Blessed Are the Women - by Claire McKeever-Burgett (Paperback)

About the Book

Blessed are the Women centers and celebrates the women of the Bible who shaped Christianity. This book invites readers to heal, reorganize worship, and connect with women's experiences past and present.

Book Synopsis

Claire McKeever-Burgett combines her own personal journey with the stories of ten remarkable women from the New Testament: Elizabeth, Mary, Anna, Eve, Adama, Miriam, Susanna, Edith, Amira, and Mary Magdalene. Through a blend of storytelling, poetry, and prayer, Blessed are the Women invites readers to reimagine worship, embrace women's narratives, and foster healing within themselves and their communities. It provides liturgies for personal or communal use, discussion questions, and connections to organizations dedicated to women's empowerment and healing. With its pastoral and prophetic approach, Blessed are the Women presents a fresh perspective on faith and spirituality, inspiring readers to find resonance between their own stories and those of women who have shaped history. This empowering and transformative work ignites a call for a more inclusive and egalitarian faith that embraces the fullness of women's voices and experiences.

Review Quotes

"Blessed are the Women is a liberating guidebook for a deeper and wider relationship with God through scripture. Rooted in the author's lived experience, it opens needed space for so many of our stories. The words within its pages show us what it can look like for women to take up space in the story of God." -- Rev. Molly Vetter, Senior Pastor, Westwood United Methodist

Church in Los Angeles

"Blessed Are the Women gives voice to the actual daily lives of biblical women. Each woman is visited in her own world, and speaks words of healing and wholeness into our world. These words are given theological depth through original music and liturgy. The music is beautiful (and singable!), the liturgical resources theologically elegant, and the suggestions for action and ethical witness at the end of each chapter open the reader's eyes to new possibilities for changing the world in which we live. I strongly recommend this book for preachers, liturgists, teachers, and small group leaders."

-- John S. McClure, Charles G. Finney Emeritus Professor of Preaching and Worship Vanderbilt Divinity School

"Blessed Are the Women invites us to meet and remember Jesus through the lives of women coping with oppressive social and religious realities. Just as our faith journey relies on creative imagination, so does our ability to engage the depths of their stories. They are named. They have traumatic histories. They are strong and courageous. They have much to teach us. This creative rendering of their stories guides our Christian discipleship."

-- Luther E. Smith, Jr., Professor Emeritus of Church and Community, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

"Blessed Are the Women is appropriately named, but don't let the title confuse you. This is a book that men need to read also. Given the patriarchal history of American Christianity, we men need to understand how we have been complicit in harming women and how we can be transformed by listening to their wisdom and following their lead. As McKeever-Burgett writes, "Without women we don't have Jesus. We don't have Christianity. We don't have any of it." Christian men would do well to sit with the truth of that statement and reading the stories within this book could enable that truth to sink deep into their souls."

-- Rev. Dr. Christopher Carter, Associate Professor of Theology at Methodist Theological School in Ohio, and Lead Pastor of The Loft at Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles

"Blessed Are the Women is not a story only for women. It's a story for all of us who yearn to embrace the fullness of God's goodness within us and to live and love with the fullness of our enfleshed selves. Blessed Are the Women/Claire is a trinity of gentle wisdom, tender mercy, and inexplicable beauty that I will be sharing with colleagues, friends, and parishioners. To know Claire and her work is to know what wisdom, tenderness, brilliance, and grace look like in human flesh."

-- The Rev. Maria A. Kane, Ph.D., Rector, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Waldorf, Maryland

"A breathtakingly beautiful tribute to the unseen matriarchs, Blessed Are the Women is an essential and empowering read for all who dare to follow God the Deliverer and for those seeking the divine feminine in everyday life. Often overlooked and underestimated, these untold perspectives show how the stories of women have shaped, influenced, and helped sustain our spirituality. With rich narratives and lyrical prose, the author takes us on an intimate journey through the stories of women, known and unknown, revealing their indispensable role in Christianity-and all faiths."

--J. Dana Trent, author of Between Two Trailers: A Memoir

"Claire McKeever-Burgett has captured the process of midrash in her book and skillfully relates her midrashic accounts to the experiences women have had throughout time. She brings to life women in the Christian Scriptures, some named there and others nameless until McKeever-Burgett gives them names and identities. By including her own experience throughout the work, she makes women's stories real

as she teaches truth."

-- Rabbi Emeritus David Horowitz, Temple Israel Akron, Ohio

and Past President, PFLAG NATIONAL

"Claire McKeever-Burgett takes women seriously. Because of that, this book feels both wizened and somehow brand new; ambitious yet matter-of-fact. Blessed are the Women was a delightful read."

-- Shannon K. Evans, author of The Mystics Would Like a Word and Feminist Prayers for My Daugther

"For those who long for imagination, long for women's voices to not simply be included but to be celebrated and centered in their faith practice, Claire has written this for you. She has written it for us. Blessed are the women, indeed."

-- Jenny Booth Potter, author of Doing Nothing is No Longer an Option: One Woman's Journey Into Everyday Antiracism

"In Blessed Are the Women, Claire McKeever-Burgett lifts up the deep well of women from which we come, and through these women, she offers us audacious vulnerability, expansive liberation, powerful witness, and creative contemplative connection so that we can more fully be healed as we remember-love holds us still."

-- Rev. Molly Brummett Wudel, Co-Pastor of Emmaus Way,

Durham, North Carolina

"McKeever-Burgett holds a profoundly incarnational theology, integrating spiritual reflection with practical embodiment. Hers is an original voice, forged in the crucible of her own pain, fear, and grief, tempered by courageous self-examination, intuitive vision, and poetic joy. Blessed Are the Women is holistic, designed to foster communities who read, reflect, worship, and share stories together, empowering one another for the sake of healing, freedom, and justice. These pages contain a forceful rebuke of patriarchy and an open invitation to move toward sacred, life-giving wholeness for all."

-- Marjorie J. Thompson, author of Family: The Forming Center and Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual Life

"Praise the Great Mother for the birth of this book! For the creativity, honesty, beauty, and labor of its author, Claire McKeever-Burgett. This book is for all humans who long to sit in the lap of the Holy One and to be nurtured in love and story. Blessed are the women who went before us and who walk with us even now. And blessed is this beautiful creation."

--Rev. Beth A. Richardson, writer, artist, storyteller, and liturgy nerd; Dean Emeritus of The Upper Room Chapel

"Savor this book! Blessed are the Women is a tender gift for hungry souls and neglected bodies longing to find gospel companions bearing honest witness to the wonder and frailty of life. Claire's determination to unapologetically proclaim all the news -- good, conflicted, life- giving, and incomplete -- she's heard from the mothers of the Jesus story and wise women she's met along her own journey will inspire and challenge you."

-- Rev. Amos J. Disasa, Senior Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of

Dallas

"This book is premised on the notion that we can expect to hear God's Word anew when we show up to Scripture. Claire is helpfully pointing back to a range of stories (women's stories!) through which we can discover ourselves (and God) again and again. The associated prayers, liturgies, and music enable us to move past a static reading of these narratives and to start living into them, as these women's experiences have the potential to reorient and characterize our lives today. In that sense, it is a gift."

--The Rev. Zachary Thomas Settle, PhD; Editor-in-Chief, The Other Journal

"This extraordinary book integrates the stories of biblical women, with profound contemporary experiences of women's bodies and sexuality, in ways that are stunning, healing, invitational, and prophetic. The recommended reading, viewing and listening resources and the reflection guide make it accessible and ready to use for individuals or small groups. I can't wait to introduce

Blessed Are the Women to others, and to use it as a resource for healing retreats and groups for women."

-- Elaine A. Heath, Ph.D., Author of Healing the Wounds of Sexual Abuse: Reading the Bible with Survivors, and co-author of Trauma Informed Evangelism: Cultivating Communities of Wounded Healers

"With bold, beautiful, and vulnerable storytelling, Claire McKeever-Burgett brings biblical narratives to life and light, empowering us to see the deepest parts of ourselves within them. This book is a necessary gift to the church. More than a celebration of women across time and history, the words found within these pages invite us to journey into our collective liberation.

-- Kat Armas, author of Abuelita Faith and host of The Protagonistas podcast