I so appreciate this book. While it took me a while to get to it, I found it insightful and such an important message for today.

Aimee Byrd tackles a timely and frustrating subject in conservative Evangelical Christianity: the restrictive nature of gender roles and the resulting impact on women. Byrd herself is a complementarian and affirms the innate differences between men and women. However, she rightly calls out the damage done by heavy-handed gender roles in the home, church, and society; the mixed messages given to women on what they are "allowed" to do; the stunting of spiritual growth by overly-specialized men's and women's Bibles and Bible studies; and the shallow readings of Scripture that neglect to observe the feminine voice. Byrd's most excellent points involve her critiques of gender norms in evangelicalism and her fresh, well-informed perspectives on Biblical interpretation. Where Byrd falls short is primarily in her writing style - the book is tough to get through, and is only occasionally peppered with mildly captivating anecdotes. Byrd's recurring analogy of "spelling back the yellow wallpaper" is lackluster and not compelling or engaging. In sum, Byrd adequately highlights a problem in evangelical church culture (and has taken a considerable amount of abuse for doing so), but she fails to engage the reader along the way.

All those who hold to the authority and inerrancy of Scripture will agree that in creation we find equality of value between the sexes, as well as distinction. We wouldn't even be talking about equality if there were no distinction. But the differences come when we begin to talk about what that distinction is and what that might mean for our relationships.

I think this book can be misunderstood if you do not know the background of the author's take. It was from the book The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. It is a short book that I read before I read this. The author was disturbed by this book and after reading it I was as well. The book is about a woman in a marriage that she loses herself piece by piece because of the protective love of her husband. She becomes more lost when she attempts to speak out but only told that she does not know better and she should be put in her safe place. Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is about the yellow paper in our churches and how the church is hurting themselves in the process. I of course do not like the reality that women are hurt by the church, however, and I am not brushing over that hurt but we can easily get our broad paint brushes out and cry sexism and not see our own fault. I think the author was trying to stay away from that but as a reader it is easy to jump to conclusions. She does bring up that submission should be taught to the church as a whole. She asks the question does your church teach that submission is just as much for the men of the church as the women.

Discipleship was another big take away. We need community in the church. So many times church is so divided by women, men, student ministry, children's ministry that we do not operate as a community. Churches rightfully so are concerned by abuse in this area and neglect community all together. For me personally, I feel the problem is bigger churches make it easier for individualism instead of community. We all suffer from not doing community together. Don't add more programs, add community.

The text is in 3 parts

Recovering the way we read scripture
Recovering our mission
Recovering the responsibility of every believer.

Each chapter is commentary and ends with the Yellow wallpaper and questions to ask yourself. Some are challenging. I do struggle with placing value over something else. Are women more valuable than men? Are women undervalued? That is probably the better realistic question. And the one that Aimee Byrd is putting her heart into. In the end, she sees the church both men and women working together for God's glory. How is our church taking that glory away when we pit men and women against each other? A text that is worth contemplating.

A special thank you to

While I was really looking forward to this book because the harms and theological issues with the “biblical” manhood and womanhood movement seriously need to be addressed I was left disappointed with Byrd’s treatment for several reasons. First, the organization of the book’s arguments was lacking. The chapters didn’t seem to build on each other in a very logical way, so while certain individual examples were compelling (I especially enjoyed the chapter on Ruth), I finished the book without a coherent alternative to CBMW’s teaching.

Second, there were some very specific gaps in the book that made it difficult to understand Byrd’s theological arguments against CBMW. She seemed to assume that her readers would be familiar with the 2016 Trinitarian debates about ESS, but I was not. As a result I spent several hours doing external research on the debate to fill in the context that Byrd left out. This was a major shortcoming of the book for me and made it seem like Byrd was targeting an audience of readers who are already on the same page as her. Because of this I don’t feel I could recommend this book to peers or church members who still hold to the CBMW views. It would just leave too many questions unanswered.

The role that gender plays within Christian thought today is nothing if not confusing, ambiguous, and convoluted. Pastors within theologically conservative traditions often find themselves at a loss as to how to effectively shepherd the women in their congregations. It would be a dream to see all their congregants—men and women—equipped theologically and discipled well, and they want to exercise loving oversight of all their members, but well-placed fears begin to creep in as they call to mind all the many pastors who have mortgaged their ministries for a moment of sexual indiscretion.

The functional result, though, is that there are a wealth of opportunities for men to learn and grow and receive discipleship within the church while women have to fend for themselves, leaning upon sometimes questionable Bible study material or looking outside the church to parachurch ministries in order to get the discipleship they need. Conservative churches also want to take scripture seriously when it comes to passages that seem to teach countercultural messages about gender, but that conservative instinct is a double-edged sword because it leads churches to err—truly err—in the name of caution.

This is the morass into which Aimee Byrd wades with her latest work, Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. The title is a savage pun on a the title of a book published almost 30 years ago, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, in which John Piper and Wayne Grudem pushed back against the tide of the sexual revolution arguing that in fact biological sex is meaningful today, and that God’s word actually does speak to the question of how men and women ought to relate to one another in the home, the church, and the world. Byrd acknowledges that this was their aim and stands with them in the fight for scriptural authority (and even male-only ordination!), but nevertheless contends that the Biblical Manhood and Womanhood movement has ultimately just sort of propped up male privilege and power while undermining women and failing to acknowledge female voices and their contribution in the church and beyond.

A prophetic edge

Byrd’s book bites with the incisiveness of Old Testament prophecy, naming and identifying a multitude of ways in which the church has been unfaithful in shepherding women. For example, there is nothing wrong with volunteering in the nursery, baking a casserole for a potluck, or preparing one’s home for guests, but the insidious reality is that the church has come to see these as the only ministries open to women, and that they may not enter into the intellectual life of the church. It is a beautiful thing when women exercise motherliness and hospitality, but we need not be surprised when women exist outside that mold and thus try to cram them into our expectations. They may not speak up or teach Sunday School classes. Heck, even coed classes are viewed with suspicion! If we let women do things beyond cooking and taking care of babies, won’t we suddenly morph into a wild, crazy-eyed liberal church that rushes to stay in the graces of the current cultural moment?

There is another way, argues Byrd, which is revisiting scripture with an eye toward its female cast of characters. Through several studies of various passages in the Bible, she makes the case that women often "interrupt" the male-centric narrative in ways that help the reader see a fuller picture. Even simple interruptions like that the Book of Ruth is not called the Book of Boaz show that God is not interested in "upholding the patriarchy" but is instead demonstrating ways in which men and women are players in the grand narrative. The conservative church tends not to see these things when it is led by men and when it offers zero avenues for women to contribute to the exegetical and theological work of the church at large. When Bible study is sectioned off by gender, a brother never has the chance to see the text through his sister’s eyes, and vice versa.

Instead of defining women by what they can and cannot do, argues Byrd, we can let women be women because they are women, and not because they’re the ones who do the housework and childcare. She elaborates:

We need to stop using the word role in reference to permanent fixed identity. Roles can change, especially in different cultures. My sexuality is not a role I play. I don’t need to act like a woman; I actually am a woman. Furthermore, role playing is neither our identity nor our eternal aim.

Byrd’s point is just this, that we want there to be a script for what it precisely means to grow up into mature manhood or womanhood. We want someone to tell us the things we must do and the traits we must inhabit in order to be fully masculine or feminine. And there’s a lot of shame for a man to not be "manly" or for a woman to not be "ladylike," so we feel this pressure to do that and be that. But Byrd flips that script; you’re a woman… because you’re a woman. You’re a man… because you’re a man. Watching football, drinking cheap beer, and owning a gun doesn’t make you manly. Wearing makeup and perfume and cooking a Pinterest-worthy dinner is not what makes you feminine. Inasmuch as complementarians prescribe specific, extrabiblical requirements for masculinity and femininity upon human beings, we must see this as a binding of the conscience that will only twist and warp human beings further away from the image they are intended to bear.

Much more could be said to commend what Byrd has articulated, but for me the helpful takeaway was mostly this: we must not impose requirements upon women (and men) that the Bible does not instruct us in, and conversely we must not prohibit women from certain things (like teaching) just to be safe because it’s kinda like the preaching of an ordained elder. We must be careful to obey all that God has commanded us regarding gender and the interaction of the sexes, and we must be careful to not do what he forbids. Rather than trying to fill in the ambiguity in between with our own inferences, Byrd advocates for giving people—particularly women—freedom of conscience, although she does not spell this out in so many words.

A muddled vision

I rather wish she would have spelled that out, though. My main criticism of the book is that in spite of how crystal clear her critiques are, the book kind of meanders around, looking here and there at intriguing Bible passages, dissecting common complementarian dogma, making a suggestion or a comment... but never really outlining her thesis in a concise, positive manner. The book is divided into three sections—Recovering the Way We Read Scripture, Recovering our Mission, and Recovering the Responsibility of Every Believer—but despite this structure it never really feels like she’s shooting the arrow at a specific target. She does move from saying, "Don’t define female gender roles just by what they can’t do!" to, "Let’s prove from scripture that women CAN do at least most of those things!" which is fine as far as it goes, I suppose, but what’s the vision here? As I write this, our nation’s streets are filled with protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s death demaning the end of qualified immunity for police and the end of police brutality toward black and brown people. But that’s obviously not the end goal; the vision is that folks with black and brown skin would be seen as human beings instead of just thugs who are probably right about to commit a crime. This vision is what felt largely absent from Byrd’s work: except for a few snatches, I never really gained a sense for what her vision of rightly ordered sex and gender in the home, church, and world should be if it’s not the CBMW version and it’s not the CBE version.

Here’s the thing: you might justifiably critique CBMW complementarianism, but you have to give it credit for concretely laying out what life should look like for the average man or woman in the church who wants to live in a godly manner but who has only rudimentary training in biblical interpretation. Think of it as almost a 20th/21st century revamp of the Great Chain of Being from medieval christendom: here is your place in society, and this is what you must do to execute that role well, now go do it. Byrd points her finger multiple times at their example of a woman fetching mail from the mailman, but the charitable reading is to see this as "pastoral case law": CBMW is working so hard to help out the average man or woman that they’re even trying to help you think through the most insignificant interactions in one’s day. I happen to agree with Byrd’s critique of this scenario, but if you’re going to say, "This ain’t it, CBMW," then you need to tell us what it is.

If she comes anywhere close to giving such a positive vision of the world and how it should be, it’s her thoughts about siblingship and how that’s the lens through which we largely ought to see one another rather than headship/submission. There’s obviously plenty of biblical warrant here—it’s a common form of address in the New Testament—but it’s pretty hard to understand what content those terms hold anymore for Byrd. If we’re not going to pigeonhole a woman according to a certain set of stereotypes—like being tender and caring and homely—and if we’re going to eliminate all gender distinctions of what one may do, then how is the word "sister" any longer any different than "brother"? She suggests, "Sisters make great adult Sunday school teachers when invested in well, as well as excellent contributors in class discussion as learners. They could also contribute theologically in written resources the church offers," but I’m left wondering why, if we’re all just persons, that we should take any care at all to prioritize female voices in these spaces. Is it because their vocies tend to be in a higher register? I’m being facetious, but at the same time I’m not; if you erase all but biological distinctions, I don’t know what else would make a sister’s voice different than a brother’s.

I also tend to find the CBMW theory of gender to be somewhat unsatisfying, and to be prioritizing the preservation of a specific culture rather than fighting for fidelity to God’s revealed word. While Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood does a fantastic job of articulating the problems with complementarianism today, it falls down on presenting much of an alternative vision. It’s certainly a helpful resource to me as I think through the ways women are underserved by the church, but I think I will have to keep looking for a more positive articulation of what complementarianism could be.

DISCLAIMER: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of a fair, unbiased review.

I am grateful to net galley.com and Zondervan Reflective for an advance review copy of this book which has in no way influenced the content of the review.

I am a Pastor of a church which practices male only ordination in south west Scotland, in some senses I may have been the target audience of this book, being as I am a Conservative Evangelical Christian. I had read lots about this book before I got a copy, Christian twitter was on fire with opinion pieces and many people writing the book off.

I have to say what I found was pleasantly surprising, Byrd does a great job in this book at pointing out the speck in other people's eye (though on some occasions it seems like a massive plank to me). For instance if your manhood and your definition of manhood is so fragile that you cant ask for directions from a woman then the chances are that there is something wrong with your manhood rather than the woman's femininity. I also like Byrd's focus on how all women are not called to submit to all men, that is not a biblical concept I can find anywhere.. Certainly Paul commands woman to be subject to their own husbands but not to all men. I also learned that much theological controversy in recent years, especially around the Eternal Subordination of the Son emanated from the council for biblical manhood and womanhood which helped to crystallise for me some of the issues surrounding that issue.

However there are some problems that I found with the book, I found it frustrating when Byrd was talking about the book of Ruth how she constantly said that the main thing about the book of Ruth wasn't that it was written from a female perspective but it was display of the faithfulness of God but then the chapter went on to talk about how the book of Ruth was written from a female perspective for an entire chapter, thus suggesting that this was the main thing.

I also had some exegetical problems with the book, I dont think for instance that her defence of Pheobe bringing the most important letter ever written was that convincing. I dont think that this somehow endowed her with an apostolic authority. I think even that the way that chapter was written can be confusing, our doctrine of Scripture tells us that all scripture is God breathed, not just Romans but Song Of Songs as well, not just Romans but Chronicles as well. To be fair to Byrd I know that she would whole heartedly agree with the above statement but the writing of that chapter left me with the impression that Romans was the most important thing ever written and was somehow more inspired, more inerrant than the rest of Scripture.

I also didn't find the list of women whose houses churches met in during the years of the early church particularly convincing, Byrd argues that because the church met in their house then somehow these women must be considered as the leaders of that church. Well it could be, but it could also be that these were women of substance who just happened to have a big enough place for people to meet.

The final exegetical problem I had concerned Deborah and Barak, where Byrd claims that Barak's refusal to go without Deborah wasn't a crime of cowardice but a desire to make sure that the woman of God went with him. To me the rebuke that Deborah offers to Barak seems to show that wasn't the case. Deborah says this wont lead to your glory, (as it would had if you had obeyed willingly) for now Sisera will die by the hands of a woman. (Brackets are my own addition and not in scripture).

This is a book that needed to be written, for too long the church has confined the role of women to making tea and serving in the creche, for too long the Godly women who have kept many churches going throughout the centuries has been overlooked as soon as a man comes along. It is a book that the modern evangelical church needs to read, but in my opinion it is a book that doesn't really know what it wants to be. it is a book that falls between two stools, is it a radical feminist call for woman's ordination (which it comes close to on occasion) or is it a call for a church to reform a practice that alienates half of the congregation?

I found some of the answers unsettling, I found myself guilty of some of the things that Byrd lists, I cant go all the way with everything that Byrd writes but on the whole I have had my conceptions challenged I have thought about several different things as a result of reading this book and you will too.