This is a very powerful book. It is extraordinarily dense, but the going gets easier as you keep reading, so stick with it. The final few chapters are a tour de force. Brock's central thesis involves the claim that we have projected the mental constructs of abused children onto our conception of God and Jesus, but that understood correctly, Christianity can still offer a compelling story of the power of solidarity and faith. I think her book is the only one which salvages anything from Christianity for me at all, and what it salvages is beautiful and deep.

The problem with feminism ... is not a problem of feminism but of how we perceive it. It is not about trouble-making women, women who think they are men, or women who hate men. It is about women. And men.

Journeys by Heart by Rita Nakashima Brock, a Christian feminist, concerns power, sin, pain and freedom. The gift of feminist theology, like the gift of liberation theology, is to crack the shell of our imagined world and allow us, for the first time, to honestly see ourselves, each other, and the reality of creation, and to enter into an honest and open relationship with God.

Personally, I (as a white, male, heterosexual etc., etc.) found most interesting Brock's analysis of the culturally determined concept of power which is assigned to men. Male identity is defined by domination and submission. Yes, submission - not only our domination of others, but the domination of others over us. Our male identity, wrapped up in power and control, necessarily entails that we submit to the ideology of domination; that is, for the chance to dominate others we agree to submit to God, nation, leader, class, race, the corporate ethos, rules of morality or rules of immorality. Our identities arise from submitting to limitations imposed on us, and from the limitations we impose on others. Everything that moves is a threat to our identity. This we call freedom.

Brock leads us beyond the traditional male and female 'ideals'. The gospels, she argues, do not lead to the question: what would Jesus do in this situation? The gospels lead to the questions: how can I be myself, understanding that Christ lives in me and in all people? what is my relationship to God, Christ, others and all creation? what can I do to lessen the pain and suffering we all experience in different ways?

This is a book of reason, heart and faith. Men (and women) can learn quite a lot from this powerful volume.

I won't describe this book, as it has been adequately described by the preceeding reviews.

I will, however, repeat that this is a "must read" book IMHO. As a psychotherapist and seeker, I found this book to be very important in my own thinking toward Christianity and suffering.

For any therapist who works with childhood sexual abuse, Chapter 5 "The Unblessed Child" alone is worth the price of the book.

I would, however, like to address a point raised by a reviewer below, who criticized the book for not answering the questions that it raises. I think this is unfair criticism. The issues of suffering and violence are vastly complicated, and it is my opinion that by raising the questions and examining them in light of Christianity this book provides a great service.

Given the educational levels of the authors, I felt somewhat daunted when I began the book. To their high credit, the authors have taken complicated, emotionally charged information and have made it very accessible. I applaud the authors' courage at being willing to step forward and to tell their own stories, and to explore how their own life experiences have impacted their theology.

I look forward to hearing more from both of these authors.

This was a provocative book by two feminist theologians who shared their personal stuggles of early sexual abuse and the effect it had on their adult lives. The honesty of each is gripping. They also make a very credible tie between abuse and violence being tolerated in religious circles because of existing patriarchal beliefs and language in the Bible and religion. It is very insightful and a comfort for women who have felt abused by the Church at worse or not supported in efforts to end abuse in their lives. An eye-opener for those who have yet to be educated about the problem of language in referal to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit - A consolation for those who have.

PROVERBS OF ASHES is extraordinary. It is skillfully written, and gives a powerful, and, I believe accurate account of Christianity. The authors' description of the power of grief and how moving through it is transforming is right on. They articulate a theology of a Loving Presence which individuals can provide each other, and humanity can provide for everyone. This provides love and healing. Not the defensive denial that traditional Christianity gives us.

I am a licensed clinical social worker, and a woman who has experience repeated abuse in her life, which was supported by Christianity. This book spoke to the core of my being.

Chris Walker, LCSW

"Casting Stones" is a very well written book about prositution and the reasons behind prositutions. In reading this book you will find that the authors took this subject and the writing of the book very seriously, researching, visiting, and speaking to prosituties and those in the prositution industry.

Perhaps, most interesting is the information that the authors provided on Asian prositution. The authors, traveled to Asia to research the economic, cultural, and religious reasons behind prositution. An example of some of the topics that are discussed: sex tourism in Asian countries, how young girls are perfered due to the AIDS epidemic, and the mindframe of prositutes which prevents them from leaving prosituition.

It should also be noted that the authors wrote this book from a Christian theologoian perspective, with a sensitivity to other religions and ways of life. This is a very interesting book with a different view of prosituition, and a worthy read.

Politics, sex, global economics, religion: sounds like a pot-boiling fiction best seller. But, while there are many harrowing scenes and both despicable and heroic characters, there's precious little "romance" in this study of prostitution and the international sex trade in Asia (Korea, Japan, Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan) and the United States. As the authors quote one prostitute, "It kind of kills you, but it's over fast." And yet, one Thai military officer, suspected of being more than a customer, took offence at the authors' use of the term "sex industry"!

The authors, both Christian feminists, interviewed hundreds of prostitutes and those who would provide them refuge on both sides of the Pacific, and their analysis owes much to Liberation Theology, particularly Korean minjung theology.

"Evil," they write, "should be reconceived as whatever increases human helplessness, reinforces or inflicts pain without a healing purpose, and/or creates separation from relationships of love and nurture. Those three things - helplessness, pain, and separation - define evil as it is experienced by those exploited by the sex industry." It is no surprise, the authors point out, that this particular form of evil trade has taken root in and between the United States and (with the exception of Singapore) the most developed and developing countries of Eastern Asia. "The temptations of market economic theory are to reduce every aspect of human life to its value in the marketplace. .... The way in which certain economic systems contribute to human sin is to institutionalize the lack of care in a society and to make the consequences of this lack of care invisible."

This is an extraordinarily written, researched and thoroughly thought out work. The authors do their humanly best to understand and have compassion for all the players in this industry. As an introduction to how the world presently works, there may be no better book.

Read it.

I think the review, "Fails at the start" is a conclusive refutation to the entire book. If our very definition of justice comes from the words and acts of God, then whatever he does is ipso facto just, and it is nonsense to say that he is unjust or abusive. The author may not like the way God is, but God cannot be said to be unjust.

This book, with all its pages of argumentation, fails at the fundamental level. That is, it fails to answer the question of how we may define good and evil, justice and injustice. The Bible never describes God as unjust, but rather that any concept of justice is derived from his words and actions.

If God is BY DEFINITION just, then I question where this book obtains its definitions of justice and injustice by which to judge God. The book's definitions could not have come from God himself, since he never calls himself unjust. If the definitions come merely from the author's mind, then this book only tells us something about the author's anti-biblical thinking, and says nothing about God himself. And if the definitions come from anywhere else other than God, then they are non-authoritative and cannot be used to evaluate God at all.

As the Bible says, Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Let God be true, and every man a liar.

Thus, this book fails from the start; it does not pose any challenge at all to orthodox Christianity.

This is, bar none, the most uncompromisingly and unflinchingly honest work of theology I have read in 35+ years of studying the subject. Blumenthal's proximate subject is the Holocaust, but his ultimate subject is holocaust-as-such, not only **the** Holocaust -- in particular, those experiences of holocaust, personal and individual as well as historical and communal, in which God's tendency to abuse His/Her children are nakedly manifest. Most moving of all, in terms of individual holocaust, are the comments of one of Blumenthal's colleagues at Emory Univ, herself a survivor of the holocaust of childhood sexual abuse, who was given the MS for evaluation and comment. Christian theologians, this writer included, would do well to ponder a conclusion Blumenthal never states explicitly, but which is inescapably latent in his text: for a holocaust survivor, the only authentic and honest mode of theological discourse is the rhetoric of deliberate blasphemy. Perhaps respect for God ends where the experience of holocaust begins. If this book, and that possibility raised thereby, does not keep you awake nights, then take warning: your soul may quite possibly be dead.