Katelyn Beaty - A Womans Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World

Praise for A Womans Place

A Womans Place will ignite a long overdue and healthy conversation in our churches about women and work. I loved this book, and I wish I could put it in the hands of every woman I know.

Sarah Bessey, author of Jesus Feminist

Whether you are a man or a woman, whether you work at school, an office, or home, A Womans Place will inform, challenge, and inspire you.

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph.D., author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me

Insightful... Incisive commentary on how cultural mores have been overlaid on biblical texts should help the Christian community pry off those faulty, how-it-is assumptions and free us to explore the reforms needed to get to how-it-ought-to-be.

Amy L. Sherman, author of Kingdom Calling

Women in all life stages will benefit from Katelyn Beatys holistic and positive theology of work, whether that work is carpools or corporate board meetingsor both.

Kara Powell, Ph.D., author of Sticky Faith and Growing Young

As this excellent book evidences, a womans place is throughout the culture. Indeed, where women are not present the world lacks its full depth.

Dave Blanchard, cofounder and CEO of Praxis

Whether you are a man or a woman, this will challenge your thinking and encourage you to a better and deeper view of vocation.

Ed Stetzer, executive director of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention

Opens our eyes to the central place work has for every image bearer of God... A must-read book for both women and men.

Tom Nelson, president of Made to Flourish

With characteristic transparency, elegance, and prophetic strength, Katelyn Beaty has given us a book that I pray will have a profound influence on women and men alike.

Scott Sauls, author of Jesus Outside the Lines

Shows... what it means for women to take their places alongside men in fulfilling Gods command to cultivate the world.... Convincingly calls each of us, female and male, to a wiser, fuller, and healthier life.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies, Crandall University, Moncton, Canada

Advocating for the empowerment of women to fulfill their God-given roles, Katelyn Beaty looks throughout Scripture and history for insights. What she finds is an encouragement to every woman who feels called to workboth inside and outside the home.

D. Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College

Work is an essential part of being made in Gods image, and women are essential image bearers. Katelyn Beatys A Womans Place brings reflection on Scripture and an informed mind to help answer the question implied in the titlea womans place is to be an agent of shalom working with dignity and strength in all spheres of Gods redemptive plan for a flourishing creation.

John Ortberg, senior pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and author of All the Places to Go , and Nancy Ortberg, CEO of Transforming the Bay with Christ

Long needed, Beaty offers a thoughtful integration of secular and Christian thought about the emerging possibilities and continued challenges facing women in Americas professional workplace.

Daniel W. Miller, director of Princeton Universitys Faith & Work Initiative and president of the Avodah Institute

A thoughtful biblical perspective on women and work has been long overdue, but thanks to Katelyn Beatys excellent A Womans Place , the wait is over. May this thorough and provocative treatment of a tremendously important subject find the widest possible audience.

Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and host of The Eric Metaxas Show

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Copyright 2016 by Katelyn Beaty

Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIC Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Howard Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Howard Books hardcover edition July 2016

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Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

Jacket design by Studio Gearbox

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Beaty, Katelyn, author.

Title: A woman's place: a Christian vision for your calling in the office, the home, and the world / Katelyn Beaty.

Description: Nashville, TN: Howard Books, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015048793

Subjects: LCSH: Christian womenReligious life. | Christian womenEmployment.

Classification: LCC BV4527 .B393 2016 | DDC 261.8/8082dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015048793

ISBN 978-1-4767-9409-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-9416-7 (ebook)

For Granny and Boompa, who said I was going places

C hristine, why cant you be like the other girls? Why dont you play with dolls instead of spending so much time reading? That cant be healthy.

Christine, stop playing soccer with the boys. You should be in the kitchen learning to cook.

Why do you spend so much time on schoolwork? Boys dont like girls who are smarter than they are. No boy will want to marry you.

The message I heard as a young girl was loud and clear: A good Greek girl should want to learn to cook and play with dolls because her real purpose, her ultimate future, was to grow up, get married, and have babies.

When I turned seventeen, my family introduced me to a nice Greek man who owned a small grocery store. We fell in love, and he asked me to marry him. Then it was time to have the conversation with his parents. We Greeks like to keep everything in the family.

Christine, if you go to university, you cannot marry our son, his mother said. A woman cannot be more educated than her husband because she will not respect him. You must put away all of these foolish desires for further education and come and work full-time in the family business until you have babies, and then you can work part-time and I will look after the children for you.

So, it seemed that my mother had been right after all. If I wanted to fulfill the purpose for which I had been created, I would have to quench my passions and minimize who God created me to be. I could of course work as my own mother had worked for all of my life, as long as that work did not involve any kind of career or vocation that would take me away from getting married and having children. Work was a necessity to help the family budget, but it could not be a sacred calling or any part of my identity.