BOOK REVIEW: THE WIDOWS: A WOMEN’S MINISTRY IN THE EARLY CHURCH
Widows were not only a class of people in need of defending. Bonnie Thurston asserts that certain women in the early church were organized into a clerical order of widows—an order of women established in the church within the second century. Thurston’s book was the first to focus exclusively on ancient widows in the Christian church, with scholarly research on the order of widows.