After Eden: Facing the Challenge of Gender Reconciliation

The title of this book is an appropriate one for a study of gender relations, for we live not in but after Eden -- a fact that is especially evident in the ongoing tensions between men and women. Reflecting much careful deliberation, After Eden not only deals sensitively with the painful realities of broken gender relations but also puts forth a biblically inspired vision of shalom, healing, hope and reconciliation. Written from an informed Christian perpective by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, the book discusses the history of feminism in its Christian and secular forms, analyses the tensions and compatibilities between Reformed chritianity and feminism, and looks at the relationship of gender to various cultural and social institutions. What makes After Eden unique is its wide-ranging scope; no other book treats, as this one does, the systematic embedding of gender issues in all areas of life.

Not to engage in needless meta-criticism, but I agreed with most of the first reviewers comments, but was troubled by the second. It seems more likely that this reviewer was angry to begin with, than angered by Van Leeuwen's book itself. It seems as though this reviewer would have us do nothing more than raise awareness of existing problems, rather than attempting to make real steps towards a solution. The fact that this book aproaches the problem of gender disharmony from a judeo-christian perspective, is no more or less legitimate than aproaching it from a Marxist or Foucaultian perspective. To suggest that a religious approach is illigitimate purely on the grounds that it is religious is simply intollerant and guilty of the same opressive qualities that the previous reviewer finds so distasteful.

The authors proceed respectfully and sensitively, and given their topic, this speaks well of their efforts. It is true, as a previous reviewer pointed out, that as part of their Christian convictions, these authors are not content with laying blame and casting denunciations in the direction of the violators of modern sexual orthodoxy. Reconciliation, not retribution is their aim. The attitudes of sexual McCarthyism, with its angry dispensations of global and irrevocable "guilty" verdicts all around, are rightly seen as harmful to constructive progress in gender relations. If you cherish your hard-earned bitterness, then indeed Christianity is not for you, and neither is this book. The rest of us may need help going forward, healing the wounds we've suffered as well as those we've inflicted. May we lament the day when learning how to treat one another justly and in accordance with the good and the best for all humans is not politically correct. The rest of us, then, might find this book worth reading (rather than illiberally dismissing the contribution of these authors as irrelevant by caricaturing their religious tradition).