Never before have I had a more difficult time reading a book, than when I tried to read Aimee Byrd’s “Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose.” I know I am a little behind the times with this review as the book made a big stir in 2020 but I must say my piece about it.
This book is garbage. I find very little redeemable about it.
It is filled with disingenuous representations (strawman arguments) and what I found to be incoherent ramblings at times. Early on in the book, she goes on about “how come women’s bibles have flowers on them.” I actually wrote in the margin “why is she wasting my time with this?”She repeatedly uses a yellow wallpaper metaphor with a smugness that didn’t drive any point home for me, but made me want to scream “enough already!”She makes huge leaps in her scriptural interpretations that left me embarrassed to have paid money for this book. I don’t know how many times I wrote in the margins “misrepresentation.” I find her to be quite dishonest. She writes as if every far-right fundamental church is a prime example of how every church treats women.
She is a blogger in a sea of bloggers who got her feelings hurt because big-name evangelists wouldn’t respond to her. That is exactly how this book reads. A child throwing a tantrum.
It makes me sick in my heart to see other women saying “this is exactly the book we need.’ I 100% agree that the modern church has to shake off the 1950’s American culture that has often formed church policy, but this book wasn’t the insightful book I hoped for.
IF you plan to read this book, please keep your Bible close by and check her citations. Be on guard for her tug on your emotions to deconstruct your beliefs, instead of sound biblical theology.
