Holy Misogyny

Written with eloquence and flair, Holy Misogyny sets out to expose the numerous theological, political, and rhetorical conspiracies that have dethroned women, woman, and “the female” from sacred significance in the Christian West. Better known for her work on Gnostic Christian texts and traditions, in Holy Misogyny, April DeConick addresses a larger audience of students, scholars, and readers interested in understanding how conventional forms of Christianity became, well, conventional. Dissatisfied with the apparent inevitability of Christian misogyny, DeConick has adopted the historian's strategy of assembling evidence to show that things could be (and in fact were) different. Social forms are achieved, not natural, and, as a human product, theology does not describe what truly is but what theologians wish were so. Thus, what is needed is another, more persuasive historical counter-narrative, one that uncovers a now lost golden age when “the female” was also divine, nonprocreative sex could be holy, and women led their Christian communities.

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