The most comprehensive treatment I have ever seen regarding the God-given sacredness of women's lives.

from the foreword by David Gushee

Christian faith declares every human being to be created in the image of God, dearly beloved by God and endowed with sacred worth. Yet child marriage, coerced reproduction, and domestic violence are all-too-common realities in the lives of countless women. Slicing powerfully through age-old tactics of obfuscation and misdirection, McKinney-Timm shows how no Christian articulation of the demands of neighbor-love can be complete if it ignores the vast injustices being inflicted today on women and girls, whether around the globe or right at home. A clarion call.

Jennifer A. Herdt, Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale University Divinity School, USA

As a secular, gender-equality human rights advocate and scholar for over thirty years, I can attest that the promise of If Women's Lives Were Sacred flows beyond those working to support women's rights from within Christianity. For all of us who seek to build sustainable coalitions across faith and secular movements for 'equal justice', as McKinney-Timm's names our goal, her clear elaboration of first principles, articulation of common interests, honest reckoning with tensions and historical accountability, and insistence on the transformative potential of faith creates a space for meaningful and long-term work across movements in these hard and regressive times.

Ali Miller, Faculty Co-Director Global Health Justice Partnership of the Yale Law and Public Health Schools, USA

Women's struggles for full humanity in the bedroom, boardroom, legislature, and battlefield become harder every day against a backdrop of White Christian Nationalism. Nothing less than human sacredness is at stake. Allyson McKinney Timm offers welcome, well documented insights into how progressive feminist Christian teachings can reshape the landscape.

Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D, Co-director, Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER)

This unflinching, Christian ethical investigation of women's rights and sacredness makes the case for policy changes we need right now. If Women's Lives Were Sacred seamlessly weaves together a global view, including U.S., Ugandan, and Sierra Leone contexts. By probing public practices that endanger women's wellbeing, it accessibly explains the bite of discrimination while fervently stirring up a commitment to equality.

Traci West, Professor Emerita of Christian Ethics and African American Studies, Drew Theological School, USA

In a world where anti-feminist Christian movements in the U.S. and globally are rolling back hard-won gains for women, Allyson McKinney Timm offers the brave, biblically rooted, and morally urgent rebuttal the church needs: women's lives are sacred, and any Christianity worthy of the name must defend their full humanity, agency, and rights. This is a clarion call for the church to repent of its complicity in gender oppression and become what it was always meant to be-a force for liberation, justice, and equal dignity.

Rev. Jennifer Butler, Founder, Faith in Democracy, USA