It’s been a minute since I read any non-fiction, and this title caught my eye. Red Lip Theology: For Church Girls Who‘ve Considered Tithing To The Beauty Supply Store When Sunday Morning Isn’t Enough is a wordy one, but it sounded interesting. I’d never heard of Candice Marie Benbow before, so I went into it blind.

Red Lip Theology is part memoir, part theological dissertation of sorts. Candice shares about her early life in church as the daughter of an unwed mother. It was not an easy thing to be for her, and that experience definitely helped shape some of her ideas. This book is heavy on the mother-daughter relationship and how the loss of her mother affected her, so if that’s a trigger for you, be careful. Candice is pretty open about some traumatic parts of her life and bad relationships throughout the book.

On the theology side, Candice is a Duke Divinity School grad and has clearly put in the time on studying. I went to a little Bible college, so it was interesting to me to see how different experiences in the classroom can shape things. I’d never heard of womanist theology before, so that was a nice little educational read.

Parts of it had me nodding my head and highlighting things (ex: Jesus wasn’t white, y’all!). Others, I didn’t agree with, but I still appreciate her perspective. I’m a white chick, so I’m not going to understand where she’s coming from all the time and how her blackness has played a factor in how she sees the world. It doesn’t mean either of our perspectives are better than the other; they are just different. I think that’s important for any Evangelical to understand when they pick this up.

Overall, I enjoyed Red Lip Theology, (although she could use the world trifling a little less. Not sure why that one stood out and got annoying, but alas, it did.) It’s a book that will challenge you, and if you don’t like it, I’m pretty sure she won’t care.