Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is the Krister Stendhal Professor of Scripture and Interpretation at Harvard Divinity School. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. In 2001, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also past president of the Society of Biblical Language.
Schüssler Fiorenza has published many influential books. Some include: In Memory of Her, The Power of Naming, Bread Not Stone, Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation, and Wisdom Ways. Her most recent work The Power of The Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire will be published by Fortress Press next year. I reached her in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Gerry McCarthy: You've explained that liberation theology failed to recognize the clerical culture that shaped it. Have you seen any critical reflection on this in the past few years?
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza: Feminists have weighed these issues for some time. The major issue --especially because of the Roman Catholic context-- is that liberation theology has always argued for the option for the poor. But it has never spelled out that this option for the poor is an option for poor women, because the majority of the poor are women and children (who are dependent upon women).
If that's the case, then it would have been necessary to look critically at all the issues in terms of teaching, theology, and praxis that contribute to the poverty of women. That means issues like birth control, sexuality, abortion, marriage dependency, and violence against women. All of these issues would have needed to be in the centre of liberation theology. But this couldn't happen --for the most part-- because in terms of Church teaching it was difficult to raise these issues. Also: It was mostly clergymen who articulated liberation theology, especially in the case of Latin America. They had more of the theological issues at heart which were dictated by the clerical framework rather than putting women in the centre, although the leadership of the base communities was mostly carried out by women.
GM: Can you talk to me about the difference between liberation theology and feminist theology?
ESF: It's difficult to make such a comparison, because there are different strands of liberation theology and different articulations of feminist theology. From my point of view (that is from the perspective of a critical feminist theology of liberation) the difference is the option of wo/men for ourselves. I became involved early on in a big debate with Dorothee Soelle at a conference in the late 1970s on liberation theology. My point was that liberation theology has as a central tenet "the option for the poor." That means it fits into the traditional Christian theological framework of doing charity to the other. But feminist theology begins with the experience of oppression of being a woman in the Church, the academy, or a developing country who has been traditionally excluded and is still often a second-class citizen. Therefore feminist theology requires not just the "option for the other," but it requires also the option for wo/men. That is to say: The option for ourselves. This is important because wo/men are socialized into the ethos of self-denial and self-sacrificing love, although not all feminist theologians would agree with me on "the option for ourselves."
GM: Three years ago you explained that: "Among us in religious studies, however, I see no theoretical movement that would take global interdependence seriously; this we need very much." Do you think this has changed?
ESF: There's a growing awareness that identity politics is important, but that it may prevent us from talking to each other, and trying to articulate together a theoretical framework that is different from the mainstream academic framework.
We just had a discussion at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Washington DC on the book Voices from The Margins which has been edited by R.S. Surgirtharajah. We talked about this issue. Although differences of perspective and analysis were stressed, there was a growing awareness of the issues where we arrive at a similar diagnosis and understanding. I see difference (which identity politics stresses) not just as positive. I also see it as a result of kyriarchal structures. That means structures that generate racism, sexism, and other "isms" that are not necessarily always positive. For instance: To build a theological perspective on the fact that I'm a white woman living in the United States, limits my theological concerns in terms of identity politics.
It's important that we articulate our differences. But it's also important to see that some of the differences are historically and culturally the results of kyriarchal marginalization and oppression which has relegated us to second-class citizenship in religion and society (or no citizenship at all). In other words: The emphasis on the differences wrought by kyriarchy keeps us in the old kyriarchal places where we're supposed to be --so that we're all fragmented and cannot develop any kind of sustained theoretical frameworks and coalitions to achieve change. Since I'm working in the academy I see this fragmentation drastically, and how few of us there still are who want to do academic work in a different fashion than the dominant academy does. Also: How few survive it, and how many people continue to be trained into the old mindset.
GM: You switched from using the concept of patriarchy to kyriarchy in the early 1990s. Could you explain why?
ESF: In the 1970s I belonged to feminist groups who --because of the women's movement and the experience of sexism-- were strongly theoretically focused on woman and the feminine. For whatever reason, I've never been socialized successfully into cultural femininity and feminine identity.
In the 1960s in Germany, I wrote a book that was my first dissertation on "ministries of women in the [Roman Catholic] Church." Catholic theology at the time worked consistently with the so-called "theology of women." This was the case not only in theology --but also in other disciplines, wherever you looked you found a similar theory or ideology stressing the different nature of women, and this difference was generally defined in terms of middle-class woman, the "White Lady."
So I had already wrestled with the cultural ideal of the feminine before I came to the United States and encountered the women's movement. Then I found in the beginnings of feminist studies in religion and theology the same kind of fascination with woman's special nature and qualities. But the stress on woman's experience and sisterhood was articulated over and against cultural stereotypes of wo/men and using this essentializing understanding of woman articulating a different theology and ideology. I was always in tension with the approach stressing the feminine. I was always saying: I'm not just a woman. I'm also a German and a scholar, and all these other different things that make me who I am.
Black women in the women's movement also raised the issue that a lot of what white feminists were articulating in terms of wo/men's experience in patriarchy was just that: It came from white feminist middle class experience, and didn't take the experience of black women into account that they had historically more in common with black men than with white wo/men who were slave mistresses.
Along with other people (including Rosemary Radford Ruether) I started during the 1970s using patriarchy in a more complex sense. Patriarchy does not mean the domination of all wo/men by all men. It is to be understood, not just in terms of sexism and heterosexism, but also in terms of racism and class difference. But even though I used patriarchy in such a different way, I realized that many people who read my books or heard me speak on patriarchy still understood it as domination of men over women. So I started to look for a different word in English that would signal that I understood patriarchy differently. Since the Greek word kyrios which means the emperor, lord, slave-master, husband, free educated propertied man is prevalent in theological discourse and liturgical language (kyrie elaison), I used it as a neologism meaning the same as domination which is derived from the Latin. Kyriarchy is an interlocking system of dominations that includes patriarchy, but cannot be reduced to patriarchy.
GM: I enjoyed your thoughts on how people limit their world by internalizing "cultural ageism." Specifically you've explained that retirement has been conceived in terms of ageism. Can you talk to me a bit more about this? Do you think there's been more critical reflection on this in our culture?
ESF: Women who are getting older (and older men who are feminized) are more and more put into the category of children. Rather than speaking of senior citizen, people speak about "the elderly." One is reduced to childhood dependence again. There are studies that show that is the case. Obviously there are older people who are ill and who may have problems in terms of living an independent life, but there are also younger people who are ill and may have the same problems. My point is that it's not necessarily age that determines capabilities or abilities of people. It's many other factors. My major concern is that women are affected by this anti-aging culture much more, because women are still seen in our culture as fragile and sex objects. For women beauty is still more desirous than intellect.
The gender stereotypes and discriminations are reinforced through ageism. The same is happening in feminist or other progressive circles. People think that if you don't have young people there then what you are trying to do is not quite valid. Because young people are the future and older people are from the past and outdated. It's part of our quick-moving media culture: One day you have importance and then you're gone.
In Germany they say it's impossible for someone who is past 50 to get a job (if they're let go and out of work). It's no longer said in passing, but it's already seen as a policy which one has to deal with now. Churches can feed into these stereotypes or they can try to counter them.
GM: In your keynote address at the Women's Ordination Worldwide Conference (WOW) in 2005 you explained that: "…I fear that the struggle for wo/men's ordination has been modeled in analogy to the liberal women's rights movement that did not seek to change society but only to move wo/men into positions of male power which excluded us from its ranks. Therefore, we, like clergy wo/men in other churches, are in danger of strengthening the present hierarchical structures by struggling to move into them. If we do not reject ordination into clergy privilege and sacred structures of domination, WOW could re-enforce the second-class citizenship of the majority of church wo/men, the so-called laity." Is this something that's resonating with more people in WOW? What kind of feedback do you receive when speak about this?
ESF: It resonated well with more than half of the participants. Many of those who were ready for ordination --or going in this direction-- also assured me that they were working for a discipleship of equals.
I'm holding my breath, because I don't know what the Vatican is going to do. We are in a moment where it's difficult to say where the ordination movement is going to go. The Women's Ordination Conference here in the United States always tried to keep the creative dialectic or tension to say: As long as women are not ordained on principle, we have to protest against the sin of sexism. But another question is whether or not it is good for women if women (or men) are ordained into the clerical structure that has produced much abuse. This creative tension is still there, but it seems to be eroded.
The problem is that the women who are undergoing ordination are faithfully imitating the clerical kyriarchal system in order to become legitimate. They are following in the footsteps of the Episcopal women who went through the irregular way of ordination and then were legitimated. Roman Catholicism doesn't have a democratic structure like the Episcopalians have to legitimate the irregular or illicit ordinations that are taking place. Rather than abolishing hierarchical structures they are building them up among wo/men so that now some wo/men become part of the clerical club, whereas so-called laywomen remain second-class citizens essentially different from the ordained women. The Vatican could turn around tomorrow and have a conversion and say: We're going to ordain deaconesses and allow wo/men to move into the clerical structures of subordination and obedience, and thereby make the exploitation and discrimination against wo/men "invisible."
Ordination is too easily seen as a privilege rather than a hindrance for doing one's feminist work. For instance, I've always said I'm better off not being ordained than being ordained in terms of the theological work that I want to do. Just look at all the trouble progressive Catholic theologians like Curran, Boff or Hans Kung have had. Because I'm not ordained, Rome cannot censure me, because they have no means to reinforce their censure.
The vision of church as a discipleship of equals was confirmed at Vatican II, which emphasized that the hierarchy are not first, but that the people of God constitute Church --and the hierarchy is there to serve the people of God. This is a different theological understanding than the understanding which is now taken up, absorbed, and re-inscribed by these ordinations of wo/men which are legitimized with the idea of apostolic succession. In other words: That Jesus ordained the apostles and the apostles ordained their successors and so on which is an historical fiction, because Jesus did not ordain anyone. So the women's ordinations are legitimating themselves with reference to the apostolic succession tradition that has been exclusive of wo/men and still is used to de-legitimate other Christian churches. The wo/men's ordinations just reinforce this tradition when they claim legitimacy, because some male bishops (who don't have the courage to show their faces) have put their hands on them.
I admire all the women in their engagement to struggle against the sexist exclusion of wo/men from the sacramental and decision-making powers of the church, but I wished they had looked more carefully at their theological reasoning rather than operating out of a pre-Vatican II Tridentine type of theology. I don't want to be misunderstood. Many of the ordained women are doing great work and are publicly renouncing all clerical privilege and culture. My critical evaluation is not of the women, but of the theology that seems to be under-girding some of their ordination rhetoric.
GM: In the past you've said we shouldn't use the term laity.
ESF: I never use the word. I always say "so-called laity" --otherwise people don't know what I'm talking about.
GM: Do you still believe it relegates us to second-class status?
ESF: Historically that's the case. Yves Congar tried to rehabilitate the term, but it is not correct that it is derived from laos = the people of God. Like the expression clergy, so also the expression lay is derived from Roman Imperial administration language. The so-called laity were the hoi polloi or the uneducated people who didn't know much. It's a negative term which feeds into the clerical culture that says only the clergy is educated and has the powers of sacrament and decision- making. The term doesn't correspond anymore either to our cultural or theological situation, because many of the so-called laity are more theologically educated than a lot of clergy are --and many clergy no longer have the intellectual and emotional qualities necessary for leadership. I'm not teaching in a Catholic institution anymore, but I am told by those who are that now anybody with a low IQ who has a certain "member" and is not homosexual is admitted to ordination, because of the great lack of priests.
GM: You've explained that the interchange between social movements and intellectual movements is very important. Why do you think it's so important?
ESF: We've just talked about the ordination business. There you can see that you have a social-religious movement that is committed to change and transformation, but is theologically not well articulated. There seems to be a disconnect between this feminist social-ecclesial movement and the intellectual and theological feminist work that has been done. I don't know the reasons why this is the case, but there is a great disconnect.
Or to give another example, feminist studies in religion and the wo/men's movement in church and society. The first generation of feminist theologians and scholars in religion were connected to and came out of the wo/men's movement in society and church. I would have done theology without the wo/men's liberation movement, but I couldn't have developed my critical feminist theology of liberation if I hadn't come to the U.S. and become immersed in the wo/men's movements for social and ecclesial change.
However, if one looks at the third or fourth generation of feminist theologians and scholars in religion they are dependent on whatever the discourses of the dominant academy is today, and not rooted in a wo/men's movement for change. As co-editor of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion I see again and again how difficult it is to receive articles that are rooted in a movement for justice and use the tools of the academy to articulate knowledge for change. This is so because we were not able to create institutional structures where students could be confronted with feminist theology, its debates and traditions. Some are lucky if they encounter one or two critical feminist scholars in their schools and the mainstream academy.
Hence, a lot of what's done in terms of women's or gender studies in religion has nothing to do with social movements for change. It could even be considered sometimes conservative or reactionary, depending on which great male thinker the dissertation is relying. Women and men across the world have told me that if they want to do a feminist dissertation they have to first criticize and de-construct what has been done by the first generation of feminists. Then they have to resort to a male author to get theoretically grounded so they can do their own new kind of feminist theology. But what is happening in the process is that a lot of work is called feminist that is grounded in a mainstream framework. That is the case because of the different focus the social movement for change has --and the different focus or interest the academy has. Hence, it is important that we work on the interchanges between social and intellectual movements.
GM: Do you see any signs of hope in the Catholic Church today?
ESF: I'm often asked: Why are you still calling yourself a Catholic? The Catholic tradition has elements that are more open to a globalizing world. That's one reason why I am still a Catholic, but not a Roman theologian. The other main reasons are the Catholic people, especially the Catholic wo/men who are involved in much social work for change. Hence, it is important to do theology with them. Last year I had a meeting with Catholic students at Harvard. They were all complaining that they are not considered "real" Catholics, because they are the "social Catholics." The real Catholics are allegedly only the sacramental Catholics (those who go to Church and so on). I had the same experience in Germany. I was in Germany this summer and was told that many of the academies --which have done a lot of social Catholic work-- have been closed or are tenuous because of financial reasons. In Germany the Church receives monies from the state and more people (because of the economic situation) drop out of the Church so they don't have to pay the Church tax anymore. So the German Church has less money (but they're still rich because they have a lot of property) and the bishops are using the financial situation to cut down all the institutions and groups that are engaged for social change. They argue that they need to focus the resources they have on the essentials of being a Catholic, namely going to Mass and Confession.
The hope for Catholicism are the Vatican II social Catholics. I do think Catholics all around the world are doing great work. Catholic people around the world have become mature members of the church. They're no longer doing or saying what either bishops or the Pope tell them to say or do --but follow their own conscience. That's where my solidarity with Catholics stands. But I'm told by some younger people that this is just a bug I caught, because we lived through Vatican II. Many of my younger friends or colleagues can't understand why I put so much energy into Church, because they think it's totally outdated.
Another reason is an historical one. I'm a "born" Catholic. It's strange for me to have students or friends who can be members of six or seven different churches in their lifetime -- although my theology would probably lend itself to this. But my history made me who I am, and it would be difficult to leave this history and identity behind even if I wanted to.
When I started to study theology there was a rumour that Karl Rahner would be silenced. I made a vow that if Karl Rahner would be silenced I would not want to have anything to do with theology, because intellectual freedom was not possible --and you can't do any intellectual work without intellectual freedom. But then Rahner was not silenced, the Council came, and theology was the most exciting thing one could do. So maybe in the future there will be some other Pope who will again "open wide" the windows and doors of the Church to let the whole world come in. That is why it's important to keep the faith.
Gerry McCarthy is Editor of The Social Edge.
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