Book Review:
Half the Church
By Carolyn Custis James
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have rocked our world, daring us to look oppression against innocent women and girls squarely in its ugly face. Their national best seller Half the Sky is a difficult book to read as the mental images of brutality, violence and injustices performed against women in our modern “sophisticated” world begin to collect in the reader’s mind. For example, the reader is exposed to the fate of young Nepalese women who are valued by Indian men for their light skin, beauty, docility, language barriers. The big business of prostitution causes these women to be worth less than pirated DVDs in the eyes of Indian law. When asked why these girls are not protected by law, an Indian policeman asks, “What’s a young man going to do from the time he turns 18 until he gets married at 30? These girls are sacrificed so that we can have harmony in society and so that ‘good girls’ can be safe.”
The authors of Half the Sky list three reasons women are victimized with horrific acts of sex trafficking:
- The economic distress caused by the collapse of Communism.
- Globalization—it’s easy for women to become trapped by sex traffickers as they leave home seeking work.
- The fear of AIDS leads men to use younger girls for sex, fallaciously thinking they will be less likely to be infected with the dreaded disease.
Carolyn asks the question “Where is God’s voice in all this turmoil and pain? What has He been saying about the injustice, the murder, the oppression to His church? Is His Word speaking to us in a way that we may have missed as we read through Western lenses?” Not only are her questions thought-provoking, but her quest for the answers are worth the read of this significant book.
The healthy function of the bride of Christ, the church, is of high priority to Carolyn. She points out that once an oppressed, abused woman, clad in torn rags, dirty and ruined by the ravages of sin, the church has now been beautifully decked out in her dazzling wedding attire, her confident countenance shining with the love of her Bridegroom. By His sacrificial death He has initiated the transformation of a lifetime, having bought His bride from the market place of sin. He has presented her spotless before His Father’s throne. Carolyn identifies those who belong to the Bridegroom as His “image bearers,” people who reflect God’s love and value to this sin-stained world.
Carolyn finds it intriguing that God would use the feminine image of a bride to include both men and women. Because of Christ, women behold themselves as God’s exalted and much-needed daughters, “ezer-warriors” of God. They bring strength and dignity to the relationships in their earthly roles as wives, moms, sisters. They have been created by God to complete what is needed for familial relationships, for thriving villages and even prospering governments.
Because of men’s relationship to Christ, the Bridegroom, God’s redemptive plan allows men to understand not only their own value but the value placed on the other half of human creation. God is working redemption in his noble sons: fathers, sons and brothers who perform His acts of righteousness, who defend the weak, who lovingly sacrifice themselves for His creation, so secure in God that they can bring good to others, warriors who stand against the wiles of the devil.
God designed that both men and women make up His living church, His bride, to accomplish His purposes, which involves bringing the message of redemption and reconciliation to the hopeless, those in despair, those oppressed and those marginalized. He calls the church to work as one body for the major concerns that plague this world.
Carolyn quotes Isaiah 1:17 as an architectural blueprint of what God wants to see taking place in this world. “Seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” This is just one reference among many that show how the Bible is indeed relevant to the social injustices of today if we will just take notice of what it is saying to the peoples of the world.
Sheryl WuDunn, one of the authors of the national Half the Sky writes in her endorsement of Half the Church: “Carolyn has written an unusual and compelling book, mixing her personal story with dramatic changes in today’s world and her thoughtful interpretations of the Scriptures and how women can respond with greater fervor to the Bible’s call for change and betterment of the world.”
Carolyn urges us to consider laying aside the Western lenses we have used to read the Scriptures. She calls us to place the Bible back in the context of the Middle East, from whence it came, to see how it speaks to the issues of gender inequality that this generation faces in epidemic proportions. Carolyn quotes Half the Sky many times while encouraging the reader to come to grips with these truths: “Far more women have been shipped to brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the 18th or 19th centuries.” This is only one statistic: it doesn’t include the honor killings, the child marriages, the female infanticide, the stranded and impoverished widows. Carolyn rightly calls these facts “mind numbing.”
Matt 28:19-20 declares what the church’s global mission is, the reason we are here on this planet: it is the sharing of the gospel so that disciples are made. People can hear the message better when they are not hungry, or sick or abused. Sharing the message of the cross in conjunction with meeting physical needs is at the core of what will bring transformation to humans who are living under the power of the Enemy who is the author of oppression, devaluation, destruction and death. Carolyn calls this the full-orbed gospel. She pleads with the church to listen to the women of other cultures, gaining new understanding of how the gospel can be communicated to the poor, the hopeless, the abandoned, the abused and the enslaved so they can hear it and respond to His call to become part of the Christ’s Bride.
This book leads us to see the need, answer the call and participate in God’s kingdom work until He comes. If this has moved you to want to dialogue about what we can do, join our Facebook discussion. We are eager to talk about what the hand of God is leading each of us to do to bring light and life to this sin-sick world.
You can also go to www.Halfthesky.org and read what others have been doing to help the oppressed women of the world.
Review by Sharon MacMillan