FEMININE APPEAL
By Carolyn Mahaney
Crossway. 188 pages. £9.99
ISBN 1 58134 615 8
Feminists, like Marilyn French, get very cross and call it the evangelical backlash — this steady output over the last decade from Christian women writers commending biblical womanhood. This book is one of the best to date. It is up there with God’s Design for Women and Disciplines of a Godly Woman.
Its subtitle, Seven Virtues of a Godly Wife and Mother, indicates that we are dealing with a list. People like lists, as is manifest by the briefest glance at TV programming schedules. But unlike The Ten Worst TV Programmes Ever Made, this list of seven virtues is neither subjective nor random nor whimsical: it is biblical. It takes the seven virtues listed in Titus 2.4-5. Carolyn Mahaney, as the older woman addressing the younger woman (i.e. the reader) examines each of these virtues in turn to unpick its meaning, relevance and application.
