Title Tuesday: Fierce Women

Welcome to  Title Tuesday, my favorite day of the week! This day is dedicated to book suggestions, news, cartoons, and reviews. For 2020 I decided to structure my book reviews by breaking each month into topics. You can find my topics list here. This month we are covering womanhood. So lets jump in!

Today I want to take a look at Fierce Women: The Power of a Soft Warrior by Kimberly Wagner. 

I want to start by saying that I bought this book REALLY wanting to like it. My husband read the companion book Men Who Love Fierce Women: The Power of Servant Leadership first and he LOVED it. Since Fierce Women had the stamp from The True Woman Movement I assumed that this book would be as good as the others in that collection. 

Sadly I was mistaken.  

This book is not a guide for women on how to be both strong and Christians at the same time. This is a marriage book geared towards softening a woman's personality and wiring to be less confrontational. While it may be titled Fierce Women, this book is all about becoming softer and less abrasive to people around you, specifically your spouse. 

The portion of this book dealing with a husband's unrepentant sin just really put me off. 

On page 224 after saying that it is ok to confront sin in your marriage, Wagner then follows that statement up with, "If you release expectations and find joy in your relationship with Christ, you will reach a level of surrender that provides contentment no matter what your husband chooses." 

Those two statements counteract one another. How can you release expectations and confront sin at the same time? If you have no expectations then you cannot expect someone to stop sinning. 

This to me is slinging a bunch of buzz phrases together about a topic that is sensitive and demands clear instruction and biblical discernment not platitudes that you would find on a a coffee mug.

This book doesn't address fierceness in terms of anything but as a wife. It is almost like this book was written in anticipation of the second book about loving fierce women. It smacks of the idea that a woman exists only in relation to her husband. In light of that, I have to give this book 2 stars. It is theologically sound and it is well written but that is about it.  I would have liked to see a guide on how to be a fierce woman in other situations: work, school, with family, in positions of authority, volunteering, and the like. Women are multidimensional, even strong women in the Christian faith.