions to the chapters and her fascination with the macabre. The only purpose I see in the book is as a list of women that I can research or read more about.
March 13, 2018
“One Half of the World does not know how the Other Half lives,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanack. That is certainly true of church history, the standard volumes of which are dominated by accounts of the thoughts and deeds of men. Ruth A. Tucker’s Extraordinary Women of Christian History tells readers about the “Other Half” of Christendom by means of biographical snippets of famous Christian women.
Tucker has served as a professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Calvin Theological Seminary. She is best-known for her biographical approach to both the history of Christian missions in From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya and of church history more generally in Parade of Faith. In 1986, she and Walter L. Liefeld coauthored Daughters of the Church, which is a systematic account of “Women and ministry from New Testament times to the present,” in the words of the book’s subtitle.
Like Daughters of the Church, Extraordinary Women arranges its material chronologically. Chapter 1 begins with the apocryphal, but nonetheless influential, Thecla, erstwhile missionary compassion of the apostle Paul. Chapter 14 ends with Helen Roseveare, missionary doctor to the Congo in a time of civil war. Along the way, readers peak into the lives of women, both Catholic and Protestant, some married but others not, who professed the Christian faith with their thoughts, lives, and deeds.
From the outset, Tucker confesses that her accounts of these women’s lives will be anything but hagiographical. Analogizing her choice of subjects to “the tastiest candy from this sampler box of chocolates,” she notes that “in many cases [i.e., other writes’ accounts of these women’s lives] the candy is too sweet for the palate—sugarcoated heroines.” Tucker’s accounts are anything but sugarcoated. Indeed, if anything, they tend toward bitter chocolate. She writes, “I was struck by how many failed marriages and failed ministries had become added ingredients of this volume” (x). At times, this non-sugarcoated approach becomes too much, as if the failures outweighed the successes, at least to my mind.
Regardless, I appreciate Tucker’s reminder: “These women are anything but the super-saints of pious heroine tales. They are real people, and they are like us” (x). There is hope in that statement. God can make a beautiful thing out of the crooked timber of humanity.
One final takeaway as a male reader—or rather, a question. The women Tucker portrays advanced the kingdom of God despite opposition, especially the opposition that arose because so many of them labored against the grain of traditional gender roles and expectations. Ironically, the Protestant Reformation made the leadership of women even more difficult. “Protestants disdained monasticism,” Tucker writes, “which incidentally had been the primary path to ministry for women” (53). One can feel the sting of that opposition to women’s contributions in the complaint of nineteenth-century preacher and social reformer Phoebe Palmer:
"We believe that hundreds of conscientious, sensitive Christian women have actually suffered more under the slowly crucifying process to which they have been subjected by men who bear the Christian name than many a martyr has endured in passing through the flames" (148).
Interestingly, Palmer countered this “crucifying process” with a long, rigorous defense of women’s preaching ministry in a book whose title alludes to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2—Promise of the Father.
The question(s), then, that rises from reading Extraordinary Women of Christian History is this: If the Spirit has been poured out upon “all people,” both “sons and daughters” (Acts 2:17, cf. Joel 2:28), why do so many churches continue to erect barriers to the full involvement of women in all of their ministries? Would not the work of the kingdom advance more steadily if its daughters were not unduly hindered? The women whose lives Tucker sketches did much. One cannot help but wonder whether they could have done much more, had they worked without hindrance from within the church.
Book Reviewed
Ruth A. Tucker, Extraordinary Women of Christian History: What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016).
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
Tucker has served as a professor of church history at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Calvin Theological Seminary. She is best-known for her biographical approach to both the history of Christian missions in From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya and of church history more generally in Parade of Faith. In 1986, she and Walter L. Liefeld coauthored Daughters of the Church, which is a systematic account of “Women and ministry from New Testament times to the present,” in the words of the book’s subtitle.
Like Daughters of the Church, Extraordinary Women arranges its material chronologically. Chapter 1 begins with the apocryphal, but nonetheless influential, Thecla, erstwhile missionary compassion of the apostle Paul. Chapter 14 ends with Helen Roseveare, missionary doctor to the Congo in a time of civil war. Along the way, readers peak into the lives of women, both Catholic and Protestant, some married but others not, who professed the Christian faith with their thoughts, lives, and deeds.
From the outset, Tucker confesses that her accounts of these women’s lives will be anything but hagiographical. Analogizing her choice of subjects to “the tastiest candy from this sampler box of chocolates,” she notes that “in many cases [i.e., other writes’ accounts of these women’s lives] the candy is too sweet for the palate—sugarcoated heroines.” Tucker’s accounts are anything but sugarcoated. Indeed, if anything, they tend toward bitter chocolate. She writes, “I was struck by how many failed marriages and failed ministries had become added ingredients of this volume” (x). At times, this non-sugarcoated approach becomes too much, as if the failures outweighed the successes, at least to my mind.
Regardless, I appreciate Tucker’s reminder: “These women are anything but the super-saints of pious heroine tales. They are real people, and they are like us” (x). There is hope in that statement. God can make a beautiful thing out of the crooked timber of humanity.
One final takeaway as a male reader—or rather, a question. The women Tucker portrays advanced the kingdom of God despite opposition, especially the opposition that arose because so many of them labored against the grain of traditional gender roles and expectations. Ironically, the Protestant Reformation made the leadership of women even more difficult. “Protestants disdained monasticism,” Tucker writes, “which incidentally had been the primary path to ministry for women” (53). One can feel the sting of that opposition to women’s contributions in the complaint of nineteenth-century preacher and social reformer Phoebe Palmer:
"We believe that hundreds of conscientious, sensitive Christian women have actually suffered more under the slowly crucifying process to which they have been subjected by men who bear the Christian name than many a martyr has endured in passing through the flames" (148).
Interestingly, Palmer countered this “crucifying process” with a long, rigorous defense of women’s preaching ministry in a book whose title alludes to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, as recorded in Acts 2—Promise of the Father.
The question(s), then, that rises from reading Extraordinary Women of Christian History is this: If the Spirit has been poured out upon “all people,” both “sons and daughters” (Acts 2:17, cf. Joel 2:28), why do so many churches continue to erect barriers to the full involvement of women in all of their ministries? Would not the work of the kingdom advance more steadily if its daughters were not unduly hindered? The women whose lives Tucker sketches did much. One cannot help but wonder whether they could have done much more, had they worked without hindrance from within the church.
Book Reviewed
Ruth A. Tucker, Extraordinary Women of Christian History: What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016).
P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.
February 27, 2024
Reading this book, even if it was for a college class, was very enjoyable!! Parts of it inspired me, parts challenged me, and parts of it I questioned as far as if the women mentioned were actually women of God. But, I loved Tucker’s writing style, and I plan on re-reading this book whenever I need a little feminine inspiration!
April 16, 2016
I received this book via a Goodreads giveaway and was excited to read about what I expected to be some of the overlooked figures of church history (woman).
While I was hit disappointed in that assumption, I was disappointed in the tone and assumptions of Tucker. She clearly expected her audience to be female and said as much, which I found off-putting. At times, her writing lacked clarity or betrayed a flippancy I found inappropriate to the subject.
I knew before I started reading that Tucker and I disagree on many things, including complementarianism. I should have expected from reading her other works that I would disagree with her presentation here.
Still, the book does serve as an introduction to female Christians in history. Use it as a jumping off point for further research but don't look for too much depth (which admittedly would be difficult in a book trying to get as many figures in as possible).
While I was hit disappointed in that assumption, I was disappointed in the tone and assumptions of Tucker. She clearly expected her audience to be female and said as much, which I found off-putting. At times, her writing lacked clarity or betrayed a flippancy I found inappropriate to the subject.
I knew before I started reading that Tucker and I disagree on many things, including complementarianism. I should have expected from reading her other works that I would disagree with her presentation here.
Still, the book does serve as an introduction to female Christians in history. Use it as a jumping off point for further research but don't look for too much depth (which admittedly would be difficult in a book trying to get as many figures in as possible).
September 9, 2023
I wanted to love this book. I understand what the author was trying to do, and I can appreciate the diverse and interesting women she chose to feature. I did learn something, and it was so well written. Each chapter Susanna on its own and as part of the whole. However, I felt it was way too heavy on pentecostal women. Perhaps because I'm not pentecostal and not from a part of the US (or a denomination) heavily influenced by it, it was just not as interesting to me, and influence on the global church is not evident or was not explained. Also, I was downright depressed by some of these stories. I like that Tucker goes hard on the salty, difficult parts of people's lives, but it just makes me sad how we follow and revere people, while also expecting perfection that can not be delivered. I look forward to reaching heaven and meeting the saints whose public-controversy-free lives pleased the Lord but whose stories were never known or told.
January 17, 2023
This book does not contain fully formed biographies on each of the women presented. I enjoyed the journey through history making brief stops at each of their stories. It would be up to the reader to pause, stay longer and explore on their own if they want to know one of their stories better. I also enjoyed the unbiased presentation of each of these women. Our personal stories are complex: good and bad, and I appreciate the author sharing the facts of these women’s lives without driving me towards a fully formed opinion of them. I feel like that offers them the respect they deserve from one flawed human being to another.
February 22, 2022
I really appreciate this book and author as she introduces us to a wide variety of amazing Christian women. Many of who I had never heard of and want to learn more about after reading this book. I also appreciate that the author doesn’t seem to have any agenda on who she introduces. Simply strong women, of any background in the faith, who may have been overlooked. Very interesting .
The author is a historian and teacher so I only gave it 3 stars because it reads a little like a text book. But I do think it is worth reading and learning from for all.
The author is a historian and teacher so I only gave it 3 stars because it reads a little like a text book. But I do think it is worth reading and learning from for all.
April 17, 2018
I'm not a fan of the quick read USA Today format used in this book. While the profiles are well written, the author cannot seem to decide upon what age level she is writing for. some sections are easy reader, others have more complexity, while others fail to give information on the subject being introduced.
another I'm glad I only spent a dollar book.
another I'm glad I only spent a dollar book.
July 19, 2024
I enjoyed the history and learning of historical figures. Tucker’s writing, however, I did not enjoy. Her bias was clear in her writing. She seemed to make assumptions about those she was studying without firm proof backing her opinion. I enjoyed learning about those she wrote about, but would not recommend this book apart from finding new historical figures to research.
April 27, 2018
This book caused me to question so much about the church. But in the end, I've come back around. We're all human. And I really love how this book doesn't paint women as saints, but as humans. Because really . . . if God can use them, He can use me too.
March 19, 2023
poorly cited, and the author inserted her own opinion into very distant historical contexts, therefore demonstrating little academic humility. I found this book a hugely disappointing handling of an important subject, I wont finish it
September 4, 2018
A wide sampling of stories of women, some better known than others, all told with an express interest in avoiding hagiography...so inspiring by keeping it real describes this book pretty well!
June 11, 2016
This book challenges expectations and assumptions – growing and stretching the reader’s notions of history, the church, and legacies left behind.
As promised in the introduction, this work is definitely no sugar-coated look at an interesting collection of women from the church’s history. At the same time however, the author is neither condemning nor gossipy in her overview of each individual. This is a great example of a straightforward, honest look deeper beneath the surface of each woman, while still emphasizing Christ’s redemption as the central focus.
This book is best used as a study text – definitely not a one-sitting read. With the questions at the end of each chapter, and the extensive bibliography included that the reader can use to find companion texts for deeper context, I would highly recommend this book for any Bible study group!
I am absolutely going to have to read through this fantastic work several times again to get deeper, and see what I missed.
I received a review copy of this work from the Publisher through NetGalley
As promised in the introduction, this work is definitely no sugar-coated look at an interesting collection of women from the church’s history. At the same time however, the author is neither condemning nor gossipy in her overview of each individual. This is a great example of a straightforward, honest look deeper beneath the surface of each woman, while still emphasizing Christ’s redemption as the central focus.
This book is best used as a study text – definitely not a one-sitting read. With the questions at the end of each chapter, and the extensive bibliography included that the reader can use to find companion texts for deeper context, I would highly recommend this book for any Bible study group!
I am absolutely going to have to read through this fantastic work several times again to get deeper, and see what I missed.
I received a review copy of this work from the Publisher through NetGalley
March 18, 2016
Extraordinary Women of Christian History
What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs
by Tucker, Ruth A.
Baker Books
Christian
Pub Date 16 Feb 2016
I was given a copy of Extraordinary Women of Christian History through the publisher and their partnership with Netgalley in exchange for my honest review which is as follows:
If you are interested in women’s place in Christian history then Extraordinary Women of Christian History is going to be a book you want to read. This book highlights stories of Women of Christian History from Thecla one of the earliest Women missionaries highlighted. Thecla was a convert of Paul in Iconium.
From Thecla to Susanna Wesley to Corrie Ten Boom Christian women from all over the world and from all walks of life are highlighted and the questions at the end of each chapter allow for deeper study either individually or in a group setting.
I give this book five out of five stars
Happy Reading
About these ads
What We Can Learn from Their Struggles and Triumphs
by Tucker, Ruth A.
Baker Books
Christian
Pub Date 16 Feb 2016
I was given a copy of Extraordinary Women of Christian History through the publisher and their partnership with Netgalley in exchange for my honest review which is as follows:
If you are interested in women’s place in Christian history then Extraordinary Women of Christian History is going to be a book you want to read. This book highlights stories of Women of Christian History from Thecla one of the earliest Women missionaries highlighted. Thecla was a convert of Paul in Iconium.
From Thecla to Susanna Wesley to Corrie Ten Boom Christian women from all over the world and from all walks of life are highlighted and the questions at the end of each chapter allow for deeper study either individually or in a group setting.
I give this book five out of five stars
Happy Reading
About these ads
March 29, 2016
I enjoyed this book, and learned a lot. I do not agree with all the conclusions that the author made about the women presented in the book. I do like the fact that the author doesn't gloss over the faults of the women she highlights. I believe it is important to be fully honest about our good qualities as well as our bad.
April 17, 2016
The book was very inspirational and I enjoyed reading. So many things in the book I did not know. Learned many things. I was truly inspired by these women.
Read
January 7, 2017anipets were too brief. I did not get much out of it.
October 9, 2017
Tucker reminds me of the Speaker for the Dead in the Ender’s Game trilogy: here, she writes about heroines of the Christian faith without any sentimental glossing over of their flaws or failures. I appreciated learning about women I’ve never heard about. Triumphs, failed marriages, courageous risks, mental illness, universalism, contributions to missions all give a whole picture of each woman’s life and journey of faith.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews