Wo/men, Scripture, and Politics: Exploring the Cultural Imprint of the Bible

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.

About the Author: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is the Krister Stendahl Professor at Harvard Divinity School and founding coeditor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. She is past President of the Society of Biblical Literature, and was elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. Her influential works include: In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins; Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology; Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies; and Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward an Emancipatory Educational Space.