Rev. Dr. Mitzi J Smith: “This Little Light of Mine” The Womanist Biblical Scholar as Prophetess, Iconoclast, and Activist

Rev. Dr. Mitzi Smith, mitzijsmith.com
Twitter: @MitziJSmithPhD 

Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary.
You can read more about Dr. Smith and read my summary of her introduction to her book, Womanist Sass and Talk Back, here. 

Essay: “'This Little Light of Mine' The Womanist Biblical Scholar as Prophetess, Iconoclast, and Activist" 

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In this essay, Smith shows how womanist biblical scholars, like so many Black women who came before them, can function as prophetess, iconoclasts, and activists (126). Through these three roles Black women seek to "dismantle racism, sexism, classism, neocolonialism, and heterosexism as interconnected oppressions and systems that invade and infiltrate the lived realities of black women and marginalized communities" (126). Smith writes, "We recognize that God dwells in us as peripheral prophetesses, that God resides in the margins with the oppressed, and that from the margins we can and are called to speak truths to powers, to shatter oppressive strongholds, iconic traditions and beliefs, and to actively participate in the revolution to transform this world into the likeness of God’s incarnate justice, peace, and love" (126).

Main points:

1. Womanist biblical scholars acknowledge their social location and the lenses with which they read the Bible, understanding that every interpreter’s “context both limits and illumines interpretation,” (Weems 52) whether or not the person is aware of it and admits it: "All readers, readings, and texts are contextual and subjective (112).
   
   
2. A womanist biblical scholar is a Prophetess, "infused with and guided by the Spirit of God.. as [she] confronts and names oppressions in texts, contexts, readers, readings, and cultures" (112. Womanist biblical scholars, like "proto-womanists and Civil Rights activist Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer" go beyond their written work to "raise their voices, and lift their feet to write and right, to teach and to preach, and to sing “truth to power” with a goal toward transformation and the dismantling of oppressions and oppressive structures, toward revolutionary change (113).
   

   "Womanist biblical scholars declare that black women and other women of color experience and produce truth and light; they are repositories and creators of legitimate epistemologies. All knowledge production is subjective. Womanist biblical scholars acknowledge the existence of more than one truth, especially with regard to biblical texts, contexts, readings, and readers; truths and potential truths exist; malestream biblical scholars have no monopoly on truths." (113).

3. Womanist biblical scholars know that "the God of the Bible is the God of the oppressed, the God of liberation and they interpret Scripture "within the overarching hermeneutic of liberty and justice for the oppressed and most marginalized" (115).
   
   
4. A womanist biblical scholar is an Iconoclast, knowing that many times the knowledge and systems that have been "produced, petrified, and sacralized by malestream (white men and other men) and white feminist scholars" will not address the needs of black women and will be oppressive. Therefore, the work of womanist biblical scholars "is necessarily sometimes iconoclastic" needing to challenge things that have been revered as holy (119).
   

   "In confronting biblical texts, contexts, and interpretive traditions, including long-held theological constructions and commentaries that fail to consider the implications of race, gender, class, and empire womanist biblical scholars must sometimes break down and discard traditional, putative interpretive icons or images and paradigms that are oppressive of women of color and our communities and dismissive of our struggles and concerns. (119).

5. The womanist biblical scholar is an Activist, concerned with the everyday lives of black people "and their access to necessary resources, the recognition of their civil rights, and the exercise of agency and the negotiation of power as it relates to the health and wholeness of every member of the community and in the world" (122). Therefore they "read, exegete, and write as agents of social change in the church, in the community, and in the world" (122).
   
   
6. Finally, womanist biblical scholars also challenge (and seek to change) "unjust interpretations, theologies, and pedagogies of our sisters" while also allowing God "to read, indicted or convict, and transform her [own] soul so that she will speak the truths to powers wherever injustice is found. She must constantly make available to God her fallible humanity so that God might continually encourage, transform, and regenerate her for the work she is called to do for herself and her community" (123).

Works Cited

Smith, Mitzi J. “'This Little Light of Mine' The Womanist Biblical Scholar as Prophetess, Iconoclast, and Activist" in I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader. Edited by Mitzi J. Smith, Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015.

Weems, Renita, “Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible,” in Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader, ed. Katie Geneva Cannon, Emilie M. Townes, and Angela D. Sims. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011. 

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• Key QuestionsWomanist Bible Scholars ask when interpreting the Bible

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• "A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas: “Marginalized People, Liberating Perspectives: A Womanist Approach to Biblical Interpretation”

Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas is an African-American Episcopal priest, womanist theologian, and the inaugural Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. She is also the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral. She is widely published in national and international journals and other publications.  Her groundbreaking and widely taught book Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (1999) was the first to address the issue of homophobia within the black church community.  Her book, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (2015), examines the challenges of a “Stand Your Ground” culture for the black church.

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Essay: “Marginalized People, Liberating Perspectives: A Womanist Approach to Biblical Interpretation” 

Thesis: We are called to listen to and learn from those on the underside of church and society (46). We need to value the perspectives of the “least of these,” the underside,” those who are marginalized and oppressed (46). When we view God from the perspective of the most marginalized people in the Bible we will more clearly see that "the God of our theologies is not necessarily the God of our lives," and that God is truly transcendent, and so cannot be contained by any theological system or "exegetical attempt to make simplistic the complexity and mystery of a transcendent God" (46). Reading in solidarity with the underside shows us more clearly what it means "for God to be a liberator with those who are most oppressed, even as they are represented in the Bible" (46). Furthermore, if our claims about God are not liberating for the marginalized and oppressed, then we must reevaluate those claims (46).

Main Points:

1. Douglas writes as a theologian, not a biblical scholar. Even though the Bible is a significant source for Christian theology, and biblical interpretations have theological implications, the tools of the disciplines are different (44). But in the same way that our theologies tend to reflect more about the person doing them as they do about God, the same is true for our perspectives on the Bible (44). No one does theology or biblical interpretation in a vacuum - it is always informed and influenced by one's social, historical, and cultural context (44). 
   

   "The texts we go to, the way we read those texts, and the authority we give the Bible itself are inevitably informed by who we are as embodied beings, how we experience life socially and culturally, as well as what we perceive as the meaning and value of life" (44).

2. This is not an "anything goes" kind of "vulgar relativism". Typically when that accusation is made it is in an attempt to end the conversation, played as a perceived trump card. This kind of mentality would suggest that "slaveholders who used the Bible to place a “sacred canopy” over chattel slavery were just as justified in their use of the Bible as were the enslaved who used the Bible to support their quest for freedom" (44). This kind of approach to the Bible "implies that it is just as appropriate to use the Bible as a weapon of terror and dehumanization as it is to use it as a source for empowerment and liberation” (44).
   
   
3. A womanist approach to biblical interpretation starts by acknowledging the ways our society and many churches still contain "interlocking and interactive structures of domination" which are "characterized by white patriarchal privilege and undergirded by white supremacist ideologies" (44). Douglas also points out that "to be marginalized is not to be powerless... Rather, it signals a certain liberating agency that has several implications for biblical interpretation in our complicated world” (44).
   
   
4. People who exist on the margins of society and church have an epistemological advantage, a way of knowing, "that is fundamental to creating a just society and church” (45). Those on the underside are least likely "to be deceived into thinking that certain systems and structures of domination are not inherently evil but can be mended to be more just" (45). This is in contrast to those who are still outsiders but are able to exist within those structures who might be tempted to protect whatever small amount of privilege/power they have. Because of this, the underside can more clearly see "the radical and revolutionary change required to ensure that all human beings have access to what is needed to live and to fulfill our full human potential” (45). This is similar to what Gustavo Gutiérrez suggested about there being a “preferential option for the poor” because they are perhaps better able to understand the revelation of God (45).
   
   
5. In order to listen and learn from the underside, we must name our own points of privilege so we can even recognize "that our vantage point may indeed not be the best vantage point from which to engage the biblical witness to God" (46). This frees us to appreciate these other perspectives.
   
   
6. Since various biblical texts "lend themselves to oppressive interpretations", we need to adopt a “hermeneutic of suspicion” as we interpret the Bible (46):
   

   "Inasmuch as any text or interpretation of a text diminishes the life and freedom of any people, then those texts and/or interpretations must be held under “suspicion,” critically reevaluated, and perhaps lose authority. We must fundamentally denounce any attempts to use the Bible in ways that terrorize others, such as women or gay and lesbian persons. Moreover, the perspective of “the least of these,” those who feel the “terror” of a particular text or interpretation, is the adjudicating perspective in this regard.” (46)

7. It is imperative that we recognize the impact and consequences that our use of the Bible and our theology can have on people's lives. The Bible can be used "as a weapon of oppression or a source of liberation" (46). Therefore, we must do biblical interpretation not only with humility but also with the firm commitment "to nurture a liberating, not terrorizing, biblical tradition” (46).

Works Cited

Douglas, Kelly Brown. “Marginalized People, Liberating Perspectives: A Womanist Approach to Biblical Interpretation” in I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader. Edited by Mitzi J. Smith, Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• "A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney: Womanist Midrash (Introduction)

Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. wilgafney.com
Twitter: @WilGafney

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Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne

The summary of the book on Goodreads says: “Womanist Midrash is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Using her own translations, Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. Gafney employs a solid understanding of womanist and feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and the sociohistorical culture of the ancient Near East. This unique and imaginative work is grounded in serious scholarship and will expand conversations about feminist and womanist biblical interpretation."

In the introduction, Gafney says this book is an invitation to other readers, hearers, and interpreters of Scripture to read and interpret with her (2). She explains that her exegetical approach which she calls "womanist midrash" was inspired by rabbinic midrash (exegesis) (2). Rabbinic readings reimagine the dominant readings and craft new interpretations to "stand alongside—not replace—former readings" (2). Midrash asks questions of the text, raising as many questions as it answers, often leaving it up to the reader to answer the questions (2, 4). Gafney employs her womanist midrash using the customary tools of the trade for a biblical scholar: "textual criticism, linguistic and literary analysis, even historical-critical approaches," but she does so as a womanist (8).

Main points:

1. Womanist midrash "is a set of interpretive practices, including translation, exegesis, and biblical interpretation, that attends to marginalized characters in biblical narratives, especially women and girls, intentionally including and centering on non-Israelite peoples and enslaved persons" (3).
   
   
2. Gafney uses her "sanctified imagination", which she describes as "the fertile creative space where the preacher-interpreter enters the text, particularly the spaces in the text, and fills them out with missing details: names, back stories, detailed descriptions of the scene and characters, and so on." Similar to classical and contemporary Jewish midrash, "the sacred imagination tells the story behind the story, the story between the lines on the page." One example she gives is that the sanctified imagination declares that Samson’s locks of hair were dreadlocks. This practice of the sanctified imagination is also a type of reader-response criticism (3).
   
   
3. Gafney says, "most simply, womanism is black women’s feminism," (6) but it is also much more: "It is a richer, deeper, liberative paradigm; a social, cultural, and political space and theological matrix with the experiences and multiple identities of black women at the center" (12). Womanism sets itself apart from the dominant-culture feminism, which is too often only concerned with white women of a certain class (6). Womanists privilege the intersection of their "Afro-diasporic identity (embodiment and experience)" and "gender (performance and identity)". Womanists interrogate "power, authority, voice, agency, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion" in the text (6).
   
   
4. Gafney's primary womanist principles that shape her interpretation are:
   1) "the legitimacy of black women’s biblical interpretation as normative and authoritative,
   2) the inherent value of each member of a community in the text and interpreting the text,
   3) talking back to the text
   4) making it plain, the work of exegesis from translation to interpretation." (8)
   
   
5. Gafney also includes a list of 12 questions to ask when interpreting the Bible. I included those questions in this post: Key Questions Womanist Bible Scholars ask when interpreting the Bible.

Works Cited

Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• "A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Dr. Renita Weems: "The Hebrew Women are not like the Egyptian Women"

Rev. Dr. Renita Weems 

http://renitaweems.com/

Twitter: @somethingwithin

Essay: "The Hebrew Women Are Not Like the Egyptian Women: The Ideology of Race, Gender and Sexual Reproduction in Exodus 1"

In this essay, Weems points out an ideological conflict within the text of Exodus 1:8-22. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah are able to exploit Pharaoa's assumption that Hebrews and Egyptians are fundamentally different by telling him that Hebrew women give birth more easily. At the same time, they are proving his assumption that women are more compliant than me is false as they deceive him. Weems says the text remains problematic in terms of its usability in liberation struggles because it does not question the ideology of different.

Weems examines the power dynamics in play with the people who actually wrote and read the text (the world behind the text). She examines the ways assumptions about race and gender are depicted within the ideological struggle we see in Exodus 1:8-22.

Main points:

1. Most of the studies that have analyzed the story of Shiphrah and Puah have viewed the biblical text as primarily a "literary production" and "a document with historical import and ramifications" (25). But by treating the text as "an intellectual transcript of the past" that is constructed by the implied author of the text "the dominant voice becomes the sole one worthy of attending to" (25). These previous studies have not considered the context of the social origins of this story and "the social configurations construed within it' (26).
2. Biblical texts are social productions: "they emerge out of very particular social and material settings, and as a result, they simultaneously preserve and promote certain views about power relations and social identity" (26). This means we can see biblical texts taking sides in ideological debates, especially around issues of power. For example, at least some of the existing structure of power relations that was in place at the time the text was written is "both embedded in and assumed by the text" (26). In the case of Shiphrah and Puah, the story shows us how women and Hebrew slaves were thought of in the past, but the story also advocates "a similar or a different social ranking for women and Hebrew slaves in the present" (26).
3. An ideological analysis pays close attention to the "narrative voice and ideological perspective inscribed in the text" (26). We ask questions such as, "From whose point of view is the narrative being told? Whose class, gender, and ethnic interests are being served in the preservation and commodification of this story? (26).
4. As contemporary readers and interpreters we like the fact that women are highlighted as "setting in motion the liberation of Israel", but ultimately, "the story is as eloquent and aristocratic in what it does not say as in what it does say" (32). Exodus 1 does not actually challenge the idea of differences between men and women or between the Egyptians and the Hebrews (32). Those differences have simply been recast and "co-opted" for the narrator's purposes and ideological interests (32).
5. Weems concludes by saying that those who are involved in race, gender, and/or class struggles in today's world who want to use this story as a positive example in their struggle for liberation will need to exercise 'due caution" (33).

Works Cited

Weems, Renita J. "The Hebrew Women are not Like the Egyptian Women: The Ideology of Race, Gender and Sexual Reproduction in Exodus 1". Semeia (Volume: 59) 1992. pp. 25-34.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• Key QuestionsWomanist Bible Scholars ask when interpreting the Bible

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• "A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Key Questions Womanist Bible Scholars are asking when interpreting the Bible

“Womanists and feminists ask different questions of a text than do other readers and different questions from each other. And we also ask some of the same questions, and we arrive at similar and dissonant conclusions. Privileging the crossroads between our Afro-diasporic identity (embodiment and experience) and our gender (performance and identity), we ask questions about power, authority, voice, agency, hierarchy, inclusion, and exclusion. The readings enrich all readers from any perspective. The questions we ask enrich our own understanding and the understandings of those with whom we are in conversation.” - Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, (Womanist Midrash, 7)

The first 12 questions I have compiled are straight from Gafney’s introduction to Womanist Midrash. Questions 13 and 14 I wrote down as I was reading about various consequences of interpretation. The remaining questions came up in various readings and I have cited those sources as well. These are helpful questions for all of us to consider when reading and interpreting the Bible. 

1. "Who is speaking and/or active? 
2. Where are the women and girls, what are they doing, and what are their names? 
3. When women or other marginalized characters speak and act, whose interests are they serving? 
4. Who (and where) are the characters without which the story could not have unfolded as articulated? 
5. What are the power dynamics in the narrative? 
6. What are the ethical implications of the text when read from the perspective of the dominant character(s)? 
7. What are the ethical implications of previous (especially traditional) readings of the text for black women? 
8. How have black women historically related to the text? 
9. In what ways do the contemporary circumstances of black women readers shape new and renewed interpretations? 
10. How do the values articulated in the text and its interpretation affect the well-being of the communities that black women inhabit? 
11. How does (can) this text function as Scripture for black women? 
12. Who is (what is the construction of) God in the text? Is s/he/it invested in the flourishing of black women, our families, and our worlds?" (Gafney 8)
13. What is the history of consequences of interpretation for this text? 
14. How has this text been used to harm, oppress, or marginalize people?
15. What do the specific word choices and narrative choices in the text mean for the women on the margins of society? (Norton 278)
16. Where is God in all of this? To whom does this God belong? (Norton 278)
17. Weems asks "From whose point of view is the narrative being told?" (26)
18. “Whose class, gender, and ethnic interests are being served in the preservation and commodification of this story?” (Weems 26) 
19. “Can those involved in race, gender, and/or class struggles in modern society use this story as a positive example in their struggle for liberation? (Weems 33) 
20. When she applies a Black Lives Matter hermeneutic to the biblical text, Gafney is asking: Whose lives are at risk in the text? (Gafney, Reflection on BLM, 206)
21. Who is subject to oppression or pushed to the margins of the text and considered disposable, especially as a result of "an intersecting element of identity" such as gender and ethnic identity? (Gafney, Reflection on BLM, 206)

Works Cited

Gafney, Wilda C. "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship". Journal of Biblical Literature, vol 136, no. 1, 2017. pp 204-207.

Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.

Norton, Yolanda. “Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth,” in I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader, edited by Mitzi J. Smith, Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. 2015.

Weems, Renita J. "The Hebrew Women are not Like the Egyptian Women: The Ideology of Race, Gender and Sexual Reproduction in Exodus 1". Semeia (Volume: 59) 1992. pp. 25-34.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation

Essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney: “A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game”

Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. wilgafney.com
Twitter: @WilGafney

Author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne, a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah; Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel; and co-editor of The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible.

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“A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” by Dr. Gafney might be my favorite academic essay I have ever read. (And I have read a lot!) She explains in a footnote that she is "framing Delilah's story in hip-hop lyrics" that have taken on different meanings from the way they were originally intended ("which can be sexist, misogynist, homophobic, and glorifying of violence" (50).  

Gafney centers Delilah, making her the main character of interest instead of Samson/Shimson. Gafney says she sees Delilah as a ‘bad woman” who “uses her sexuality to her own benefit within the overarching androcentric and patriarchal power systems” (50). Gafney tells us that a womanist reading of Delilah sees her as her own woman who makes her own decisions about her body and her life and for once, actually ends up better off than expected in the “androcentric scriptures of Israel” (50). Delilah plays the men’s game but she beats them at it.

Main points:

1. Traditional “heteropatriarchal” readings of this text focus on Samson and glorify him as the hero of the story ("a playa") because the text is written with him as the main character and Delilah as a supporting character (51). I love all of the references to hip-hop and various vernacular phrases throughout this article, and the points Gafney uses them to make, such as when she says, “Women who object to normative readings of the saga might well be told, 'don’t hate the playa, hate the game' (Marrow and Ascencio 1999) since the game is biblical, hating or challenging the game has theological implications—since the game is presented as God-ordained” (51) Gafney then reminds us that womanist biblical interpretation “does not hesitate to talk back to the Bible or its God” (51). This gives such wonderful freedom to the interpreters of the text to push back on those traditional power dynamics.
2. Gafney talks about Samson’s mother, who is not named in the text. There is a tradition in rabbinic interpretation that provides names for some of the women who were not given names in the text. After telling us that the name given to Samson’s mother in that tradition is “Zlelponith”, that is what Gafney calls her in the rest of the article (56). 
3. Samson’s wife is also nameless in the text. Gafney says her story specifically influences Delilah’s choices in that Delilah learns from the infamous story about Samson and his wife. Gafney calls her “Yashirah” based on the aspects that Samson was drawn to, referencing Judges 14:3. The text blames her for her fate because she is the “other”: a “foreign” woman from a “foreign” place “out in public looking like that” (57). Gafney says that as a womanist she is “compelled to read from her position” and points out that the text itself is biased against because of her otherness, an outsider, a foreigner, and the people who wrote and compiled the text thought of her people and culture as inferior and did not see the divine image in her (57). Samson’s wife (Yashirah) only has one “sorrowful bit of agency” in this story - she cried every day of their seven-day wedding feast (Judg 14:17). Gafney says “she pressed him to the point of oppressing him. She pressed her way to her own deliverance” (59). However many translators say she “nagged” him for the answer to the riddle in order to save her life and her family’s lives.
4. Gafney reiterates several times what she must do or cannot do as a womanist interpreter. Reflecting on Samson’s revenge when he sets foxes on fire to destroy the Philistine crops and at least thirty random men are killed along with his wife and her father she says: “As a womanist, I cannot ignore this wanton act of cruelty or its uncritical acceptance in the many sermons and Sunday school lessons I have heard on this text. [...] before moving to Samson's next woman or on to Delilah, I must pause in womanist solidarity with Yashirah, mark and mourn her passing. I do not know the name her mother called her. I call her Yashirah, good and pleasing in herself, to herself, not dependent on the approval of any man.” (60)
5. Next, we learn about an unnamed foreign (Philistine) sex-worker (Judg 16:1) who Gafney names “Arishat” (61). Gafney uses her “sanctified imagination” to conclude that Delilah surely would have heard all of these stories of Samson’s violence and how he treated these other women (61).  Gafney points out that Samson’s love for Delilah is one-sided. The text does not mention her having feelings for him and does not care about her motives. Gafney argues that Delilah and Samson are not married because the text does not say that they are (64). And even though Samson is the one having sex with multiple women, few sermons address Samson’s promiscuity, nor is he criticized within the text for this or for all of his acts of violence (65).
6. Gafney describes Delilah as “grown”: a single, independent woman who is financially secure, which is a dangerous thing for the patriarchy (65).
   
   
   Delilah uses her wit to outsmart Samson and uses his own arrogance against him. Gafney also points out that unlike most of the women in the Bible, Delilah makes it to the end of this story not only alive but free and much wealthier (70). [Another delightful comment from Gafney: "Using my sanctified imagination I hear Delilah singing 'Bitch Better have My Money" by Rihanna (Pierre et al. 2015)" (70).] Delilah is not punished for her role in Samson’s death or forced to be under the authority of a man. Gafney’s fantastic conclusion to this article is that “Delilah is not tamed by her text. She is not rewarded with marriage or children. She does not need them. She can support herself. Delilah is free. She exits the text on her own terms. Like a boss” (71). 

Works Cited

Gafney, Wil. “A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game” in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse. Edited by Byron, Gay L., and Vanessa Lovelace. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics" by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace
• “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” by Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems
• "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton

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Rev. Dr. Vanessa Lovelace: "We Don't Give Birth to Thugs" (summary)

Rev. Dr. Vanessa Lovelace
Twitter: @womanisthbprof 

Dr. Lovelace is an Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Dean and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Lancaster Theological Seminary. She received a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University, an M.Div. from McCormick Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Bible (Hebrew), Culture, and Hermeneutics from Chicago Theological Seminary. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

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Essay: "'We Don't Give Birth to Thugs': Family Values, Respectability Politics, and Jephthah's Mother"

This essay uses literary criticism and a womanist hermeneutic to expand on previous feminist and womanist interpretations of Judg 11 which have analyzed this story from Jephthah's unnamed daughter's point of view, by interpreting it from the perspective of Jephthah's unnamed (and silenced) mother (240, 243). The narrator describes Jephthah as a "mighty warrior" and the "son of a prostitute" (Judg 11:1). Lovelace argues against commentaries on this story that blame Jephthah's circumstances on the fact that his mother was a prostitute. She calls their lens one of "so-called family values" and says she is responding to those commentaries in this essay (240). Further, she draws a parallel from the negative characterization of Jephthah and his mother to the rhetoric surrounding black males born to single mothers (243).

Main points:

1. Lovelace points out that in the United States when people want to talk about the “deterioration of the traditional family” this is usually coded language for the decline of the “white Protestant nuclear family” which they try to blame for the “decline of America." (240). This political rhetoric claims “nonconforming family formations” are the cause of their own “socioeconomic instability” instead of acknowledging the “oppositional domestic policy directives” (240).
2. There is a popular perspective in sociology of families that is called "the functional perspective on the family" (244). This functionalist view argues that "significant deviation" from "the conventional family structure" (where the man works and the woman stays at home with the children) will create "social instability" (245). Lovelace points to a key moment when this “family values” rhetoric was elevated when Vice President Dan Quayle declared that the Los Angeles riots after the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted were a result of a “poverty of values” in the black community instead of acknowledging that it was a response to systemic racism and inequality (246).
3. Lovelace talks about the racist language that is often used against black men, calling them "thugs" for things like celebrating after scoring a touchdown. She takes the title of her essay from what one Black mother said in response to a study that was done in New York: "We don't give birth to thugs; we give birth to children" (Brown-Manning).
4. Commentators Smith and Klein attribute any moral failures on Jephthah’s part to a lack of strong male leadership in his family because his father was not around, or “stepped outside the traditional family structure to father a child by a woman who was not his wife” (257). Lovelace argues that by depicting Jephthah as a thug and a threat to society because he is the son of an unmarried woman, “he along with his mother, is racialized black” (250). 
5. Lovelace shows how reading the story of Jephthah through the lens of “family values” as Michael Smith does, has the effect of “racializing Jephthah and his mother as black by assigning to them attributes that have been ascribed to black mothers and their children” (257). Because of this, Jephtha is seen as a “thug” similar to the way Black men today are so often stereotyped in this way.

Works Cited

Brown-Manning, Robyn. "We Don't Give Birth to Thugs; We Give Birth to Children: The Emotional Journeys of African-American mothers Raising Sons under American Racism." PhD diss., City University of New York. 2013.

Lovelace, Vanessa. “‘We Don’t Give Birth to Thugs’: Family Values, Respectability Politics, and Jephthah’s Mother” in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse. Edited by Byron, Gay L., and Vanessa Lovelace. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation

Other essay summaries:

• "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship" by Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney
• Introduction to Womanist Sass and Talk Back by Rev. Dr. Mitzi J. Smith
• "Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics" by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace
• “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” by Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson
• "Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems
• "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton

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Rev. Dr. Mitzi J Smith: Womanist Sass and Talk Back (Introduction)

Rev. Dr. Mitzi Smith, mitzijsmith.com
Twitter: @MitziJSmithPhD 

Dr. Smith is a teacher, preacher, biblical scholar, and author. She is a Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. She earned a BA in Theology from Columbia Union College; a MA in Black Studies from The Ohio State University; an MDiv from Howard University School of Divinity; and a Ph.D. in Religion (New Testament and Early Christian Studies) from Harvard University in 2006. She is the first African American female to earn a Ph.D. in New Testament from Harvard. 

She is the author of Womanist Sass and Talk Back: Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality, and Biblical Interpretation (2018), Insights from African American Interpretation (2017), editor of I Found God in Me: A Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics Reader (2015), and co-editor of Teaching All Nations: Interrogating the Matthean Great Commission (2014)

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From the summary on Goodreads and Amazon: "Womanist Sass and Talk Back is a contextual resistance text for readers interested in social (in)justice. Smith raises our consciousness about pressing contemporary social (in)justice issues that impact communities of color and the larger society. Systemic or structural oppression and injustices, police profiling and brutality, oppressive pedagogy, and gendered violence are placed in dialogue with sacred (con)texts. This book provides fresh intersectional readings of sacred (con)texts that are accessible to both scholars and nonscholars. Womanist Sass and Talk Back is for readers interested in critical interpretations of sacred (con)texts (ancient and contemporary) and in propagating the justice and love of God while engaging those (con)texts."

In this post, I am only going to summarize the introduction to this book, which I have now read three times in just a few months. The first time I read it I think I highlighted 3/4 of it!  

Dr. Smith begins by talking about how she has spent a lot of time thinking about the ways she integrates her passion for social justice with her teaching, preaching, and writing. She is well aware that many of her students and other readers of the Bible have been taught and even encouraged to suffer injustices in silence (1). Readers are taught to ignore their pain and struggles and read from a position of privilege. They have often not been allowed to question or critique the text, to wrestle with it, or with the ways God is depicted in the text (1). Smith tells us her goal is to "prioritize the oppressions and injustices that daily threaten and take the lives of the most vulnerable and to demonstrate other ways of reading that do not trick or force readers to become complicit in their own oppressions and oppression of others. (2)"

Main points:

1. Biblical interpretation and scholarship is usually mostly concerned with "the world behind the text" (the historical context), and/or the world within the text, which is "the world the text constructs" (the literary context), and barely addresses "the world in front of the text" or "contemporary (con)texts" (2). But our contemporary context and its impact is inescapable: "it is the elephant in the room and sometimes the elephant is the room" (2). It places too great a burden on those who are most impacted by social injustice to ask them to ignore their oppressions as they read and interpret sacred texts (2).
   

   "When members of minoritized oppressed communities are asked and expected to treat social (in)justice issues that impact their daily lives as a postscript to authentic biblical interpretation, their voices are silenced and marginalized and are often unwittingly taught to accept the imposed silence as a sacred obligation and sacrifice that God requires." (2)

2. Injustice in our world compels us to read the sacred "(con)texts)" in ways that embody the God who loves justice and calls us to do justice. (2). Smith says her reading perspective is "a womanist intersectional approach that privileges or prioritizes the experiences, voices, traditions, and artifacts of African American women (and their communities) as sources of knowledge production, critical reflection, and ethical conduct" (2). She echoes what others have said about Womanism seeking to "dismantle oppression in all of its forms" being especially concerned with how "bias and oppression based on race, gender, class, and/or sexuality intersect and mutually impact the lives of African American women and other people of color" (2).
3. Biblical interpretation is "a political act" and it can be one of social justice or injustice (3). Smith writes "as an act of womanist resistance, an act of sass and talk-back to (con)texts that disturbingly re-inscribe structures of oppression and are oppressive, that invite us to be complicit in oppression, that primarily depict God as a violent male, that subordinate the other, and that embody and sacralize (the secular is elevated to the level of the sacred) androcentrism, patriarchalism, and misogyny" (3).
4. If we ignore the biases and violence in our sacred "(con)texts" we are more likely to "internalize the oppression in (con)texts and read as oppressed people, rather than as a people who value and seek freedom for ourselves and for others. We are traumatized and we will traumatize others" (3). We traumatize ourselves and those we teach when we tell them (or allow them to believe) that "God sanctions violence" or it is God's will that they experience that violence (4). 
5. Therefore, we need critical biblical interpretation that can help us question oppression that is "embedded in sacred texts and in society and that gets falsely attributed to God" (4). And we need to be able to find hope and courage in this process as we are reminded that God is always on the side of the oppressed and justice (4).
6. Oftentimes readers are uncomfortable with "moral ambiguity" in the Bible (4). They prefer to think it is all crystal clear in its ethical commands and depictions of God. But "sacred narratives written and interpreted from the perspective of the winners have the power to further oppress and police the marginalized, minoritized and/or subordinated or the losers, and to persuade the latter to think and behave in ways that do not serve the interests of justice, equity, peace, and love in the earth" (5).

Works Cited

Smith, Mitzi J. Womanist Sass and Talk Back: Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• My summary of "Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics" by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace
• My summary of  “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” by Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson
• My summary of "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton
• My summary of  Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship"

The Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D. is a scholar, pastor, preacher, and activist. She is a Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne, a commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah; Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel; and co-editor of The Peoples’ Bible and The Peoples’ Companion to the Bible. 

As I mentioned in my first post for this series, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Gafney speak at the Evolving Faith conference in 2018. You can listen to Gafney's talk from that conference on the Evolving Faith podcast. I highly recommend you take the time to listen to it. She gives a great definition and introduction to Womanism and Womanist biblical interpretation. She also invites the rest of us to think about what it would be like for us to do a similar kind of biblical interpretation as a sort of companion interpretation alongside Womanism.

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In 2017, in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Gafney published a reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and its impact on her scholarship. I encourage you to read it for yourself. (It is only 4 pages.) In her reflection, she concludes that there is a significant difference in how she teaches now after the BLM movement emerged. She is even more intentional now than she was before about talking about whiteness and white supremacist culture and ideology and discussing how those elements have been at work "in the founding and shaping of the West, of America, of public and private institutions" including educational institutions and the church (207).

Main points:

1. "Black lives matter" is a simple statement that should not even need to be stated, but it clearly does because "this statement is not universally accepted as a truthful or legitimate claim" (204).
2. Gafney began her teaching and academic career "committed to unmasking the whiteness that is applied to the biblical text, through which it is often interpreted...and decentering the white male scholarly voice that masquerades as normative and neutral" (204). She mentions in a footnote that she has been doing this work for a long time, particularly in the representation of biblical characters in religious art and curriculum and in pop culture, and she does some of that at wilgafney.com.
3. The murder of Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012, was a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement which was organized by three black queer women: Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi (205). This was also a turning point for Gafney in her understanding of "the degree to which black folk are not regarded as fully-if even at all-human" (205). The quick defense for shooting an unarmed child walking in his own neighborhood based on the supposed "terror" this child's black body evoked in the grown man who shot him told Gafney (and many others) that there is "a broad acceptance of the anti-black dehumanizing bigotry of George Zimmerman" (205). Gafney says that the killing and demonization of Mike Brown on August 4, 2014, fully heightened her understanding of "the utter disregard for black lives shared broadly in this country and the implication of policing in that disregard" (205). 
4. These horrible killings occurred and continue to occur in the public square - "the same public square in which biblical interpretation takes place" (205). Therefore the implications of all of this "must be accounted for in the work of interpreters of the biblical text who write, speak, teach, preach, and think to any degree in public" (205). Because of the public nature of so much of this work, Gafney has utilized social media. For a project to help preachers engage the biblical texts responsibly in light of the ongoing killings of black people, she used the hashtag, #what2preach, in order to "organize hermeneutical and homiletical conversations around lectionary and other texts engaging BLM, addressing its aims, its claims, and the resulting anxiety experienced by many" (205).
5. Gafney's teaching in the age of the BLM movement is characterized by three things: "1) unmasking whiteness in biblical scholarship and interpretation, 2) asking which lives matter in the biblical text, including applying a BLM hermeneutic to the text, and 3) analyzing prophetic literature in light of the claims of BLM while analyzing BLM and its rhetoric and actions as prophetic" (206). In applying a BLM hermeneutic to the biblical text, Gafney is looking for whose lives are at risk in the text, who is subject to oppression or pushed to the margins of the text and considered disposable, especially as a result of "an intersecting element of identity" such as gender and ethnic identity (206).

Works Cited

Gafney, Wil. "A Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement and Its Impact on My Scholarship". Journal of Biblical Literature, vol 136, no. 1, 2017. pp 204-207.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• My summary of "Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics" by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace
• My summary of  “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” by Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson
• My summary of "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton
• My summary of  Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Summary: Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace

Rev. Dr. Gay L. Byron and Rev. Dr. Vanessa Lovelace are the editors of Womanist Interpretations of the Bible : Expanding the Discourse. I will do more to introduce each of them in later posts, so for now I will jump into my summary of their introduction to this collection.

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Introduction: Methods and the Making of Womanist Biblical Hermeneutics

Byron and Lovelace begin their introduction talking about how they have been greatly influenced by the writings of Alice Walker who is usually credited with coining the term "womanist", first used in an essay published in 1979 called "Coming Apart". It was in a footnote where she expanded on what she meant by "womanist":

“Womanist” encompasses “feminist” as it is defined in Webster’s, but also means instinctively pro-woman. it is not in the dictionary at all. none-the-less, it has a strong root in black women’s culture. it comes (to me) from the word “womanish,” a word our mothers used to describe, and attempt to inhibit, strong, outrageous or outspoken behavior when we were children: “You’re acting womanish!” a labeling that failed, for the most part to keep us from acting “womanish” whenever we could, that is to say, like our mothers themselves, and like other women we admired." (Walker, 100) 

Walker later elaborated on her definition of womanist in the preface to her 1983 book, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. (I went over that definition in my post of key terms that come up in womanist Bible interpretation.)

Main points:

1. This volume expands on recent work in womanist biblical criticism by naming themes and interpretive trajectories of womanist hermeneutics, offering global and interdisciplinary essays, and a range of contributors from emerging scholars, independent scholar-activists, along with others at different stages of their academic careers (8).
2. This book is organized in four parts: 1) Gender and Sexuality, 2) Agency and Advocacy, 3) Foregrounding Women on the Margins, 4) Illuminating Biblical Children/Childhood (9). After those sections, there are responses from four womanist and feminist scholars who offer their perspective on the essays in this volume.
3. They emphasize that "all interpreters of sacred texts are responsible for exposing and analyzing the power dynamics in both the ancient texts and the interpretations of the texts that have been used to further injustices and global systemic challenges" (15).
4. Their hope for this volume is that readers walk away with new understandings of womanist readings of the Bible and that more interpreters "would be emboldened to read the texts from their own social location and be empowered to take action and work toward building new relationships and coalitions that can transform the injustices in our society and across the globe" (15). They also hope this work will lead to even more collaboration and conversations that will help keep the interests of black women and other women of color "at the forefront of interpretations of biblical and extrabiblical sources" (16).

Works Cited

Byron, Gay L. and Vanessa Lovelace. Womanist Interpretations of the Bible : Expanding the Discourse. SBL Press, 2016.

Walker, Alice. “Coming Apart.” in Take Back the Night. edited by Laura Lederer. (New York: Morrow, 1979), pp. 95–104.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• My summary of  “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” by Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson
• My summary of "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton
• My summary of  Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson: “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra”

Rev. Dr. Cheryl B. Anderson is a Professor of Old Testament at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. She earned her Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University and also has a J.D. from Wayne State University and M.Div. from Wesley Theological Seminary. On her faculty page, she writes, "as a lawyer and an ordained minister, I am attracted to interdisciplinary approaches to biblical studies. Consequently, my specific areas of interest include biblical laws, gender theory, and postmodern methodologies." Here is a one minute clip of her talking about Biblical text with context.

I also found this video from 2020 where she speaks on "Why #MeToo​ Matters for LGBTQ Inclusion."

And in this video from 2016 she talks about "Exploring an Autobiographical Exegesis."

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In her essay, “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra” Anderson states that her purpose is "to explore the interpretive challenge posed by such a text [Ezra 9-10] to Christian communities that happen to be African American" (47). Ezra 9-10 condemns and bans intermarriage between the Jews and "foreign women" and expels those women and their children from the community. Anderson says that reading this text as an African American woman reminds her of America's history of racial segregation and prohibitions against interracial marriage. "Normative" readings of this text see the banishment of the women and children as a way to maintain the unique identity of their community of faith. But Anderson points out that African Americans have more in common with the people who are sent away in the text than with the people who remain (47). Additionally, if we accept that assumed rationale, that would mean that excluding those who are different could be justified. Anderson suggests African Americans need a different reading that resists the normative one and argues that the intermarriage ban in Ezra should be seen as a "cautionary tale" (47). Anderson says we need a reading strategy that takes seriously the social and historical context of both the biblical text and the contemporary reading community, because if we don't, "the silencing of the marginalized groups in the text (women and children) continues to silence a marginalized group today (African Americans) (48).

Main points:

1. The ban in Ezra draws a distinction between a privileged group, those who are included in the community, and a nonprivileged group, those who are excluded from the community, but that distinction is justified as a divine command. And those two things were prominent in the laws that forbid interracial marriage in the United States (50). The intermarriage ban in Ezra is a biblical precedent that was used against African Americans in our more recent history, with terrible consequences. Anderson argues that if we fail to recognize the underlying dynamics at work in both the text and in American history, the harmful consequences continue (50).
2. Renouncing their foreign wives gave them an economic advantage as well. They regained the land through intermarriages and when they banished those wives, they would keep the land and pass it on as an inheritance to their children (54).
3. Even though Nehemiah also condemns intermarriage, he does not require banishing the foreign wives and children (Neh 13:23-29). Nehemiah shows concern for the lower classes while Ezra does not. Anderson draws a parallel to the way "theological arguments masked the class issues involved in these marriages" (Yee 2003, 145) just as during segregation, "antimiscegenation laws were supported with theological arguments that masked the class issues involved with slavery and segregation (55). 
4. Notice that only the foreign wives (and their children) banished and not the foreign husbands even though the Deuteronomic law referenced in Ezra 9:12 prohibits both foreign husbands and foreign wives (Deut 7:3). Anderson points to connections between descriptions in the text of guarding the community's holiness ("the holy seed" in Ezra 9:2), connected with a male symbol of purity, and the way foreign women are often hypersexualized in the text, making negative associations between foreign women and female sexuality (56). Associating a specific group with sexual waywardness was (and is) a way to "demean and dehumanize them so that actions taken against that group are justifiable" (56). Anderson again draws a parallel to the segregationist era and the way the dominant culture characterized black men and women as hypersexual, often calling black women "promiscuous Jezebels". They were labeled "'sexually deviant' in order to justify their exploitation and domination" (57).  
5. To reckon with the history of segregation and its ongoing legacy when reading this kind of biblical text, Anderson says African American people of faith need a "hermeneutic of resistance" (60). She says resistance is appropriate because the dominant culture's interpretations so often erase that history and avoid dealing with the consequences of interpretation for people of color. She says you could also simply call this reading strategy "intersectionality" (60). 

Anderson concludes that the intermarriage ban in Ezra is a cautionary tale that should remind us of the damage that can and will be caused "if we ignore our past (and our present) when we open the Bible (61). In other words, we cannot ignore the history of consequences of interpretation. Therefore the ban is a "call to conscience as it shows how people with privilege "create systems that exclude others without considering fully the negative repercussions" (61). Finally, she writes, "From a liberationist perspective, the book of Ezra teaches us the importance of a critical and contextual reading strategy. After all, how we read affects how we live" (61).

Works Cited

Anderson, Cheryl B. “Reflections in an Interethnic/Racial Era on Interethnic/Racial Marriage in Ezra,” in They Were All Together in One Place: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, edited by Randall Bailey, Tat-siong Benny Liew, and Fernando F. Segovia. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), pp. 47-64.

Yee, Gale A. Poor Banished Children of Eve. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.

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This is part of my final project for "Womanist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.":

• Key Terms in Womanist Bible Interpretation
• My summary of "Silenced Struggles for Survival: Finding Life in Death in the Book of Ruth” by Rev. Yolanda Norton
• My summary of  Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible” by Dr. Renita Weems

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