Faithfully Dissident Daughters
by Chelsea Kim Long
My rating: 0 / 5
Genre: Christian non-fiction
I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t have some concerns about this book before I started reading it. When I was offered an ARC, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to see what Chelsea Kim Long had to say about Christian womanhood. However, this is not a Christian book. This is a pagan book masquerading as a Christian book. That may be a bold claim to make, and I’m sure many won’t agree with me. I’ll sum up my review below with this: Long denies the sin of Adam and Eve, the fall and the curse that was then passed on to all future generations, that we are all born into, and the very reason we needed a perfect, sacrificial Lamb to die for us.
Quoted from the book: “In the beginning, God created humanity and called it good, a reflection of the image of God. Yet somehow, much of mainstream Christian culture paints our humanity in a negative light” (pg. 14). But we paint our humanity in a negative light because of what came after God called us good. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought the curse of sin on all humanity thereafter. She spends pages picking apart Jeremiah 17:9—”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (ESV)—because she doesn’t want to think of her heart as “bad.” She says she no longer sees herself as a sinner with a “deceitful” heart. Which is 100% unbiblical. What about Romans 3:23, which says that all have sinned? Does her new version of the Bible say “all but women have sinned”? “All but feminists”? “All but those who decide to deconstruct their faith”?
Long grew up in a church that might not have been the most helpful for a child learning about God, if she was taught that a woman is only seen as godly if she gets married and has kids (in natural homebirths, apparently). I have to admit that the Jeremiah verse I mentioned earlier wouldn’t be the first one I’d drill into the head of a new believer of any age, which apparently happened to her. She seems to still want to call herself a Christian, but I’m not sure why she bothers. If it weren’t for the sin of Adam and Eve, there would have been no reason for Christ to die and be resurrected. (Seriously, why would anyone go through all of that without very good reason?!) More personally for Long, if she doesn’t see herself as sinful, then she doesn’t need Christ or his redemptive work, and what would it even mean to be a Christian then?
Long defends what she’s doing here against anyone who might claim that she’s in the wrong by telling us to look at her fruit. Because yes, in Matthew 7:17-18, Jesus says, “So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit” (ESV). On the other hand, she also claims that, “The fruit of the Spirit is not something you have to work to attain. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control already exist within you…” (pg. 18, emphasis mine). Note that this is the fruit of the Spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit, i.e. God, not the fruit of humanity. It does not already exist within us; only God is good! The fruit I’m seeing from Chelsea Kim Long is this book in which she encourages readers to interpret the Bible however they see fit and proceeds to do so for us to a scary degree. Since it’s pretty clear that Long doesn’t believe that the Bible is 100% accurate, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by anything she says in this book. She also clearly doesn’t believe God is sovereign, or she would trust that He could have kept His Word protected to make sure that important concepts weren’t completely left out or skewed so badly that only a sect of deconstructionists could uncover the real meaning.
Here are some further examples of the ways that Long has managed to make the Bible fit her own ideas, in brief. (I know some of these aren’t as important to all Christians as they are to me, but I’m still going to include them all.) The author/the book:
• is pro-abortion
• is against God’s plan for gender and sexuality
• is pro-evolution (at least implied)
• skews God to be female
• is pro-yoga and other New Age/mystic beliefs
• is pro-idol worship (at least implied)
Let me talk about that last one in more detail. On page 27, Long talks favorably about people who used to worship female gods, claiming that it wasn’t until later that the Hebrew scriptures turned religion into a patriarchy. But since God existed before the universe was created, God refers to himself using male terms in the Bible (Father, Son, etc.), and “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Timothy 3:16 ESV), it is 100% unbiblical to claim that people were worshiping female gods before men came along and forced a change. Beyond that, though, my basis for saying that the author/book is pro-idol worship is because taking what you don’t like out of the Bible/Christianity and making it what you want is setting up your own religion. Your own idols. Full stop.
I do understand that men have treated women badly throughout history and plenty of them back up their actions using the Bible. But people in general have used the Bible incorrectly to back up all sorts of terrible, violent, sinful behaviors, not only in the male vs. female arena. This is because the world is fallen, not because God isn’t sovereign or the Bible isn’t true. Anyone who deconstructs Christianity and removes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Bible, sin, and the need for a Savior is left with…nothing. Certainly nothing resembling Christianity. And that’s what we have here. Please be aware of that if you decide to read this book. In case it’s not clear, I not only don’t recommend this book to anyone, I would actively warn against it. For any Christian women who are looking for books about true biblical womanhood, I would recommend Made to Be She by Kristen Clark & Bethany Beal instead.
I received an advanced review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Find out more about Faithfully Dissident Daughters
If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!
