Tired of seeing their holy texts used to justify the subjugation of women, a group of feminist theologians from across the Protestant-Catholic divide have joined forces to draft A Women’s Bible.
As the #MeToo movement continues to expose sexual abuse across cultures and industries, some academics of Christianity are clamoring for a reckoning with biblical interpretations they say have entrenched negative images of women.
The women we know from translations and interpretations of Bible texts are servants, prostitutes or saints, seen dancing for a king or kneeling to kiss Jesus’ feet.
Photo: AFP
However, while many feminists have called for the Bible, Christianity and religion altogether to be cast aside, an eclectic group of theologians instead insists that if interpreted properly, the Good Book can be a tool for promoting women’s emancipation.
“Feminist values and reading the Bible are not incompatible,” said Lauriane Savoy, one of two University of Geneva theology professors behind the push to draft Une Bible des Femmes (A Women’s Bible), which was published last month.
The professor at the university’s Faculty of Theology, which was established by the father of Calvinism in 1559, said the idea for the work came after she and her colleague, Elisabeth Parmentier, noticed how little most people knew or understood of the biblical texts.
“A lot of people thought they were completely outdated with no relevance to today’s values of equality,” the 33-year-old said, standing under the towering sculptures of Jean Calvin and other Protestant founders on the University of Geneva campus.
In a bid to counter such notions, Savoy and Parmentier, 57, joined forces with 18 other woman theologians from a range of countries and Christian denominations.
The academics have created a collection of texts challenging traditional interpretations of Bible scriptures that cast women characters as weak and subordinate to the men around them.
Parmentier points to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus visits two sisters, Martha and Mary.
“It says that Martha ensures the ‘service,’ which has been interpreted to mean that she served the food, but the Greek word diakonia can also have other meanings, for instance it could mean she was a deacon,” she said.
They are not the first to provide a more women-friendly reading of the scriptures. In 1898, US suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 other women drafted The Woman’s Bible, aimed at overturning religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.
The two Geneva theology professors say they were inspired by that work and had initially planned to simply translate it to French.
However, after determining that the 120-year-old text was too outdated, they decided to create a new work that could resonate in the 21st century.
“We wanted to work in an ecumenical way,” Parmentier said, adding that about half the women involved in the project are Catholic and the other half from a number of branches of Protestantism.
In the introduction to A Women’s Bible, the authors said that the chapters were meant to “scrutinize shifts in the Christian tradition, things that have remained concealed, tendentious translations, partial interpretations.”
They take to task “the lingering patriarchal readings that have justified numerous restrictions and bans on women,” the authors wrote.
Savoy said that Mary Magdalene, “the female character who appears the most in the Gospels,” had been given a raw deal in many common interpretations of the texts.
“She stood by Jesus, including as he was dying on the cross, when all of the male disciples were afraid. She was the first one to go to his tomb and to discover his resurrection,” she said.
“This is a fundamental character, but she is described as a prostitute ... and even as Jesus’ lover in recent fiction,” she said.
The academics also go to great lengths to place the texts in their historical context.
“We are fighting against a literal reading of the texts,” Parmentier said, pointing for instance to letters sent by Paul to nascent Christian communities.
Reading passages from those letters, which could easily be construed as radically anti-feminist, as instructions for how women should be treated today is insane, she said.
“It’s like taking a letter someone sends to give advice as being valid for all eternity,” she said.
The theologians’ texts also approach the Bible through different themes, like the body, seduction, motherhood and subordination.
The authors say they consider their work a useful tool in the age of #MeToo.
“Each chapter addresses existential questions for women, questions they are still asking themselves today,” Parmentier said.
“While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite,” she said.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US