Tamars Cry

Evangelical and feminist approaches to Old Testament interpretation often seem to be at odds with each other. The authors of this volume argue to the contrary: feminist and evangelical interpreters of the Old Testament can enter into a constructive dialogue that will be fruitful to both parties. They seek to illustrate this with reference to a number of texts and issues relevant to feminist Old Testament interpretation from an explicitly evangelical point of view. In so doing they raise issues that need to be addressed by both evangelical and feminist interpreters of the Old Testament, and present an invitation to faithful and fruitful reading of these portions of Scripture.

The Faces series is an attempt to paint as honestly as possible the faces of characters we read about in the Bible so that readers can identify and relate to the naked, common-life truths that these characters present and hold to the promises that each story or event offers to us as we seek to know and walk with God. Walking through the Bible, an adult Sunday School class enters 11 Samuel 13, a dark room where a princess is found weeping. She has been sexually abused by her half brother while her family members conspire a cover-up. Her own brother, her mothers son, secretly vows revenge on the aggressor as well as on his father, King David. The succeeding chaos multiplies, and Tamar, the victim, sticks her face out of the closet to tell the pain of it all, only to find that her story holds relevant connections to a number of class members and, in fact, to many readers in the contemporary world.

In this comprehensive, practical, and gripping assessment of various forms of violence against women, Pamela Cooper-White challenges the Christian churches to examine their own responses to the cry of Tamar in our time. She describes specific forms of such violence and outlines appropriate pastoral responses. The second edition of this groundbreaking work is thoroughly updated and examines not only where the church has made progress since 1995 but also where women remain at unchanged or even greater risk of violence.

To be human means to resist dehumanization. In the darkest periods of human history, men and women have risen up and in many different voices said this one thing: Do not treat me like this. Treat me like the human being that I am. "Claiming Her Dignity "explores a number of stories from the Old Testament in which women in a variety of creative ways resist the violence of war, rape, heterarchy, and poverty. Amid the life-denying circumstances that seek to attack, violate, and destroy the bodies and psyches of women, men, and children, the women featured in this book absolutely refuse to succumb to the explicit, and at times subtle but no less harmful, manifestations of violence that they face."

Helps adult victims of sexual assault move from brokenness to healing. This book outlines a theology or redemption and includes an application of how the disgrace of the cross can lead victims toward grace.

At the fiftieth anniversary of the Old Testament Society of South Africa a conference was organized on the theme Exile and Suffering. This volume contains a selection of the papers presented. Focal questions are such themes as: What do we really know about the Exile? To what degree did suffering take place? How did the Ancient Israelites cope with the disaster? Where the ancinet traditions sufficient to deal with the Exile? Or did this period produce new forms of 'theology'? The significance of the Exile as a matrix for understanding suffering until this day is also dealt with.

In the past several decades, the issues of women’s ordination and of homosexuality have unleashed intense debates on the nature and mission of the Church, authority and the future of the Anglican Communion. Amid such momentous debates, theological voices of women in the Anglican Communion have not been clearly heard, until now. This book invites the reader to reconsider the theological basis of the Church and its call to mission in the 21st century, paying special attention to the colonial legacy of the Anglican Church and the shift of Christian demographics to the Global South. In addition to essays by the volume editors, this 12-essay collection includes contributions by Jane Shaw, Ellen Wondra and Beverley Haddad, among others.

Mary Anna Bader considers the implications of these narratives in the current context, citing patterns of student reactions to these texts and teaching opportunities.