From Dissertation Research to a Wider Conversation
Some Books Begin With a Problem That Will Not Go Away
Why does a culture that speaks about human dignity continue to imagine God primarily through male language and authority? Why are women so often asked to accept less power, less freedom, or less interpretive authority in the name of faith?
These questions helped shape the research behind Owning My Existence: Reclaiming the Image of God Beyond Patriarchy. What began as dissertation work developed into a book that brings academic inquiry into conversation with the lives of women navigating religious and cultural expectations.
Listening Beyond the Headlines
Dr. Corona Barrow's study included a survey of thirty-five participants and follow-up interviews with seven participants. The research explored attitudes toward patriarchy, biblical authority, male headship, female submission, and the possibility that patriarchal systems contribute to women's oppression.
Numbers can reveal patterns, but they cannot tell the whole story. A percentage may show how many people hold an idea; it cannot fully explain how that idea was learned, how it affects a marriage or congregation, or what it feels like to question it after years of acceptance. That is why the research also engages historical, theological, and cultural context.
The result is not a collection of abstract arguments detached from everyday life. It is an examination of how beliefs move through families, churches, institutions, and communities until they begin to feel natural. Research becomes a way of tracing those movements and asking whether familiar arrangements deserve the authority they have been given.
Why the Academic Work Matters
Readers may be drawn to this subject because of a personal experience: a calling dismissed, a question discouraged, a voice interrupted, or a version of femininity that never felt like home. Academic work gives those experiences a wider frame. It can show that private discomfort is sometimes connected to public systems.
That wider frame also creates room for complexity. Barrow does not treat every man as the problem or every religious tradition as identical. Her focus is on the ideas and structures that can make male authority appear inherently sacred while presenting female agency as suspect. Examining those structures carefully makes it possible to challenge them without abandoning intellectual seriousness or spiritual depth.
A Book That Keeps the Conversation Open
The research journey behind Owning My Existence ultimately leads back to a human question: what becomes possible when women are no longer required to define themselves through limitation?
For scholars and students, the book offers material for study. For ministry leaders, it raises questions about interpretation and practice. For individual readers, it may provide language for experiences that have been difficult to name.
Serious questions rarely produce instant answers. They create a space where inherited beliefs can be examined honestly. That is the space this book enters—and invites its readers to enter with courage.
Get it here: https://www.coronabarrow.com/product-page/owning-my-existence
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