Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic

Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity

De: Nadya Williams

Narrado por: Nan McNamara

How we talk about human life matters.

In western post-Christian society, humans are thought of less like precious image bearers and more like commodities. The canary in the coal mine of this ideological shift is often women and children, which manifests itself in the seemingly built-in disdain towards motherhood and children for their lack of production of economically valuable goods. However, the risk of this utilitarian approach to human life is not just outside the church, but within those spaces as well. Indeed, the commodification of human life within the contemporary body politic is so deeply embedded within the systems, even the church has lost touch with some of the ways it inherently devalues the lives of women and children.

Classics scholar Nadya Williams draws from voices both ancient and modern to illuminate how Christians can value human life amidst an empire that seeks to dehumanize that which is most precious. Bringing insights from the beliefs and practices of the early church in Greco-Roman context about motherhood, raising children, and human life, Williams suggests there is a way to recapture a vision that affirms the imago Dei in each person over and above our economic contribution to society.

©2024 Nadejda Vladimir Williams (P)2024 Tantor Media

This audiobook was well worth the time.

Dr. Williams was able to utilize both ancient and modern sources to weave a coherent narrative that answered the question what does it mean to be valuable as God’s image bearers? We are all by nature valuable but oftentimes in societies of both today and yesterday our worth, especially for women, children, the old, and sick, was built on what you brought to society. Dr. Williams helped to explain how Christians in antiquity believed differently than their culture counterparts of the Greco-Roman pagan world on the value of God’s image bearers. Christians today still struggle with what it means to be valuable as image bearers and we struggle in contemporary America with the pro-life movement, industrial/economic worth, and the value of mothers and their children. Wonderful read/listen.