The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth

Feminist theologian Watterson (Mary Magdalene Revealed), who studies sacred texts left out of the canon, has been dubbed by the New York Times as one of the new “young gurus” of the age. Her latest book reframes history, politics, and theology through a feminist lens. The “girl” of the title is Thecla, a follower of the apostle Paul, whose story—known as a romance since it focuses on the emotional life of its heroine—was popular and circulated widely within the Church between 160 and 190 CE. That is, until early Church fathers strictly deauthorized this work, pushing Thecla outside the confines of canonized scripture due primarily to the text’s valorization of women’s leadership. Despite Watterson’s claims, the book of Thecla has not quite been hidden; it has been available in several English translations since the late 1700s. Nevertheless, for Watterson, Thecla demonstrates how sacred it is to be one’s authentic self, even though she herself was dismissed as a theologically unsustainable model of womanly piety and leadership.