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

This book explores a nearly lost first-century scripture about a saint named Thecla and what her story reveals about understanding one's worth. Thecla is a teenage girl who hears a man named Paul teaching nearby about an inner world of freedom and a kind of love based on being true to oneself. Her mother and fiancé order her to stop listening, but Thecla refuses, trapped in a world that expects her to marry and have children. For author Meggan Watterson, a Harvard-trained feminist theologian, Thecla's story in The Acts of Paul and Thecla centers on power. Her refusal to be controlled and her act of baptizing herself represent a reclamation of authority—a lost gospel about finding one's own source of power within. The text suggests that early Christianity opposed patriarchy rather than supported it. However, early church fathers excluded The Acts of Paul and Thecla and other sacred texts like The Gospel of Mary from the New Testament. Watterson combines scripture, memoir, and politics to present a story long absent from the biblical canon. Thecla's journey of freeing herself from others' expectations offers readers a path to reclaim the power they often surrender to others and live according to their own truth.