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Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership Hardcover – March 6, 2019
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This book reveals new early Christian evidence that Mary was remembered as a powerful role model for women leaders―women apostles, baptizers, and presiders at the ritual meal. Early Christian art portrays Mary and other women clergy serving as deacon, presbyter/priest, and bishop.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
- Print length312 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
- Publication dateMarch 6, 2019
- Dimensions6.25 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-103030111105
- ISBN-13978-3030111106
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Ally Kateusz has written an engaging and extensively researched book examining the evidence for liturgical roles for women in the early Church. … Mary and Early Christian Women will certainly be encouraging to those girls and women who have only seen examples of male leadership in the Church, and for whom the example of Mary has been misused and abused, by providing an alternative image of an empowered, active Mary as a type for female leadership in the early Church.” (Nell Whiscombe, Modern Believing, Vol. 64 (4), 2023)
“This book will inspire Christian scholars, ministers, and congregations to rethink their perspectives on gender roles in Christianity. … this book will assist in breaking the prevalent misperception that early church women leaders were rare. It will challenge readers to fully acknowledge that women have been integrally present throughout Christian history.” (JungJa Joy Yu, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, April 27, 2021)
“Ally Kateusz presents a multidisciplinary analysis of literary texts, church art, and church … . She supports her literary and iconographic claims with official church commissions, directives, and commentaries, sometimes made by popes. …. For scholars, the book is a treasure trove, with thirty-nine pages of references and fifty pages of notes. … Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership is a stimulating read and the author’s perspective on imagination and Christian history will make you think. Highly recommended.” (Elizabeth Ursic, Cross-Currents, Vol. 71 (1), March, 2021)
“Mary and Early Christian Women would certainly interest readers who are invested in women’s roles in churches and especially readers invested in Catholicism. … The artwork included in this book is stunning, and the images portray Mary and other women in significant liturgical roles. Overall, Mary and Early Christian Women is a significant contribution to the field for its attention to extracanonical texts, artistic analysis, and its accessibility.” (Christy Cobb, RBL, Review of Biblical Literature, Issue 12, 2020)
Review
“Using numerous tables of textual comparisons and illustrations, Ally Kateusz shows what rapidly becomes obvious. Women did what men did: teaching, leading worship, baptising. They were apostles, priests and bishops. She concentrates on Mary the Mother of Jesus, and the evidence in texts and images for her as a leader, teacher and high priest in the early Church. The case is set out clearly and the evidence is meticulously presented. This is a brilliant book, a landmark.” (Margaret Barker, author of The Mother of the Lord: The Lady in the Temple)
“Mary and Early Christian Women draws back the veil on the earliest representations of the Virgin Mary and her sister saints in both narrative and visual art to reveal a tradition in which women served alongside men as prayer-leaders, preachers, and baptizers. Exemplary in its attention to detail, this book raises potentially shattering questions about the role of women in the early Church.” (Rachel Fulton Brown, author of Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought, Associate Professor of History, The University of Chicago)
“Mary and Early Christian Women provides a range of resources for re-thinking women’s roles and leadership in the third through tenth centuries of Christianity that surpasses anything we have seen. Commanding and explaining dozens of visual images never seen together before, Ally Kateusz provides a depth, breadth, and technical detail that will need years to appreciate and understand fully. This visual material, alongside some important texts, opens major paths to dramatically valorize women protagonists in the crucial eras after the first two centuries.” (Hal Taussig, Professor of New Testament (retired), Union Theological Seminary, USA)
“Dr. Kateusz provides irrefutable proof of women taking part in early church ministries.” (John Wijngaards, author of Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates)From the Back Cover
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license.
This book reveals exciting early Christian evidence that Mary was remembered as a powerful role model for women leaders―women apostles, baptizers, and presiders at the ritual meal. Early Christian art portrays Mary and other women clergy serving as deacon, presbyter/priest, and bishop. In addition, the two oldest surviving artifacts to depict people at an altar table inside a real church depict women and men in a gender-parallel liturgy inside two of the most important churches in Christendom―Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the second Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Dr. Kateusz’s research brings to light centuries of censorship, both ancient and modern, and debunks the modern imagination that from the beginning only men were apostles and clergy.
About the Author
Dr. Ally Kateusz is Research Associate at the Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research in London. She is a cultural historian whose work focuses on religion and gender. Her research has been published in the Journal of Early Christian Studies, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, as well as other venues, and has won prestigious awards.
Product details
- Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2019 edition (March 6, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 312 pages
- ISBN-10 : 3030111105
- ISBN-13 : 978-3030111106
- Item Weight : 1.46 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,216 in Feminist Theory (Books)
- #5,375 in History of Christianity (Books)
- #6,741 in Christian Church History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Ally Kateusz, PhD, is a cultural historian specializing in the leadership roles of women during the early Christian era and Late Antiquity. Her research focuses on the intersection of religion and gender in art and text. She employs ancient iconography to help recover the nearly lost memories of women's ritual and liturgical authority.
Dr. Kateusz has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Early Christian Studies and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, as well as other venues. Her research has won a First Prize Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award, a Feminae Journal Article of the Month, and the First Place Otis Worldwide Outstanding Dissertation award. She is Research Associate with the Wijngaards Institute of Catholic Research in London.
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The biggest surprise for me was that some of the evidence of women in ministry and leadership was redacted, obscured, or completely hidden over time. In a hunt for unvarnished truth, Kateusz quotes from enemies of the early church in order to highlight the prominent place women had in the spread of Christianity.
This book is on the scholarly side, so don't recommend it as the first thing you read on this subject. However, this book opened up several rabbit holes of people, events, and topics that I had never encountered before but want to study more.
Please note that all of the one star reviews are left here by men. Please upvote the reviews by those who actually read it, if those reviews help you.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
What the author and cultural historian, Ally Kateusz, has done here in her book has been to show her readers that women going back to the dawn of Christianity have played an important role. Art has always shown what life was like ages ago and Christian art is no exception as it shown women functioning as leaders of the Christian faith such as elders or ministers of Christian churches.
The author’s expertise focuses around the connection art had regarding between women and religion during the early Christian period and Late Antiquity through the utilization of visual images and symbols found in a work of art from this period of time.
And if we’re looking for evidence regarding a woman’s role in the Christian faith, I believe it can be found in ACTS 2:17-18 [ESV], where Peter is preaching to a crowd:
17 In the last days, God says, I will pour out My Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
18 Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out My Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.
For having enlightening her readers as to role women have already played in the Christian, how can I not give Ms. Kateusz the 5 STARS she getting from this reviewer of Christian books.
Top reviews from other countries
However, it’s the formatting of the book that really lets this down. Some editing would have helped immensely. As most chapters made clear, their contents were republished extracts of articles, and whilst the content is informative, this often created a sense of disjointed steps, as there was no real progression in the argument. Instead of evidence being pulled together into like categories and conclusions being drawn, it felt as if it was all jumbled together and lost in the midst of everything else. Therefore, the evidence loses its distinctive force both on an individual level and a cumulative level.
To be clear, I’m not criticising the point Ally Kateusz is making within *Mary and Early Christian Women*—I’m already biased towards her view. But because of the way that her sources are presented, I’m not sure it’ll do much to convince those who need convincing.
As an extra note: I’ve noticed that some other reviewers are slamming this as an example of ‘Feminist eisegesis’. There’s two problems with that claim: 1) The author gives, I feel, important reasoning for the conclusions she draws. To refute them properly, one should engage with those reasons and not just throw out slurs. And 2) Why do these same people never acknowledge that they could also be performing ‘Patriarchal eisegesis’? Shouldn’t they openly acknowledge their own bias?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2021
However, it’s the formatting of the book that really lets this down. Some editing would have helped immensely. As most chapters made clear, their contents were republished extracts of articles, and whilst the content is informative, this often created a sense of disjointed steps, as there was no real progression in the argument. Instead of evidence being pulled together into like categories and conclusions being drawn, it felt as if it was all jumbled together and lost in the midst of everything else. Therefore, the evidence loses its distinctive force both on an individual level and a cumulative level.
To be clear, I’m not criticising the point Ally Kateusz is making within *Mary and Early Christian Women*—I’m already biased towards her view. But because of the way that her sources are presented, I’m not sure it’ll do much to convince those who need convincing.
As an extra note: I’ve noticed that some other reviewers are slamming this as an example of ‘Feminist eisegesis’. There’s two problems with that claim: 1) The author gives, I feel, important reasoning for the conclusions she draws. To refute them properly, one should engage with those reasons and not just throw out slurs. And 2) Why do these same people never acknowledge that they could also be performing ‘Patriarchal eisegesis’? Shouldn’t they openly acknowledge their own bias?