Dzubinski, Leanne M., and Anneke H. Stasson. Women in the Mission of the Church: Their Opportunities and Obstacles Throughout Christian History. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021. 256 pp. Paperback, $26.00.
In Women in the Mission of the Church, Dzubinski and Stasson join their efforts with those of Beth Allison Barr, Lynn Cohick, Ruth Tucker, and others in the retrieval and re-narration of the work of women in God’s mission. Their account is, by intent and design, broad, working from a general definition of “mission” as “anything that leads to the extension of the church or to the deepening of Christian commitment,” including support for the disenfranchised (6). While some chapters focus on the role of women in the modern missionary movement, like the account of the work of women’s missionary boards in Chapter 8, a plurality of less obvious individuals also make the cut as representatives of women’s participation in the mission of the church, including queens and itinerant prophets, breastfeeding mothers and celibate Beguines, martyrs and missionaries. Concerned about the limits of a narrow focus on those they call the “heroic few,” their sweeping narrative aims to capture the range of vocations through which women minister across time and context.
Working from the first to the twenty-first century in sections neatly divided by historical period, the book balances accounts of specific women ministering within the opportunities and constraints of their social and historical situations with broader accounts of the larger movements and historical contexts in which women in each period participated and lived. Strategic choices in the framing of their sweeping account contribute to its effectiveness. First, Dzubinski and Stasson structure each chapter with attention to 1) opportunities for women’s ministry in that period, 2) challenges to that ministry, and 3) how women negotiated those tensions and ambiguities in pursuit of faithful service to God. This framing facilitates the appreciative retrieval of overlooked contributions that characterize the book as a whole and critical attention to the unique tensions, ambiguities, and challenges in each period. Second, each chapter begins with a visual historical timeline. This highly effective choice locates the women discussed in each chapter in their own era and in historical relationship to one another. These timelines also provide compelling visual evidence for one of the book’s key claims—namely that the ministry of women is not simply the suspect result of the incursion of 20th-century feminist sensibilities into the church but rather a consistent feature of the church from its inception to the present day.
In addition to the multi-century span, the book’s aim to provide a broad account is evident in other features. Dzubinski and Stasson are careful to name and honor the contributions of women whose ministry took place largely in the context of their maternal and domestic responsibilities and those women who choose celibacy and singleness to dedicate their lives to God’s mission. They attend to, for instance, both the role that Emmelia and Macrina played in the instruction of Gregory and Basil, their more famous sons and brothers (62-66), as well as the way missionary women were instrumental in developing what the authors call a “missiology of the Christian home” (166-186). At the same time, they pay significant attention to women who eschewed expectations of marriage (or remarriage) and motherhood to devote their lives to service and prayer—from the office of the widow in the New Testament (25-27), to women in the monastic and mystical traditions (85-103) to single women sent as missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries (168-169).
The authors’ commitment to breadth is evident in their attention to the roles of non-White and/or non-Western women in the mission of the church. To wit, in their chapter on women’s ministry through social justice and advocacy work in the US, they highlight the work of and particular challenges faced by Black Christian women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (154-160), including women like anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells (154-157). Outside of the United States context, they devote substantial sections to women’s leadership in Africa, both in partnership with Western agencies and in African Initiated Churches (191-197), as well as to the work of Bible women, local women supported by women’s missionary boards in the West who taught and evangelized in Asia and Africa (171-173). While no narrative could capture every worthwhile contribution (women from Latin American churches, for instance, don’t feature in their summary), their efforts to offer a more comprehensive and global account are a necessary and refreshing contribution to the broader literature.
In Women in the Mission of the Church, Dzubinski and Stasson succeed in their aims to provide an account of women’s contributions to Christian ministry, theology, and mission in a way that can inspire the service and leadership of others. They use the language of “passing the baton” throughout the book to refer to how women have drawn inspiration from the women who preceded them, as female preachers in the first and second Great Awakening drew courage from Scripture’s female prophets and teachers. By providing this account, they add new women to and reintroduce familiar faces from the great cloud of witnesses from which the church today draws inspiration and resolve for the necessary work of the Gospel in each context.
Amanda Jo Pittman
Associate Professor of Bible and Ministry
Department of Bible, Missions, and Ministry
Abilene Christian University
Abilene, TX, USA
