Is God the Only Reliable Father?

By Diane Tennis

In this provocative book, Diane Tennis challenges women and men to rethink their relationship with God and their relationship with each other as well. She urges Christians not to abandon the Father image of God. To do so, she says, is "to abandon the hope of embracing half the race. It is, by default, to stamp approval on the existing sinful alienation of the sexes. It is a status quo strategy, a way of saying. I give up: there is no way for the sexes to live together."

Tennis shows that while human fathers may be experienced as unreliable, God the Father does not abandon but is a source of hope. She questions the interpretations of both the proponents of rigid patriarchy and those who reject God as male, and she illustrates how the God of the Bible provides a model of a reliable Father. She then looks at contemporary problems, examining reasons why modern men are so often absent from their families. Correspondingly, she considers women's attempts to compensate for men's failures.