Steps
Towards Feminist Biblical Preaching
The task of biblical proclamation
is the public announcement of the "good news" of salvation,
i.e. the well-being of wo/men.1
To begin my reflections on feminist2
preaching I will first give a short introduction to the model of
a critical emancipative interpretation, which I have developed.3
In a second step I will then focus on two hermeneutical strategies,
the hermeneutics of suspicion and of critical evaluation that are
crucial for a critical feminist interpretation for proclamation.
In the last thirty years
or so, feminist biblical studies4
has been established as a new field of learning with its own publications
and methods.5 It is taught
in schools, colleges and universities and is practiced by many scholars
in different parts of the world. While feminist biblical studies
was not in existence more than thirty years ago, today it is a blooming
field of inquiry with many different voices and directions. Hence
one would assume that critical feminist biblical studies is accepted
not only as a serious academic field but also as a method used in
preaching and teaching. However, this is often not the case. Hence,
it is still necessary to sketch here the contours of a critical
feminist hermeneutics for proclamation.
I. A Critical Feminist
Interpretation for Proclamation
Such a critical feminist
interpretation for proclamation is best understood as an interpretive
practice that seeks to foster biblical preaching as a critical rhetoric
which engages in the formation of a critical historical and religious
feminist consciousness. Whereas hermeneutical6
theory seeks to understand and appreciate the meaning of texts,
a critical rhetorical analysis of texts and symbolic worlds pays
close attention to the kinds of power relations and effects not
only biblical discourses but also biblical readers produce and advocate.
The feminist tradition
of religious agency, justice and equality for wo/men, in which my
own work stands, has claimed and continues to claim the authority
and right of wo/men to interpret experience, tradition and religion
from our own perspective and to proclaim values and visions of liberation
and well-being. This tradition has insisted that equality, freedom,
and democracy can not be realized if wo/men's voices are not raised
or not heard and heeded in the struggle for justice and liberation
for everyone regardless of sex, class, race, nationality or religion.
...feminist
biblical interpretation claims the authority of wo/men struggling
for survival and liberation for adjudicating kyriarchal authority
claims and oppressive values encoded in Christian Scriptures.
Although this feminist
tradition of wo/men's religious authority and theological agency
remains fragmented and has not always been able to escape the contextual
limitations and prejudicial frameworks of its own time and social
location, its critical knowledge and continuing vibrancy remains
nevertheless crucial for feminist biblical preaching. By taking
the experience and analysis articulated in feminist struggles for
transforming kyriarchy,7 i.e.
emperor, lord, slave-master, father, husband, elite male domination,
as its point of departure,8
feminist biblical interpretation claims the authority of wo/men
struggling for survival and liberation for adjudicating kyriarchal
authority claims and oppressive values encoded in Christian Scriptures.
Hence, a critical feminist interpretation for proclamation is akin
to the ancient practice of "discerning the spirits." and
is best understood as a deliberative rhetorical spiritual practice.
As theological subjects
feminists preachers, I argue, have to insist on their spiritual
authority to assess both the oppressive as well as the liberating
imagination of particular biblical texts. They do so because of
the kyriarchal functions of authoritative Scriptural claims that
demand obedience and acceptance. By deconstructing the theological
rhetorics and politics of obedience and subordination, a critical
feminist interpretation is able to generate new possibilities for
biblical preaching.
A critical feminist biblical
proclamation for liberation understands biblical authority not as
something that requires subordination and obedience. It understands
truth not as something given once and for all, as hidden and buried
that can be unveiled and unearthed in a spiritual reading of biblical
texts. Rather it understands revelation as something ongoing, as
fermenting yeast of the empowering presence of Divine Wisdom that
can be experienced and articulated only in and through emancipative
praxis.
What is "revealed"
for the sake of wo/men's salvation, liberation, and well-being can
not be articulated once and for all. The criterion of "wo/men's
salvation" is a formal criterion that needs to be "spelled"
out in ever new socio-political-religious situations of struggle.
It does not inhere in the biblical text nor in the individual subjectivity
of the wo/man preacher but must be articulated again and again within
particular historical contexts of struggle.
In short, a critical feminist
hermeneutics of liberation does not understand the bible as an immutable
archetype but as a historical prototype9
of Christian community and life, as the open house of Divine Wisdom
without walls and exclusions, as nourishing bread rather than as
engraved tablets of stone. It seeks not just to understand biblical
texts and traditions but also to investigate what they do to those
who submit to the bible's world of vision.
Since in Western culture
kyriarchal biblical values have shaped wo/men's self-understanding
and socio-cultural political discourses, a critical feminist emancipative
preaching is best understood as a method of consciousness raising
or conzcientization that wants to lift into critical reflection
the cultural and religious biblical values and frameworks wo/men
have internalized. It seeks to create a pedagogical space for transforming
wo/men's self-understanding, self-perception, and self-alienation
and is best understood as a critical feminist praxis against all
forms of domination.
Such a critical feminist
biblical interpretation for proclamation is a complex and exhilarating
process. Feminists have used different rhetorical metaphors and
comparisons for naming such an emancipative process of interpretation
as baking bread, as mixing and kneading milk, flour, yeast, and
raisins into dough, or as cooking a stew, utilizing different herbs
and spices to season the potatoes, meats, and carrots, which, stirred
together, produce a new and different flavor.
The metaphor of the circle
dance seems best to express the method of a critical feminist biblical
interpretation for liberation. Dancing involves body and spirit,
it involves feelings and emotions, and it takes us beyond our limits
and creates community. Dancing confounds all hierarchical order
because it moves in spirals and circles. It makes us feel alive
and full of energy, power, and creativity. Moving in spirals and
circles, critical feminist biblical interpretation for proclamation
is ongoing; it cannot be done once and for all but must be repeated
differently in different situations and from different perspectives.
It is exciting because in every new reading of biblical texts a
different meaning emerges, just as in every sermon that seeks to
engage in conscientization in different situations metanoia,
a turning away from domination is made possible.
By deconstructing the kyriarchal
rhetoric and politics of inequality and subordination inscribed
in the bible, feminist preachers are able to generate ever fresh
articulations of radical democratic religious visions and emancipative
practices. Such an emancipative process of biblical interpretation
for proclamation has as its "doubled" reference point
both the interpreter's contemporary presence and the biblical past.
Whether one thinks of the
emancipative interpretive process as baking bread or as a hearty
"stew" or a joyful "dance," crucial ingredients,
spices, strategies or moves in a critical process of a multicultural
feminist interpretation are:
· experience and recognition of social-ideological location
· critical analysis of domination (kyriarchy)
· suspicion of kyriocentric texts and frameworks,
· assessment and evaluation in terms of a scale of feminist
emancipative values,
· creative imagination and vision,
· re-construction or re-membering,10
· transformative action for change.
These hermeneutical practices
are not to be construed simply as successive independent methodological
steps of inquiry or as discrete "how to" rules or recipes.
Rather they are best understood as interpretive moves and movements,
as hermeneutical strategies that interact with each other simultaneously
in the process of "struggling for making emancipative meaning"
out of a particular biblical or any other cultural text in the context
of the globalization of inequality. This "dance" of interpretation
for proclamation is taking place on two different levels of interpretation
for proclamation:
· On the level of biblical texts and their effective histories
of interpretation
and
· On the level of contemporary interpretations and meaning
making in situations
· of domination and subordination.
Thus a critical feminist
biblical interpretation for proclamation continually moves between
the present and the past, between interpretation and application,
realism and imagination. It moves, spirals, turns, and dances in
the places found in "the white spaces between the black letters"11
of Scripture- to use a metaphor of Jewish interpretation - in order
to proclaim the invitation of Divine Wisdom:
Come eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Leave foolishness and live
and walk in the way of Wisdom. (Prov. 9:1-6)
Hence, feminist biblical
preachers have to make sure that what they have to offer is nourishing
bread and not killing stone, empowering wine and not poisonous drink.
Hence, a critical hermeneutics of suspicion and evaluation is called
for.
II. A Hermeneutics of
Suspicion and Critical Evaluation
Using a hermeneutics of
suspicion and critical evaluation in biblical preaching seems to
be a contradiction in terms. As biblical preachers and readers we
are taught to approach the bible with a hermeneutics of respect,
acceptance, consent, appreciation and obedience. Biblical texts
are understood and proclaimed as the Word of G*d.12
Canonization compels preachers to make sense out of texts in such
a way that we can accept, consent, and submit to them. A hermeneutics
of submission and consent understands canonical authority as kyriarchal
i.e. lord, slave-master, father, elite male authority that requires
subordination. Canon is often understood as norma normans et
non normata -- a norm that is to be obeyed and not questioned
or evaluated.
This understanding of biblical
authority is derived from the Latin auctoritas, which means
the authority of the lord/master/father/husband/elite male who requires
obedience, submission, and consent. Since such an understanding
of biblical authority legitimates kyriarchal domination, it calls
for a hermeneutics of suspicion rater than a hermeneutics of consent,
sympathy and acceptance. Such a hermeneutics religiously legitimates
structures and mindsets of domination. Since language and texts
are not self-enclosed systems of signs but have performative power:
they either legitimize or challenge power structures, serve to "naturalize"
or to interrupt hegemonic world-views, or to inculcate dominant
or emancipative values.
In consequence, a hermeneutics
of suspicion places on all biblical texts "caution, could be
dangerous to your health and survival" and it does so for theological
reasons. Consider texts such as
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed
an abomination; they shall be put to death (Leviticus 20:13)
or
I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is
to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was
not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.(1
Timothy 2)
In
feminist liberationist terms, preachers can not proclaim such
texts as the word of G*d, if we do not want to proclaim G*d as
a G*d of domination.
Such texts cannot be approached
with a hermeneutics of empathy, appreciation and consent but must
be submitted to a hermeneutics of suspicion if reject structures
of domination, exploitation and oppression as against G*d's will.
In feminist liberationist terms, preachers can not proclaim such
texts as the word of G*d, if we do not want to proclaim G*d as a
G*d of domination. If preaching has the task to articulate visions
of well-being that proclaim the Divine as a power for liberation
and well-being, then it can not do without a hermeneutics of suspicion.
Thus for theological reasons
a hermeneutics of suspicion insists that we must cease to preach
kyriarchal texts as the "word of G*d," since by doing
so we proclaim G*d as legitimating domination and oppression. Such
a hermeneutics of suspicion does not take the kyriocentric biblical
text and its claim to divine authority at face value but rather
investigates its ideological functions in the interest of domination.
Emotionally, it might be difficult to engage in such a hermeneutics
of suspicion because we have internalized biblical authority as
unquestionable taboo. Hence before we can fruitfully engage in a
hermeneutics of suspicion we need to work through our emotions,
anxieties and fears, and to ask what stake do I have in upholding
a hermeneutics of empathy with, of submission and consent to the
biblical text.
A feminist hermeneutics
of suspicion is so threatening to many preachers because the bible
is often understood as verbally inspired and as the direct word
of G*d. A feminist hermeneutics of suspicion challenges this understanding
of revelation by pointing out that the bible has been written by
men and has been interpreted and proclaimed in kyriarchal cultures
and societies. It is permeated with the kyriarchal cultural and
religious structures, ideologies and mindset both of biblical times
and of contemporary interpretations.
Hence, a feminist hermeneutics of suspicion seeks to demystify the
structures of domination that are inscribed in biblical texts, in
our own experience and in contemporary contexts of proclamation.
It may make many preachers feel uneasy and anxious because it breaks
a taboo by insisting that one has to scrutinize not only the presuppositions
and interests of interpreters and those of biblical commentators
but also the kyriocentric structurings and ideologies of the biblical
text itself. However, a hermeneutics of suspicion must not be misunderstood
as peeling away layers of debris in order to recover a pre-given
ontological liberating reality that then is understood in essentialist
terms.
A critical feminist hermeneutics
of suspicion moves past the "masters of suspicion" Marx,
Nietzsche, Freud (Paul Ricoeur) in that it stresses the obfuscating
effects of grammar and thought. Kyriocentric (that is emperor, lord,
slave-master, father, elite propertied male centered) language that
claims to be generic language does not mention wo/men but subsumes
us under "man" and "he" as long as we are not
exceptional or cause a problem. It does not cover up but constructs
reality in a certain way and then mystifies its own constructions
by naturalizing them.
Kyriocentric biblical texts
do not cover up reality "as it is." Rather they ideologically-rhetorically
construct reality in the interest of domination insofar as kyriocentric
texts produce the invisibility and marginality of wo/men as a "given"
fact and their worlds of domination appear as " common sense"
reality. If we do not want to re-inscribe such rhetorical-ideological
textual practices of exclusion and domination as for instance anti-Judaism
in our preaching, their kyriocentric character must be exposed not
as the word of G*d but as the words of elite men. Consequently,
a hermeneutics of suspicion is best understood as a deconstructive
practice that denaturalizes and demystifies biblical teachings of
domination and their ideological functions in the interest of alienation
and domination.
A hermeneutics of suspicion
has the task of disentangling the ideological functions of kyriocentric
text and commentary. It does not assume a kyriarchal conspiracy
by the biblical writers and their contemporary interpreters but
insists that as the words of men andro-kyriocentric biblical texts13
can not be presumed to be Divine revelation. Such a hermeneutic
must be applied
· to grammatically masculine kyriocentric texts in order
to unravel their ideological functions;
· to kyriocentric stories. One must analyze the "point
of view" of the story, which expresses the ideological-rhetorical
aims of the narrative;
· to contemporary commentaries and interpretations of the
text as well as to its history of interpretation;
· to our own "common sense" assumptions, pre-understandings,
prejudices, and value systems. Preachers must scrutinize our theoretical
frameworks and interpretive goals as well as our social location
and function in relations of domination.
In short, since preachers
are compelled to align themselves with the dominant voice and model
presented by the kyriocentric sacred text, a hermeneutics of suspicion
must critically analyze the biblical text's domination strategies
of meaning making. It must become an essential part of a hermeneutics
of proclamation, because it functions to draw out and lay open gender,
race, heterosexist, class, nationalist values inscribed in the biblical
text. Moreover, it seeks to engage us in a conscious articulation
of the ideological strategies of the text and to make apparent the
text's interaction and resonance with our experience and cultural
value-systems. Finally, it seeks to determine and circumscribe the
rhetorical situation and contexts in which the text was formulated
and in which it operates today.
While
a hermeneutics of trust and consent reads the bible for guidance
and edification and obediently accepts its teachings on submission,
a critical feminist hermeneutics of evaluation for proclamation
seeks both to make conscious the cultural-religious internalizations
and religious legitimizations of kyriarchy and to explore the
values and visions that are inscribed as counter-cultural and
emancipatory alternatives in biblical texts.
A hermeneutics of suspicion
engenders a hermeneutic of critical ethical and theological evaluation
for proclamation which in turn presupposes and completes a hermeneutics
of suspicion. Such a hermeneutics of evaluation is necessary because
texts are always held in context; they have a multiplicity of meanings.
Hence, we need to assess the rhetorics of biblical texts and traditions
as well as of contemporary discourses in terms of an emancipative
feminist scale of values. Just like a hermeneutics of suspicion,
such a hermeneutics of critical evaluation is difficult to practice
for those preachers who have been socialized into a hermeneutics
of trust and/or obedience towards the Scriptural texts. While a
hermeneutics of trust and consent reads the bible for guidance and
edification and obediently accepts its teachings on submission,
a critical feminist hermeneutics of evaluation for proclamation
seeks both to make conscious the cultural-religious internalizations
and religious legitimizations of kyriarchy and to explore the values
and visions that are inscribed as counter-cultural and emancipatory
alternatives in biblical texts. It asks for consent only to those
texts that have passed through a critical hermeneutics of suspicion
and have been assessed to function as emancipative in concrete particular
situations.
In and through the feminist
"dance" of interpretation for proclamation preachers must
adjudicate again and again how biblical texts function in particular
situations. The criterion or standard of evaluation, the well-being
of every wo/man, must be established and reasoned out in terms of
a systemic analysis of kyriarchal domination. Hence, sermons should
articulate visions of well-being that proclaim the Divine as a power
for liberation. The key question of a hermeneutics of proclamation
is: What does a text do to those who submit to its world of vision
and values? To answer this question, preachers have to deploy a
critical hermeneutics of suspicion and evaluation that seek to make
us conscious of both the cultural-religious forms of the internalizations
and legitimizations of kyriarchy and of alternative radical-democratic,
counter-cultural values and visions also inscribed in biblical texts.
A critical feminist interpretation
for proclamation assesses how much a text encodes and reinforces
structures of oppression and/or articulates values and visions that
promote liberation. For such an assessment, it articulates an emancipative
scale of values that can be but need not be derived from the bible.
Rather they are to be articulated again in the emancipative struggles
for survival, justice and well-being of all without exception. For
instance, Sheila Redmond has pointed out that the biblical values
of suffering, forgiveness, purity, need for redemption, and obedience
to authority figures prevent recovery from child sexual abuse and
continue to disempower their victims.14
If such values that prevent
recovery are espoused by a biblical text, they must be named and
made conscious as kyriocentric values that perpetuate suffering
and abuse, and therefore must be judged for their possibly debilitating
effects in particular situations where such abuse exists or is remembered.
Accordingly, a hermeneutics of critical evaluation for proclamation
has to adjudicate the oppressive tendencies as well as the liberatory
possibilities inscribed in biblical texts, their function in contemporary
struggles for liberation, and their "resonance" with wo/men's
experience. It does so not once and for all but again and again
in particular social locations and situations.
Such a hermeneutics of
critical evaluation for proclamation, however, does not categorize
biblical texts and traditions in a dualistic fashion either as oppressive
or as emancipatory. Rather, it seeks to adjudicate again and again
how biblical texts function in particular situations. Its criterion
or standard of evaluation, the well-being of every wo/man, must
be established and reasoned out in terms of a systemic analysis
of kyriarchal domination. For theological reasons such a hermeneutics
of proclamation insists that biblical religions must cease to preach
kyriarchal texts as the "word of G*d," since by doing
so we continue to proclaim G*d as legitimating kyriarchal oppression.
It argues instead, that biblical religions must articulate visions
of well-being which proclaim the Divine as a power for liberation
and well-being.
A critical hermeneutics
of evaluation for proclamation has a double reference point. The
first reference point is cultural-ideological. Language and texts
are not self-enclosed systems of signs but have performative power:
either they legitimize or challenge power structures, serve to "naturalize"
or to interrupt hegemonic world-views, to inculcate dominant or
emancipative values. As a consequence, a critical hermeneutics of
evaluation for proclamation seeks to make us conscious of both the
cultural-religious forms of the internalizations and legitimizations
of kyriarchy as structural sin and of alternative radical-democratic,
counter-cultural values and visions of well-being also inscribed
in biblical texts.
The second reference point
for a hermeneutics of evaluation for proclamation is religious-theological.
In a Christian context biblical texts are understood and proclaimed
as the Word of G*d. Canonization compels us to make sense out of
texts in such a way that we can accept, consent, and submit to them.
A hermeneutics of submission and consent understands canonical authority
as kyriarchal authority that requires subordination. Such an understanding
of canonical authority in terms of the logic of kyriarchal identity
fosters exclusion and vilification of the other.
However, canonical authority
also can be understood as radical democratic creative authority
in the sense of authorship that recognizes a plurality of meaning
and truth. In such an understanding the root sense of authority
is derived from the Latin verb augere, which means to augment,
enhance, initiate, originate, or authorize. An understanding of
canonical authority in the sense of augere - augmentation,
creativity, and enhancement invites debate, risk, vision, empowerment,
imagination and transformation rather than obedience and submission.
It engages the spiritual practice of the discernment of the spirits
which is only possible in the alternative space to kyriarchy, in
the radical democratic space of the "imagined community,"
the ekklesia of wo/men. Hence, the ekklesia of wo/men is the radical
democratic center and theo-ethical horizon of a critical feminist
biblical interpretation for proclamation in the open house of Divine
Wisdom.
Divine Wisdom -Sophia calls
Her feminist servants today from all corners of the earth to invite
all without exception to her biblical table of spiritual food and
drink for well-being, to search like She for their lost, submerged
and forgotten liberating heritage, to unfailingly assert the rights
of the disenfranchised and to seek for justice in kyriarchal systems
of domination. A critical feminist preaching seeks to hear and proclaim
Her call to act in the power of Divine Wisdom - Spirit fomenting
the radical change that is demanded by the vision of G*d's dream
of a world of well-being and salvation.
Such spiritual commitments, struggles and visions for a different
Christian self-identity and a world of justice, equality, and well-being
do not turn feminist preachers into idealistic dreamers but gather
the ekklesia of wo/men as a movement of those who in the power of
Spirit-Wisdom seek to realize the dream and vision of G*d's alternative
community, society and world, a dream of justice and well-being
for everyone. A Christian theology and biblical interpretation for
proclamation that is feminist, is inspired and compelled by Her
gospel of liberation and well-being for all without exception.
ENDNOTES:
1. I
need to clarify, why I write wo/men with a slash. I do so in order
to destablize essentialist understandings of woman and to stress
the differences between wo/men and within wo/men. I also use wo/men
in an inclusive way to refer to disenfranchised men, since marginalized
men have been construed in feminine terms. This language use stands
normal "generic" language practice on its head insofar
as it asserts that the English word wo/men includes men, s/he includes
he and fe/male includes male. This writing of wo/men invites male
readers like wo/men to learn how to think twice and to ask whether
they are meant or not when I speak of the low-self-esteem or the
great creativity of wo/men. Making ingrained language patterns conscious
and changing them is an important means of consciousness-raising
since according to Wittgenstein the limits of our language are the
limits of our world. return
2. Since
there are many different understandings of feminism and feminism
is still a "dirty" word for many associated with men hating
lesbians and bluestockings, I need to explain how I understand the
f-word. My definition of feminism is a bumper sticker definition:
Years ago, a friend of mine gave me a popular feminist sticker for
my car which defines feminism as follows: "Feminism is the
radical notion that wo/men are people." This is a radical democratic
definition which insists that wo/men are fully entitled and responsible
citizens. Hence, feminism should be a common sense notion in the
21st century rather than a point of controversy. Since this is not
the case, it is not surprising that many wo/men still or again do
not want to be brushed with the negative label feminist. According
to this radical democratic definition of feminism anyone is a feminist
who insists that wo/men are not second class citizens and works
for the full citizenship of wo/men in society and religion. It is
not gender but one's politics that makes one a feminist. Men can
support the struggles of wo/men for full citizenship while wo/men
can be and often are antifeminist insofar as they accept and defend
femininity and the feminine as the cultural, religious and political
structure that continues to produce and re-inscribe the second class
citizenship of wo/men. It is the socialization of wo/men into femininity
and gendered subject positions shaped and inflected by race, class,
and imperial structures that produces and internalizes the second
class citizenship of wo/men which results in low self-esteem, self-negation
and self-sacrificing relationality. return
3. I
have elaborated this model of interpretation in my books In Memory
of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins.
New York: Crossroad, 1983. Tenth Anniversary Edition, 1994. 2d edition.
London: SCM Press, 1995 and Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of
Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon, 1985. Tenth
Anniversary Edition, 1995; theorized it in But She Said: Feminist
Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Beacon, 1992;
Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context.
Boston: Beacon, 1998 and Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of
Biblical Interpretation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999;
and pedagogically explicated it in WisdomWays: Introducing Feminist
Biblical Interpretation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2001. return
4. Cf.
e.g. Janice Capel Anderson, "Mapping Feminist Biblical Criticism,"
Critical Review of Books in Religion 2 (1991): 21-44; Elizabeth
Castelli, "Heteroglossia, Hermeneutics and History: A Review
Essay of Recent Feminist Studies of Early Christianity," The
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10/2 (1994): 73-8. Schottroff
Luise, S. Schroer, and M.T. Wacker, Feminist Interpretation.
The Bible in Women's Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998.;
Dube, Musa W., ed., Other Ways of Reading. African Wo/men and
the Bible. Atlanta: SBL, 2002.;Schroer, Silvia and Sophia Bietenhard,
eds., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible and the Hermeneutics
of Liberation. New York: Sheffield, 2003. For Jewish feminist
interpretations see the work of Esther Fuchs, Ilana Pardes, Adele
Reinhartz, Tal Ilan, Amy Jill Levine, Cynthia Baker or Alicia Suskin
Ostriker and many others. See also Esther Fuchs, "Points of
Resonance," in On the Cutting Edge, ed. Jane Schaberg,
Alice Bach, and Esther Fuchs (New York: Continuum, 2004), 1-20;
For Muslim feminist hermeneutics see e.g. Amina Wadud, Qur'an
and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Barbara F. Stowasser, Women
in the Qur'an: Traditions and Interpretations (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1994); Asma Barlas, "Believing Women"
in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002). return
5. See
also my contribution in Ann Braude, ed., Transforming the Faith
of Our Fathers (New York: Palgrave 2004), 135-156; and my forthcoming
article "Claiming the Power of the Word: Charting Critical
Global Feminist Biblical Studies," in Kathleen Wicker, Althea
Spencer-Miller and Musa Dube, eds., Feminist New Testament Studies:
Global and Future Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005); Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth, ed., Searching the
Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction (New York: Crossroad, 1993).
return
6. For
such a hermeneutical reading see Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory
Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (New
York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991). return
7. I
coined the neologism kyriarchy, derived from the Greek words for
"lord" or "master" (kyrios) and "to
rule or dominate" (archein), in order to redefine the
analytic category of patriarchy in terms of multiplicative intersecting
structures of domination. Kyriarchy is a socio-political system
of domination in which elite educated propertied men hold power
over wo/men and other men. Kyriarchy is best theorized as a complex
pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures
of supremacy and subordination, of ruling and oppression. Kyriocentrism
is a name for the linguistic-cultural-religious-ideological systems
and intersecting discourses of race, gender, heterosexuality, class,
imperialism, and other dehumanizing discourses that legitimate,
inculcate, and sustain kyriarchy i.e. multiplicative structures
of domination. return
8. For
a similar theoretical framework see bell hooks, Feminist Theory:
From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984). return
9. See
my book In Memory of Her, pp4-40 for this concept. return
10.
See Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza "Re-Visioning Christian
Origins: In Memory of Her Revisited." Pages 225-50 in Christian
Beginnings: Worship, Belief and Society. Edited by Kieran O'Mahony.
London: Continuum International, 2003. return
11.
Cf. Naomi M. Hyman, Biblical Wo/men in the Midrash: A Sourcebook
(Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997) xxv-xxxix. return
12.
In order to mark the inadequacy of our language about G*d, I had
adopted the Jewish orthodox way of writing the name of G-d in my
books Discipleship of Equals and But She Said. However,
Jewish feminists have pointed out to me that such a spelling is
offensive to many of them because it suggests a very conservative,
if not reactionary, theological frame of reference. Hence I have
begun to write the word G*d in this fashion in order to visibly
destabilize our way of thinking and speaking about the Divine. return
13.
Cf. Brian Wren, What Language Shall I Borrow? God-Talk in Worship:
A Male Response to Feminist Theology(New York: Crossroad, 1989).
return
14.
Sheila Redmond, "Christian 'Virtues' and Recovery from Child
Sexual Abuse," in Joanne Carlson Brown and Carol R. Bohn, eds.,
Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique,
( New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1989), 70-88. 73f. return
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