Following is a comparison of my book, Bible Truth About Women, and Preston Sprinkle’s book, Genesis to Junia. I very much appreciate the quality of Sprinkle’s book, I’m thrilled that he came out with an egalitarian conclusion, and I believe both our books are needed. We both explained why good exegesis of particular Bible passages support equality and why others don’t support hierarchy. Here are seven ways mine is different:

• I start with helping readers understand the challenges of translation. Without that, people think translation is cut and dry, not realizing how many choices translators make. They believe translation can be “word for word” and therefore give us “the plain reading.”
• Preston’s book speaks only to the issue of women in ministry whereas mine shows how you can’t separate the ministry issue from marriage and how the principles carry over. It is 100% mutualist with an emphasis on the heart of God throughout Scripture. Preston also has a good, overall Scriptural theme on how God operates.
• My book explains more about how the church got to such a strong prohibitive position. Just the thought that we’ve gotten this wrong can shake people’s faith related to the preservation of God’s Word, so they need to understand how/why this happened, and that it doesn’t lend itself to throwing out the entire Bible.
• I do more to starkly point out things like inconsistencies in translation, biased choices in translation, words added to the English that are not in the Greek, etc. I explain which of these things are due to tradition, but other times we can know it was intentional. Bible readers should know they are being intentionally steered in that direction by certain versions.
• My book explains more about the harm that comes to both women and men from so-called “complementarian” teaching. Preston has said he has “no dog in the fight” which is great for objectivity. However, when a woman has personally lived with harmful theology and witnessed it in the lives of sisters and friends, we have a different kind of objectivity—lived evidence. My book has passion and stories that are illustrative about how this teaching is contrary to God’s heart.
• Preston doesn’t try to say where we should go from here. The end of my book describes the abuse-of-power crisis in the church (because many people are not aware) and connects the dots to hierarchical teaching. I give a bullet-point list of what to do next.
• There is so much material on this subject that no one can be completely thorough or a book would be too long. Both Preston and I had original manuscripts that required drastic cutting. Therefore, we each go into different depth on different topics and touch on some things the other didn’t.

In conclusion, Preston’s book is more palatable for pastors who might be on the fence. Mine is more for parishioners, to educate them and give complementarian leaders less of a following. Both are needed! Praise the Lord, may both books prosper!