God's Leading Lady

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 6 MAY 2002

In the tradition of Woman, Thou Art Loosed! and The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord, Bishop Jakes continues to uplift Christian women with this charge for them to step out of the shadows and take their positions onstage as "God's leading ladies." The stage metaphor is carried throughout; Jakes encourages women to master the art of improvisation (to "put aside pre-arranged scripts... and go with what works in the moment") and to transcend "life's outtakes" (embarrassing failures). The writing style is vintage Jakes: he poses rhetorical but energetic questions to the reader, shares personal examples from his own life and draws upon the models other women have provided for success. He profiles several biblical women who knew how to step into the limelight: Deborah, Jael, Mary the mother of Jesus, Ruth, Sarah, Tamar and Eve all get juicy roles in Jakes's production. He deals with some sticky biblical passages, arguing, for example, that the let-wives-be-subject-to-their-husbands verse in Ephesians has too often been "taken out of context and used to suppress women and rob them of their voices." Jakes also points to modern-day "leading ladies," such as radio magnate Cathy Hughes, television icon Oprah Winfrey and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as role models. Some of his self-help advice is clich d; readers are asked to decide, for example, whether their trials will make them "bitter or better." Overall, however, Jakes offers a fresh and compassionate summons for women to recognize their divine worth.