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For Church Girls Who've Considered Tithing to the Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn't Enough
by Candice Marie Benbow
A moving essay collection promoting freedom, self-love, and divine wholeness for Black women and opening new levels of understanding and ideological transformation for non-Black women and allies.
Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow's essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture.
Benbow writes powerfully about experiences at the heart of her Black womanhood. In honoring her single mother's love and triumphs—and mourning her unexpected passing—she finds herself forced to shed restrictions she'd been taught to place on her faith practice. And by embracing alternative spirituality and womanist theology, and confronting staid attitudes on body positivity and LGBTQ+ rights, Benbow challenges religious institutions, faith leaders, and communities to reimagine how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for women and girls.
"This lush, funny, deeply personal memoir is a beautiful gift to church girls everywhere and an instant classic on faith and getting free." —Deesha Philyaw, author of the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
"Red Lip Theology is more than a come-to-Jesus moment for the church; it's also a potent and fearless cry of hope and life for a new generation of believers." —Matthew Paul Turner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Is God Like? and When God Made You
"This book is a theological masterpiece, a love song, and a tender exploration of what it means to live and grow up and fail and get better and put the broken pieces of ourselves back together." —Danté Stewart, author of Shoutin' in the Fire
This information about Red Lip Theology was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Candice Marie Benbow is a theologian, essayist, columnist, baker, and educator whose work gives voice to Black women's shared experiences of faith, healing, and wholeness. Named by Sojourners as one of "10 Christian Women Shaping the Church in 2020," she has written for Essence, Glamour, The Root, VICE, Shondaland, Madame Noire, and the Me Too Movement. Candice created the "Lemonade Syllabus" social media campaign, founded the media boutique Zion Hill Media Group, and, in memory of her mother, established The LouiseMarie Foundation to support HBCU nursing students and community mental health projects. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Candice holds degrees from Tennessee State University, North Carolina Central University, and Duke Divinity School.
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