reading reflections

While I was sitting at camp with Micah this morning, I finished reading A New Gospel for Women. This book, which is part biography and part theology, highlights Katharine Bushnell and her work in the purity movement and in translating Scripture. 

Bushnell insisted that Christian theology was being used to abuse women and establish a sexual double standard. She also insisted that it was a twisted interpretation of Scripture that subjugated women and that Scripture itself brought life and freedom to both men and women. 

Her work began, in many ways, in her first trip overseas to China as a medical missionary. She saw translations in the Chinese Bible that were misleading about women. The missionaries she consulted shrugged their shoulder and did not seem to think it really mattered. That was the beginning of her devoting “her spare moments to a meticulous examine of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures” (40).

When she returned from her work in China, she established a medical practice in Denver but quickly ended up working among the prostitutes in Denver, a city which, at the time, had one of the most notorious districts in the nation (45). 

Though she did not spend the remainder of her life in practice as a doctor, her work as a doctor was the springboard to what she is now remembered for. It seems that, in the economy of the kingdom, nothing is wasted. She was willing to look at inconsistencies and also find blame in the groups that she belonged to instead of pointing the finger outward. 

After I finished reading the book, I made this list of questions. 

-what would bushnell go back and change?
-how could (could?) she have established a new group to work together after she was edged out of/left the ones she was part of?
-was she part of a church community?
-could she have been curious about new movements toward the end of her life- committed to dialogue and conversation? 
-what about creating a place for women who agreed with her interpretations to gather and worship and grow? 
-did she have male allies?