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Carolyn Custis James

Carolyn Custis James Biography

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“And here's what we so often miss. By naming us as his image bearers, God has made a relationship with himself the strategic center of his purpose for humanity and for the world. Knowing God is as vital to us as the air we breathe--not just a 'come to faith' knowing, but the ongoing knowing and endless discoveries of a relationship. Not a destination or terminus, but an endless quest to know and understand the God who created us. Maneuvering through life without knowing him is as much to our undoing as for an astronaut to attempt a tethered space walk without the oxygen-supply line that connects her to the spacecraft. The image bearer's relationship with God is our north star, the reference point from which we begin to understand everything else--incuding ourselves.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“We view men’s gifts as vital to the church. In contrast, we caution women to exercise their gifts discreetly to avoid causing problems or trespassing some invisible line — which changes location from church to church, sometimes even within the same denomination.”

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Book:Lost Women of the Bible: Finding Strength & Significance through Their Stories
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“The Proverbs 31 woman is introduced as a 'woman hayil' the same Hebrew word used for Boaz and signifies 'strength' and 'power' like that of an 'elite warrior similar to the hero of the Homeric epic.' The meaning, however, gets lost in translation, for whenever hayil applies to a woman in the Bible, translators have opted for softer English words ('virtuous,' 'excellent,' 'capable,' or 'noble character'). These words don't begin to do justice to the meaning, for in reality 'it may well be that a woman of this caliber had all the attributes of her male counterpart.' She is a woman of valor--an apt description of an ezer.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“God created his daughters to be image bearers, and that necessarily entails a call to leadership. Failure to see this creates problems that are often overlooked--the predicament and even the peril this creates for so many women, not to mention how this hampers the mission of the church.”

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Book:The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules
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“Focus on the wife as her husband's helper has led to the belief that God gave primary roles and responsibilities to men, and secondary, supporting roles to women. It has led to practices that communicate that women are second class citizens at home and in the church. None of this is true. There is nothing second class about God's vision for his daughters, and the ezer holds the clues.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“This debate has repercussions on how we live for God, how we relate to our neighbors both near and far, and how we connect with our Christian brothers. It affects the valuing of women, the quality of our marriages, and the teachings and behavioral patterns we pass on to our children. It shapes our ideas of what it means to be part of the body of Christ, how we develop and use our gifts, and what Jesus asks of us in fulfilling his mission for the world.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“Does the gospel only offer a guarded, small message for women? Or does the gospel overturn the culture's small, diminishing, and often degrading message for women with a clarion call to live within the boundless parameters Jesus defines -- to "love the Lord your God will all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength" (Mark 12:30)? Who tells us who we are? Who alone has the right to define our worth? Are we at the mercy of gender, culture, circumstances, and fear? Or is there a Voice that trumps all others to give us an indestructible identity and rich, durable kingdom purposes for our lives?”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“God names women, along with men, as his image bearers. Furthermore, God's first word about women completely shatters the notion that boys are more valuable than girls. God isn't calling men and asking women to hang back. He gives both male and female the exact same identity--to be his image bearers. He gives both the exact same rsponsibilities when he entrusts all of creation to his image bearers, calling them to be fruitful and multiply and to rule and subdue the whole earth (Genesis 1:26, 28). Words spoken here encompass every human being, every facet of human life, and every square inch of earth, and leave every other conceivable view of women (or of men) in the dust.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“The ezer is a warrior. Like the man, she is also God's creative masterpiece--a work of genius and a marvel to behold--for she is fearfully and wonderfully made. The ezer never sheds her image-bearer identity. Not here. Not ever. God defines who she is and how she is to live in his world. That never changes.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“God didn't create the woman to bring half of herself to his global commission or to minimize herself when the man is around. The fanfare over her is overblown if God was only planning for her to do for the man things he was perfectly capable of doing for himself or didn't even need... If Adam must think, decide, protect, and provide for the woman, she actually becomes a burden on him--not much help when you think about it. The kind of help the man needs demands full deployment of her strength, her gifts, and the best she has to offer. His life will change for the better because of what she contributes to his life.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“God is shaking his daughters awake and summoning us to engage. His vision for us is affirming and raises the bar for all of us. We cannot settle for less. We have work to do. There's a kingdom to build, and what we do truly matters. Our compass is fixed on Jesus. We can no longer listen to those who call us to love him with less than all our heart and soul and strength and mind. We may not have titles, position, or power in the eyes of others, but leadership is in our DNA. The call to rule and subdue places kingdom responsibility on our shoulders.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“This is a moment for believers to embody a gospel culture where both halves of the church are thriving because following Jesus produces a climate of honor, value, and love and we are serving God together as he intended from the beginning. This is a golden opportunity to restore to women the indestructible and elevated identity that they have inherited as God's daughters and that a fallen world has stolen from them.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“Pharasaical tendencies in all of us make the walk of faith doable. We can be moral, go to church, read our Bibles, and give our 10 percent. Jesus and Ruth knock down the walls of that kind of thinking. Real kingdom living is clostly. It will stretch, bend, and break us. Following Jesus isn't the path to a tame or easy life. It is about taking up a cross--which means laying down our lives as Jesus did for the sake of others.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24 NRSV). This radically upside-down statement would have shocked the original readers of Genesis and should shock us too. I don't know of any culture where men are depicted as clinging to their wives. Certainly within a patriarchal world, this is getting things backwards. There the wife leaves her parents and is absorbed into her husband's family.”

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Book:Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
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“Talking Taboo is a groundbreaking book. This chorus of bold female voices is presenting the church with an opportunity to engage real but all too frequently avoided or unseen issues impacting countless Christian women today. Their candid essays cover a wide spectrum of perspectives. Readers will resonate with some and be shocked by others. Talking Taboo took courage to write. Reading taboo takes courage too. So buckle up and brace yourself for an eye-opening but vitally important read!”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“The strongest statement ever made about women's rights appears on page one of the Bible. God's first words about his daughters established an indestructible foundation for women's rights because God anchored those rights in himself. By creating his daughters along with his sons in his image and likeness, God elevated every human being to the highest possible rank. Which means any mistreatment - verbal, emotional, or physical - of any woman or girl amounts to defacement of God himself, for she bears his image.”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“In the beginning no power differential existed between male and female. God empowered both with full rights and responsibility to rule outward over all creation, not over each other. As we know all too well, the fall changed everything, precipitating male rule over women and also the rule of some men over other men, a.k.a., patriarchy. Within patriarchy, women no longer derive their value from their Creator, but from men - father, husband, and sons. Within patriarchy, a woman's value is gauged by counting her sons.”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“The biblical assertion that women are created in God's image and Boaz's advocacy for Ruth and Naomi necessarily mean women, then and now, have inherent God-given rights. This surely means the church should be at the forefront of advocating for women's rights - not merely political and legal rights, but as in the case of Boaz moving beyond the letter of the law to exceed how any culture regards women.”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“My book in a nutshell is about the deleterious effects of patriarchy down through the ages for women and for men and how the Bible dismantles this fallen social system. I'm completely persuaded that patriarchy is not the Bible's message, but that it runs counter to God's vision for humanity. It produces tension and disunity between men and women that run contrary to God's vision for his world.”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“From the beginning, God designed a world in which his image bearers - male and female together - were his A-Team for getting things done in the world. It was more than "wouldn't it be nice if men and women could get along better." God knew this was the way his world would work best and we would flourish as he intends. Men and women - together - in an alliance that received God's explicit blessing.”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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“I have to ask myself how I can possibly expect to know Jesus as he would want to be known if my life remains unscathed by trouble and grief. How can I hope to grasp anything of God's heart for this broken planet if I never weep because its brokenness touches me and breaks my heart? How can I reflect his image if I never share in his sufferings? And how will any of us ever learn to treasure his hesed and grace if we never experience phases where these blessings seem absent?”

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Author:Carolyn Custis James
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