18 Quotes by Kate Cooper

Mary is no theologian in an academic sense. But as Luke tells the story, she and Elizabeth are the first theologians of a new faith. Their gift is an intrepid willingness to look for God's purpose in their own and one another's lives. If they are blood kin, they are also kindred spirits, helping to build up one another's strength and courage.

The new ideal of virginity and widowhood opened up a new era of sympathetic collaboration between men and women, and for male-female friendship. By establishing a category of women who were understood to be off-limits with respect to romantic entanglements, writers like Gregory were able to support and even celebrate a feminine version of Christianity without being afraid to seem as if they had fallen under the influence of feminine charms.

For the first three centuries, affiliation with the Christian movement had been against the law, even if the authorities were often prepared to turn a blind eye. Yet adversity can sometimes bring out the best in people. During this period, the Christian leaders had been comparatively humble individuals, who knew it was not in their interest to attract unnecessary attention, but who could be counted on to exhibit fortitude in the face of trials.

When Eugenia turns the experiences of Thecla over in her heart, we know she is thinking about how Thecla's experience measures against her own. And of course our writer is reaching out to his or her own reader here: just as Eugenia was changed by Thecla's story, so the reader's own life should be somehow changed by Eugenia's.

The disciples have lost their beloved teacher and when he returns to console them, he reminds them that he has already given them, in the shared breaking of bread, a way to conjure his presence among them again and again.

Yet in Paul's letters we can hear something more than his own genius: an echo of female voices, of conversations over the years with the women of the Aegean cloth trade who were his close collaborators. During this long fellowship, the apostle has not only been talking to women: he has been listening.

Amma Sarah knew that her spiritual power was infinite if she could truly forget herself and allow Christ to work through her.

In fact, studies have demonstrated that the ‘success rate’ of missionary encounters that take place in the home of a friend or family member is five hundred times higher than encounters in an institutional setting or a public place.

Even if three centuries of outsider status and intermittent persecution had tested the endurance of individuals and communities, coping with the patronage of a newly Christian emperor posed a challenge. The challenge was all the more threatening for its moral complexity. Was it right for the churches to accept the Emperor’s favour, knowing full well that if they did so, they also tacitly accepted his right, so evident in all other aspects of life in the Roman Empire, to call the shots?