Reflections on Conversation One

Abstract

Part One of the Tripartite Conversation on the Global Future of feminist New Testament studies highlights a number of tensions in feminist New Testament studies in North America and Europe today. These areas include the struggle between the universal and the particular, the primacy of written text versus cultural milieu, and the place of feminist critique in religious studies. Presenters Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth Castelli, and Gay Byron—as well as respondents Sheila Briggs and Karen Torjesen—each address these areas of tension. In the conference’s inaugural paper, Schüssler Fiorenza provides a useful metaphor to discuss the field of Feminist New Testament Studies (FNTS): the “social quilt.” If imagined as an intricate and vivid patchwork design, this “social quilt” allows space for multiple voices of biblical interpreters from diverse global perspectives. Patches of different colors, shapes, and sizes work together to create something both useful and aesthetic. The “social quilt” called FNTS implies a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.