Books surveying the history of Christianity have been traditionally 'his stories' describing the flaws and celebrating the achievements of great theologians, eloquent preachers, and powerful administrators. This survey makes one contribution toward redressing the balance by illuminating in broad terms the forgotten history of over half the Christian community.
It represents 'her story' not in the sense that women are treated in isolation from Western society and culture as a whole but in the sense that the focus is the status of women in the Christian tradition. The chapters cover the period from biblical times to the present day by asking questions such as: What roles did women play in leadership structures and in religious ceremonies? What roles did they find for themselves outside 'official' institutional churches or the formalities of worship? How were females and the feminine regarded in devotional and theological writing?
