The first-ever audio Bible recorded solely by UK women launched on March 8, coinciding with International Women’s Day. Her Audio Bible is UK’s first all-female audio version of the NIV Bible and initially includes the four gospels and Revelations.
Rev. Katy Partridge, a Church of England curate, spearheaded the audio book project that features the voices of 17 women from across the country. Each volunteer brought a wide range of accents, styles, and interpretations, giving a rich mixture of culture, ethnicity and church backgrounds, reports Church Mission Society.
The heart of the project is to represent something of the beauty of the diversity of the women across the UK, and to give them a voice. —Rev. Katy Partridge, Director or Her Audio Bible
In an interview with Premier Christian News, Rev. Partridge said, “These are not celebrity voices, these are women with a wide range of accents and backgrounds. The heart of the project is to represent something of the beauty of the diversity of the women across the UK, and to give them a voice.”
Rev. Partridge hopes Her Audio Bible shows women that their voices matter and God listens to everybody. “The way women are treated in religious spaces impacts the way they see God,” she said. “If they are excluded from leading, or speaking, or worshipping, the message they receive is that their voice does not matter to God.”
Her experience when she was growing up sparked the idea of creating a women-voiced audio Bible. “I didn’t have female voices at the front,” Partridge shared. “So the message that that fed down to me, even as a young person, was that perhaps my voice wasn’t as powerful or as valuable, or perhaps even my voice wasn’t as included, even in Scripture.
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