( Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that it is necessar...)
Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that it is necessary to reframe the field of biblical studies and replace the competitive teaching models prevalent in graduate programs with an emancipatory, radical democratic pedagogical model that fosters collaboration, participation, and critical engagement. To achieve constructive engagement with the differences of social location and diversity of perspectives that exist both in the Bible and in our contexts, Fiorenza argues, we must become aware of the pitfalls of one-dimensional thinking that seeks to use the Bible to find definite answers and to exclude different understandings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0664235093/?tag=2022091-20
(Good clean copy, includes feminist critical hermeneutics/...)
Good clean copy, includes feminist critical hermeneutics/method, model of reconstruction, renewal movement within judaism, the church in her house, neither male nor female, christian mission and the patriarchal order of the household, patriarchal household of god and the ekklesia of women.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0824506677/?tag=2022091-20
( Ephesians is a mystery text that seeks to make known ...)
Ephesians is a mystery text that seeks to make known the multifarious Wisdom of G*d. At its heart is the question of power. In this commentary, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza examines the political understandings of ekklesia and household in Ephesians as well as the roles that such understandings have played in the formation of early Christian communities and that still shape such communities today. By paying close attention to the function of androcentric biblical language within Ephesians, Schüssler Fiorenza engages in a critical feminist emancipatory approach to biblical interpretation that calls for conscientization and change, that is, for the sake of wo/mens salvation or wellbeing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814681743/?tag=2022091-20
(In Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet Elisabeth Schü...)
In Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza makes a unique contribution to two quite different discussions of Jesus the Christ. On the one hand, she looks at biblical christology from a critical feminist perspective in the tradition of liberation theology. On the other, she examines the feasibility of a feminine christology by considering such problems as Christian anti-Judaism, ideological justification of domination, religious exclusivism and the formation of patriarchal identity. Re-imagining the Jesus movement in a feminist key transcends the boundaries set by history, gender and doctrine. By assessing various Jesus traditions and interpretations in terms of whether they can engender liberating visions for today, Schüssler Fiorenza seeks to challenge and transform a Christianity dominated by masculinity and exclusivist theological frameworks so that it offers a vision of justice and well-being for all, the central image in which is the reign, the coming world, of God. This Cornerstones edition features a new extended introduction which takes into account the developments in the field since the work was originally published in 1994.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0567658651/?tag=2022091-20
( Reframing Ideas about Feminist Theory and Theology for ...)
Reframing Ideas about Feminist Theory and Theology for the 21st Century In Congress of Wo/men: Religion, Gender, and Kyriarchal Power, leading feminist scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza challenges the tendency in feminist theory to leave behind religiona space of struggle, resistance, and social transformationas a place for feminist politics. She also confronts the tendency of religious feminists to view women as if they are all the same, or to limit them to complementary roles with men. Presenting an alternative vision for global justice within the landscape of neoliberal kyriarchy, Schüssler Fiorenza calls upon religious and non-religious feminists to engage in transformation through struggle, friendship, and community. Further, this groundbreaking books final chapter opens up the discussion for future feminist work, drawing the reader into an imagined community of feminist readers with whom the reader can agree or disagree, but nevertheless struggle alongside to imagine a more just world. "Congress of Wo/men is an original contribution to critical feminist the*ologies and studies in religion as the*political sites of struggle for radical democracy and justice. The great value of this book is its witness to the striving of ekklesia wo/men for the kosmopolis of wo/men in an age of kyriarchal globalization. Congress of Wo/men is at the cutting edge of feminist the*logical work and will be crucial reading for those dreaming of a world of love for all, without domination, poverty, or oppression." -Namsoon Kang, Professor of Theology and Religion, Brite Divinity School "Amidst neoliberal globalization, Schussler Fiorenza declares that the social force of religions must be devoted to promoting hope, justice, and well-being for all. She sees religion as an ethical-political space for imagination and change and rightly advocates for closer collaboration between feminist the*logy, theory, and movements. More expansively, Congress of Wo/men offers an exciting vision of feminism working in greater solidarity with social justice activists, religious leaders, and community builders to transform global kyriarchal powers." -Maria Pilar Aquino, Professor of Theology and Religion, University of San Diego 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: Miriams Child, Sophias Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology; Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies; and Democratizing Biblical Studies: Toward an Emancipatory Educational Space.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/145754640X/?tag=2022091-20
( Recognized as a landmark in biblical literature, this p...)
Recognized as a landmark in biblical literature, this paperback volume is the work of women scholars from around the world under the leadership of Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. They look at the scriptures with "different eyes," and offer knowledge and insight that are timely as well as timeless.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0824517016/?tag=2022091-20
( How can recent advances in biblical studies empower fem...)
How can recent advances in biblical studies empower feminist struggles and inspire all Christians to articulate a vision that promotes human dignity, justice, inclusivity and well-being for all? In this book, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza develops her insights into the study of the Bible. She reclaims the work of nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminist biblical interpreters. And she analyses several intriguing biblical passages to show how the Bible can contribute to the spiritual struggle for a more just world. Praise for Sharing Her Word: "A fresh yet seasoned stock taking of feminist Biblical hermeneutics by one of the leading figures in this field." - Old Testament Essays, 2000
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0567086488/?tag=2022091-20
( Powerful insights from ministers, theologians, activist...)
Powerful insights from ministers, theologians, activists, leaders, artists and liturgists who are shaping the future. "Christianity has been a source of the oppression of women, as well as a resource for unleashing women's full humanity. Feminist analysis and practice have recognized this. Feminist Christianity is reshaping religious institutions and religious life in more holistic, inclusive, and justice-focused ways." ?from the Introduction Feminism has brought many changes to Christian religious practice. From inclusive language and imagery about the Divine to an increase in the number of women ministers, Christian worship will never be the same. Yet, even now, there is a lack of substantive structural change in many churches and complacency within denominations. The contributors to this book are the thought leaders who are shaping, and being shaped by, the emerging directions of feminist Christianity. They speak from across the denominational spectrum, and from the many diverse groups that make up the Christian community as it finds its place in a religiously pluralistic world. Taken together, their voices offer a starting point for building new models of religious life and worship. Topics covered include feminist: • Theological Visions • Scriptural Insights • Ethical Agendas • Liturgical and Artistic Frontiers • Ministerial Challenges Contributors include: María Pilar Aquino Rachel A. R. Bundang Wanda Deifelt Marie M. Fortune Mary E. Hunt W. Anne Joh Eunjoo Mary Kim Kwok Pui-lan Cynthia Lapp Shelly Matthews Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Eleanor Moody-Shepherd Surekha Nelavala Diann L. Neu Kate M. Ott Nancy Pineda-Madrid Marjorie Procter-Smith Meg A. Riley Victoria Rue Rosemary Radford Ruether Letha Dawson Scanzoni Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Deborah Sokolove Jeanette Stokes Janet Walton Traci C. West Gale A. Yee Barbara Brown Zikmund
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159473285X/?tag=2022091-20
She was born Elisabeth Schüssler in Cenad, in the Banat region of the Kingdom of Romania, on April 17, 1938 where she belonged to the Banat Swabian German-speaking Catholic population of an ethnically mixed community. As the Russian army advanced through Romania in late 1944, her parents fled with her to southern Germany. They subsequently moved to Frankfurt.
She attended local schools in Frankfurt. She then received her Theologicum (Licentiate of Theology) from the University of Würzburg in 1963, the thesis for which was published in German as Der vergessene Partner (The Forgotten Partner) in 1964. She subsequently earned the degree of Doctor of Theology from the University of Münster.
Her 1963 licentiate thesis from the University of Würzburg, where she was the first woman to enroll in the theological course required of students for priesthood, was therefore her first public and political articulation of her work toward a redefinition of the Catholic Church so that it included women in their full personhood, able to exercise their gifts and power. This thesis was published in 1964 as her first book, The Forgotten Partner: Foundations, Facts and Possibilities of the Professional Ministry of Women in the Church. As a professional theologian Schüssler Fiorenza's specialty, demonstrated in her doctoral thesis, "Priest for God: A Study of the Motif of the Kingdom and Priesthood in the Apocalypse, " for the Catholic Theological Faculty, Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, was biblical studies and the history of early Christianity. Through the publication of significant books, articles, and coedited projects as well as participation in numerous conferences and workshops both in the United States and internationally, she contributed to the feminist redefinition of theological and biblical interpretation both within the academy and the churches. Her academic career took her from Germany to the United States, where she held positions at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana; the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge; and as Krister Stendahl Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. A collection of essays, Discipleship of Equals: A Critical Feminist Ekklesia-logy of Liberation (1993), provided a brief glimpse of her wide contribution to women in the churches as well as to a theoretical articulation of critical feminist theology of liberation. A reading of the summary that precedes each article highlighted Schüssler Fiorenza's courage within the struggle against patriarchal structures in both church and academy. This characterized her life and her writing, as did the mutual support, encouragement, and shared creative path-finding that came from the community or ekklesia of women similarly committed. The publication of In Memory of Her: A Feminist Reconstruction of Christian Origins in English in 1983, and subsequently in a number of other languages, brought Schüssler Fiorenza's feminist framework for biblical interpretation and historical/theological reconstruction to international attention. She provided the first comprehensive articulation of a feminist critical model of historical-theological interpretation. It incorporated a hermeneutics (an interpretation) of suspicion that questioned the way in which women had been represented in the androcentric (male centered) documents of early Christianity. A hermeneutics of remembrance enabled a new reconstruction of the history of early Christianity so that it included the hints, the traces of women's agency within that history. In the following year the collection of essays Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Interpretation further developed her hermeneutical framework, incorporating a focus on rhetorics and providing a comprehensive model of biblical interpretation. As a teacher, Schüssler Fiorenza involved her students and workshop participants in the theological interpretive process. In this she not only taught but demonstrated the necessity of what she called "liberative vision and imagination" in order to retell the biblical stories in a variety of media and in a variety of settings so that women's suffering, struggles, agency, and dreams take their place at the center of the retold biblical story. One can experience this creativity in her 1992 book But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. She opened each chapter with a poem capturing an aspect of women's experience or vision as it shapes the interpretive process of that chapter. Most chapters closed with a creative re-telling or recontextualizing of the story under consideration written by her students as they explored the gospel stories of women. The personal and the political intersect in the pathfinding or path-creating dimensions of Schüssler Fiorenza's life and work. She was actively involved in a number of women's organizations that found their voice in the closing decades of the 20th century. With Judith Plaskow she founded and coedited the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, a forum for feminist inter-religious studies that more traditional journals failed to offer. She was likewise founding co-director of the section of Feminist Theology in Concilium, an international theological review within the Roman Catholic tradition. She was the editor of a three-volume work, Searching the Scriptures, the first volume of which was published November 1993. It entailed collaborative work with a wide range of authors and resulted in a collection that represented the multidimensional nature of feminist biblical interpretation. Being the first woman scholar to be elected president of the Society of Biblical Literature, she forged another path along which women could walk. Schüssler Fiorenza's dream to become a professional biblical scholar and theologian would seem to have been realized far beyond even her own creative imagining. She stood within a host of feminist theologians and biblical scholars as co-worker, envisioning and enacting new possibilities for women in the academy, in church, and in society. She was model and mentor for those who followed in her footsteps or who opened up new paths in feminist biblical interpretation and in the redefinition of church and world. For her, however, the theological task would not be complete until all women were free, free from all patriarchal oppression. Her creative work helped shape her own life as well as that of many other women and men in the academies and in the churches. In Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (1994), Schüssler Fiorenza deconstructed Christian doctrine to allow new interpretations likely to prove more fruitful for women and all oppressed groups. She saw these doctrines not as truths but as rhetorical strategies that retarded liberation. She viewed her approach as more radically inclusive than Marxism on questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race, and as more positively disposed toward the roles of religion and ideology. While strongly supportive of a diversity of feminist groups with different experiences and voices, she warned against the balkanization of the movement and its fragmentation into racial, religious, sexual orientation, and age-determined special interest groups. Her work was regularly cited for its creativity and forcefulness of analysis. She was, however, criticized by some for being pedantic, jargonistic, and accessible only to a closed circle of theologians and academicians.
She provided models, methods, and metaphors for biblical interpretations and a reconstruction of early Christianity in which women shared the center and were restored to human subjectivity. One of the foundational maxims of the feminist movement-the personal is political-provided a significant lens through which to view the life of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza.
( Reframing Ideas about Feminist Theory and Theology for ...)
( Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza argues that it is necessar...)
(Good clean copy, includes feminist critical hermeneutics/...)
( How can recent advances in biblical studies empower fem...)
(Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's pioneering and widely accl...)
( Recognized as a landmark in biblical literature, this p...)
(In Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet Elisabeth Schü...)
( Powerful insights from ministers, theologians, activist...)
( Ephesians is a mystery text that seeks to make known ...)
Quotations:
"The Christian marginality of women has its roots in the patriarchal beginnings of the church and in the androcentrism of Christian revelation. "
"The Christian marginality of women has its roots in the patriarchal beginnings of the church and in the androcentrism of Christian revelation. "
"Resurrection does not simply spell the survival of the soul but requires the transformation of the world as we know it. "
"Not only is history written by the winners, it is also made by them. "
In 1967 she married Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, an American theologian who was studying in Germany. In 1970, they both secured teaching appointments at the Catholic University of Notre Dame, where they had their daughter, Christina.
