Democratizing Biblical Studies

"Schüssler Fiorenza addresses such questions as, What are the educational practices and procedures that are advocated by traditional educational models, and how can they be changed? What kinds of educational and communicative practices do biblical studies need to develop in order to fashion an emancipatory democratizing rhetorical space and a forum of many voices? To envision, articulate, debate, and practice a radical democratic ethos of biblical studies, she identifies emerging didactic models that can foster such a radical democratic style of learning"--Pbk. cover.

Between 1992 and 1994 Malawi underwent a remarkable transition from dictatorship to democracy. Truly a transformation of power! Yet this period of profound change raised many issues of power and accountability. In this book some of the key questions are explained and addressed from a theological perspective. The work originated as a case study on the World Council of Churches Theology of Life programme. It was then presented as a Kachere Monograph in the belief that it will not only contribute to the reconstruction of politic in Malawi but also be an important resource for all those concerned with the formation of a viable theology of power for todays world. It is now presented here again as a Luviri Reprint. The contributors are all drawn from the University of Malawi Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Kenneth Ross has written on The Transformation of Power in Malawi 1992-94: the Role of the Christian Churches and A Practical Theology of Power for the New Malawi; Felix Chingota on The Use of the Bible in Social Transformation; Isabel Apawo Phiri on Marching, Suspended and Stoned: Christian Women in Malawi 1995; James Tengatenga on Young People: Participation or Alienation? An Anglican Case; J.C. Chankanza and Hilary Mijoga on Muslim Perspectives on Power; Hilary Mijoga on Christian Experience in Malawi Prisons; and Klaus Fiedler on Power at the Receiving End: the Jehovas Witnesses Experience in One-Party Malawi and Even in the Church the Exercise of Power is Accountable to God.

While scholars of the New Testament and its Roman environment have recently focused attention on ethnicity, on the one hand, and gender on the other, the two questions have often been discussed separately-and without reference to the contemporary critical study of race theory. This interdisciplinary volume addresses this lack by drawing together new essays by prominent scholars in the fields of New Testament, classics, and Jewish studies. These essays push against the marginalization of race and ethnicity studies and put the received wisdom of New Testament studies squarely in the foreground.

In this major study, leading feminist biblical critic Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza focuses on Paul and his interpreters. She questions the apolitical ethos of biblical scholarship and argues for an alternative rooted in a critical understanding of language as a form of power. Modern biblical criticism, she reasons, derives much of its methodology and inspiration from an outdated notion of modern science. It professes value-neutrality and detachment from the world of politics and history. Yet, Schussler Fiorenza maintains, this posture belies an objectivity that fails to engage the sociopolitical context of both the text and today's reader. It also does not recognize the rhetorical character of biblical texts and readings. If language is understood in the sense of ancient rhetorics as a form of power that constitutes reality, then an ethics of interpretation is called for. The task of biblical studies is to identify and assess the ethical resources and moral visions of biblical religions. "Only then," Schussler Fiorenza contends, "will bibical studies be a significant partner in the global struggles seeking justice and well-being for all."

In Wo/men, Scripture, and Politics, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, brings to bear years of trailblazing scholarship of feminist thought and hermeneutics onto the current political and cultural landscape. In this book, she seeks to articulate and use biblical interpretation as intervention into the failure of the democratic cultural-political imagination. Although such an intervention is often taboo for supposedly neutral academic scholarship, Schüssler Fiorenza argues that it is politically necessary because political argument today so often utilizes biblical rhetoric in the public square. e biblical-political analysis and suggestions of this book are developed in four chapters, each focusing on the role of the Bible in struggles over women’s leadership in the present, touching on the cultural “double bind” of women in politics, sexual abuse, power, and the #MeToo movement. Schüssler Fiorenza’s insights and arguments not only lead to the development of reimagined cultural biblical imprints of women in the political arena, but they also encourage her readers to add their own biblical examples to inspire them in their struggle for a biblical vision of “women in the public square.” is is an insightful, challenging book written for our time by someone who has always seemed to be ahead of hers.

Rape Culture and Religious Studies: Critical and Pedagogical Engagements stages a critical engagement between religious texts and the problem of sexual violence. Rape and other forms of sexual violence are widespread on college and university campuses; they also occur in sacred texts and religious traditions. The volume addresses these difficult intersections as they play out in texts, traditions, and university contexts. The volumegathers contributions from religious studies scholars to engage these questions from a variety of institutional contexts and to offer a constructive assessment of religious texts and traditions.

With Empowering Memory and Movement, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza completes a three-volume look across her influential work and career. In Transforming Vision (2011), she drew from decades of pioneering scholarship to offer the contours of a critical feminist hermeneutic. The chapters in Changing Horizons (2013) sketched out a theory of liberation. Now, the consequences for a liberating praxis are elaborated in interviews and essays that chart Schüssler Fiorenza’s own personal and professional history as these are intertwined with the history of the worldwide movement for emancipation and full equality. Empowering Memory and Movement looks back, but also looks around at challenges and potentialities on the global scene, and looks ahead to an emancipatory future, with a critical and wise engagement with scripture and the interpretive tradition always at the center.

Changing Horizons is the second of two volumes highlighting the ways in which Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's work constructs a critical feminist theory and praxis of liberation, in relation to the biblical text and its legacy, and in relation to the theological and ecclesial setting of today. Schussler Fiorenza attempts to free both biblical studies and theology from disciplinary constraints and assumptions that have allowed them to acquiesce and even perpetuate forms of oppression—from racism and poverty to colonialism and gender equality.