Biblical Views: Are Feminists Biased About the Bible?

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The title of this column, supplied by the editor, contains two words that need comment. “Biased” comes from the sewing term “bias,” meaning the angle on which a piece of cloth has been cut diagonally across the grain. Bias can also mean an angle of vision. In that sense, yes, feminists do have an angle of vision about the Bible. In general, their vision is angled from a viewpoint of the varied experiences of wo/men (a term coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza for women and nonelite men). This is against the grain, so to speak, because the Bible is not written (and in the past has not been interpreted) from this angle.

But in common parlance the word “biased” has also come to mean something quite negative, indicating a certain blindness, prejudice and hostility. In that sense, I can say “yes” and “no.” In the first wave of the Women’s Movement in the 1800s, some feminists judged religion and the Bible as major obstacles to human rights. Other feminists found in them great power to be unleashed in the struggle for human rights. Compare this to the use of the Bible by those involved on both sides of the issue of slavery. I think we find the same divisions today. Some feminists are convinced that religions and their sacred texts are passé or dangerous; others, that religions or at least spiritualities are essential and beautiful. Some feminist scholars have had little or no education in religious and Biblical studies, and have ruled out the Bible and the religions that use it as totally oppressive and antique, something in which they have no interest, not even enough to critique. The Bible itself contains passages to support both positive and negative views, in terms of gender.

I think the title of this column may contain a not-so-hidden fear in some that feminist Biblical scholars are destroying the churches’ belief in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God for all time. This is true; they are doing that. Feminist scholarship is not “fundamentalist.” Some Bible scholars view the Bible or parts of it as not the Word of God for now or even ever, and that ancient and contemporaneous usages can and should be examined. For example, the statement in Genesis 3:16: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and [or: “but”] he shall rule over you.”^a Or “As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says” (1 Corinthians 14:33–34). Other scholars view the Bible as the word of God in human words, more specifically in the words of men, not women. As far as we know, none of the Biblical texts was produced by a woman, though some may contain women’s traditions and insights. Inquiry into the cultural and ideological contexts is essential to good scholarship.

The word “feminist,” as used by feminist scholars, means someone who participates in the worldwide social change movement toward empowerment for wo/men; one who thinks that wo/men are fully human and works to make that an operative principle and value of his or her action. Yes, some men are feminists. The African American writer bell hooks (who does not capitalize her name) has written a small book, Feminism Is for Everybody, whose title is serious—I hope you read it.¹ The popular media have not done a very good job of presenting feminism (in fact, I cannot think of any sitcom or movie character who is clearly a feminist). But we all experience the changes the women’s movement has made and is making in society—in the workplace, marriage expectations, politics, language, economics, education, rituals and everyday life.² Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist and other feminist scholars are at work today on “sacred texts,” probing for materials that are outmoded and dangerous, as well as those that can enrich our present and future and that of our children.

Feminist scholarship in Biblical studies has been increasingly prominent and accepted in the academy for 40 years at least. The great works of Phyllis Trible exemplify both the angle of vision, from wo/men’s experience, and the use of the Bible as a contemporary resource.^b Take, for example, her treatment in Texts of Terror of the story in Judges 19 of the Levite and his secondary wife (“concubine” in some translations).³ Trible reads it as a story not of lack of hospitality (an older interpretation) but of callous treatment of women, gang rape, and the relation of this treatment to war with its widening horrors afflicted on more women. But for Trible, the Bible also includes the Song of Songs, the only extensive 070 Biblical work on sexuality, which she reads as promoting an astonishing balance: “my lover is mine and I am his.”⁴ Examination of the Hebrew Bible’s other prominent women such as Deborah and Esther, legal texts, myths, assumptions and implications are topics that have also been analyzed along feminist lines and with feminist interests.

With regard to the New Testament, prominent women such as Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark, the women mentioned in Romans 16 as powerful leaders and the women prophets in Corinth have been a focus of feminist scholarship. Also of great interest are such topics as the relation of the canonical texts to apocryphal texts, the politics of interpretation, slavery (different for men and women), Christian and feminist anti-Judaism, Jesus’ inclusive movement, his lack of statements about gender inequalities. And, of course, understandings of and metaphors for God in both testaments is a central topic. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s groundbreaking work In Memory of Her (its title drawn from Mark 14:9) , as well as her edited volumes of essays and commentaries by a host of international scholars, in Searching the Scriptures, provide solid research in these areas. Many feminist works are quite accessible to the non-scholar.

Feminist studies do not aim at an impossible ideal—complete objectivity; in fact, they aim to make it clear that there are unacknowledged assumptions, aims, omissions and distortions in every work, including—maybe especially—works that claim objectivity. Feminist Biblical scholars aim for fairness in assessing the texts, and for the right to an informed opinion about what is fair.

There is a wealth of insight in our heritage and in ongoing feminist interpretation. It would be a shame if some biased against feminism by ignorance, lack of familiarity with it, or fear would deny themselves and their communities this wealth. As for myself, I would not have spent decades studying and writing about the Bible from a feminist perspective had I not found it and the Bible an inexhaustible reservoir of frustration, anger, fascination and joy; for me, it can be more liberative than oppressive.

The title of this column, supplied by the editor, contains two words that need comment. “Biased” comes from the sewing term “bias,” meaning the angle on which a piece of cloth has been cut diagonally across the grain. Bias can also mean an angle of vision. In that sense, yes, feminists do have an angle of vision about the Bible. In general, their vision is angled from a viewpoint of the varied experiences of wo/men (a term coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza for women and nonelite men). This is against the grain, so to speak, because the Bible is […]