The Girl Who Baptized Herself
How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth
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The Girl Who Baptized Herself
Narrated by:
Meggan Watterson
Buy Now for $21.99
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Narrated by:
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Meggan Watterson
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By:
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Meggan Watterson
About this listen
“Meggan Watterson writes with a prophet’s vision and a mystic’s heart.”—Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO, Thrive Global
A teenage girl named Thecla is sitting at her bedroom window listening to a man share stories nearby. Her mother and fiancé order her to stop. But Thecla, trapped in a world that expects her to marry and have children, refuses. This man, Paul, is talking about a world she wants to believe in: an inner world of freedom to define her own life. And he’s talking about a kind of love she hasn’t known before—a love that asks her to be true to who she is within.
For Meggan Watterson, a Harvard-trained feminist theologian, Thecla’s story in The Acts of Paul and Thecla has everything to do with power. Thecla’s refusal to be controlled, as well as the authority she reclaims by baptizing herself, reads like a lost gospel for finding our own source of power within—a power that allows us to know who we are and to make choices based on that knowing. This hidden scripture suggests that Christianity before the fourth century was about defying the patriarchy, not deifying it. But early church fathers excluded The Acts of Paul and Thecla, along with other sacred texts such as The Gospel of Mary, from the New Testament.
Watterson synthesizes scripture, memoir, and politics to illuminate a story that has been left out of the canon for far too long, one that follows a girl freeing herself from a life predicated on the expectations of others—a path that made her feel unworthy. Thecla’s story offers us a path to take back the power we often give to others and live based on the truth of who we are.
*Includes a downloadable PDF of additional resources from the book
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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.