Why am I passionate about this?

I do what I do for completely self-interested reasons. I am a woman, wife, and mother; a history professor specializing in the Catholic Church and gender; and a Christian (Episcopalian). I used to compartmentalize those roles. I was a Christian at church, a secular scholar at work, etc. It was exhausting. I was frustrated by conflicting messages about gender and faith from my family, profession, and religion. I wanted to be true to all aspects of my identity in all situations, but how? History is full of people who’ve questioned and adapted at the intersections of gender and religion. I learn from their journeys and add another piece of the puzzle.


I wrote

Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829

By Lisa McClain,

Book cover of Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829

What is my book about?

Christian churches in the 21st century wrestle with expanding opportunities for laypeople to participate in ministry, sacrament, and leadership of…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Bitch: On the Female of the Species

Lisa McClain Why did I love this book?

Cooke’s hilarious, spot-on exploration of how we humans create our understandings of female nature and capabilities may seem an odd starting point, but bear with me.

Cooke exposes how scientists and scholars for centuries have mis-reported and normalized views about males and females that have little to do with actual science and much to do with the gendered attitudes of the scientists. We all have presumptions about gender roles we don’t question.

But to explore the intersections of gender and faith we need to become aware of our pre-conceptions and how we got them. From Dick the sage grouse to elder female leadership within orca pods, you’ll be laughing while gob-smacked at the shaky biological foundation of many of our gender presumptions about what is “natural” for males and females.

By Lucy Cooke,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Bitch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

Lisa McClain Why did I love this book?

Cooke makes us question what we think we know about gender.

MacCulloch makes us rethink what we think we know about Christianity. There are so many books of Christian history on the market it can be overwhelming. Many have social, theological, or political agendas. Not MacCulloch. A scholar of the first tier, MacCulloch unpacks Christianity, but this is no textbook.

With clarity and readability, MacCulloch rejects traditional Eurocentric narratives to explore Syriac churches, Thomist Christians in India, Orthodoxy, and the oft-forgotten Church of the East. He emphasizes how the strength of Christianity in all its different forms hasn’t been its supposedly unchanging nature but its adaptability—an important lesson to take into discussions of gender, lay roles, and religion.

By Diarmaid MacCulloch,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Christianity as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Diarmaid MacCulloch's epic, acclaimed history A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years follows the story of Christianity around the globe, from ancient Palestine to contemporary China.

How did an obscure personality cult come to be the world's biggest religion, with a third of humanity its followers? This book, now the most comprehensive and up to date single volume work in English, describes not only the main facts, ideas and personalities of Christian history, its organization and spirituality, but how it has changed politics, sex, and human society.

Taking in wars, empires, reformers, apostles, sects, churches and crusaders, Diarmaid…


Book cover of Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

Lisa McClain Why did I love this book?

I don’t always agree with Bart Ehrman, but I do here. Forgeries, heresies, martyrs, even unfamiliar texts featuring women (who was Thecla and why was she hanging around with Paul?) contribute to an engaging read.

Whereas MacCulloch provides the “big picture” of Christian history, Ehrman targets the first centuries of Christianity—those centuries so critical to current debates about gender and lay roles in churches—to help us understand what we don’t understand about holy texts, especially ones that never made it into Christian Bible.

Ehrman takes us into the thought processes of early Church communities to help us see how Christians made decisions that shaped church policies relevant to gendered and lay leadership today.

By Bart D. Ehrman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Lost Christianities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.
In Lost Christianities, Bart D. Ehrman offers a fascinating look at these early forms of Christianity and shows how they came to be suppressed, reformed, or forgotten. All of these groups insisted that they upheld the teachings…


Book cover of The Hidden History of Women's Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West

Lisa McClain Why did I love this book?

So many Christian churches struggle over who ought to lead. Do female priests/pastors fulfill or discount God’s intentions? How does one know? Scripture? Tradition?

Macy digs into the long-term history and finds that women were clearly ordained in the early church, but evidence of that ordination has been erased or explained away. Women used to perform many duties that we associate with religious leadership today, including some sacraments.

Furthermore, some were ordained, receiving vestments, staffs, and mitres. Their gradual exclusion from their traditional roles happened over centuries and was virtually complete by the 13th century, as the Church redefined ordination in ways that excluded women and their ministries.

Then we rewrote the history to make it appear women had never been ordained. Again, no agenda here—just the history.

By Gary Macy,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hidden History of Women's Ordination as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Roman Catholic leadership still refuses to ordain women officially or even to recognize that women are capable of ordination. But is the widely held assumption that women have always been excluded from such roles historically accurate? How might the current debate change if our view of the history of women's ordination were to change?
In The Hidden History of Women's Ordination, Gary Macy offers illuminating and surprising answers to these questions. Macy argues that for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity, women were in fact ordained into various roles in the church. He uncovers references to the ordination…


Book cover of Dissident Daughters: Feminist Liturgies in Global Context

Lisa McClain Why did I love this book?

In this inspiring collection, Catholic and Protestant women from nations such as Peru, Korea, South Africa, Australia, and Iceland reveal how women are already leading in a variety of Christian denominations worldwide.

Authors explain their religious communities’ history, ministries, and understandings of gender and religion. Then each shares a religious rite created by the women of their Christian community. The diverse rituals reflect Christianity’s ability to adapt to the needs of believers, meeting them “where they are.”

Examples include the incorporation of indigenous elements in worship; use of the body through dance/artistry; and attention to gendered concerns such as domestic violence, poverty, and reproductive rights. These women’s leadership and rituals are not separate from mainstream Christianity. They are part of it.

A great idea book for people looking to incorporate gender more inclusively into worship.

By Teresa Berger (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dissident Daughters as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With its focus on narratives, its attention to contextual and material realities, and its collection of women-identified liturgies in global context, Dissident Daughters claims prominence within the growing literature on women's ways of worship. This book not only introduces liturgical texts, but focuses on the communities that create and celebrate these liturgies. Dissident Daughters gives voice to the women activists in these communities who show how their communities came into being; how social, cultural, and political realities shaped them and their liturgies; and how they envision their lives in and as communities of faith. In drawing the different narratives together,…


Explore my book 😀

Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829

By Lisa McClain,

Book cover of Divided Loyalties? Pushing the Boundaries of Gender and Lay Roles in the Catholic Church, 1534-1829

What is my book about?

Christian churches in the 21st century wrestle with expanding opportunities for laypeople to participate in ministry, sacrament, and leadership of the Church, particularly over whether women should be ordained to the priesthood/ministry. Some Christians welcome such possibilities. Others fear them.

Catholicism faced such challenges after English King Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534. For almost 300 years, Catholicism was illegal throughout the British Isles, an underground faith. Divided Loyalties explores how Catholics experimented with new understandings of women’s and men’s roles in family life, ritual, and religious leadership in their quest to be both good Catholics and good subjects. The lessons learned inform our contemporary discussions, not only about women’s and men’s natural and God-given roles but also about divine power and authority itself.

Book cover of Bitch: On the Female of the Species
Book cover of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years
Book cover of Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew

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Lyle Greenfield Author Of Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation

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Why am I passionate about this?

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