How to Read the Work of “Great Artists Who Have Done Terrible Things”: Feminist and Womanist Biblical Scholarship and the #MeToo Debate on Cultural Texts of Terror
A recurrent question in public discussion of the #MeToo movement is what to do with the work of artistic authorities—Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, etc.—who have been exposed as sexual abusers. While acknowledging important differences between this question and that of biblical “texts of terror,” this paper argues that feminist and womanist biblical scholarship both anticipates and illuminates this debate. It first demonstrates that many of the solutions proposed in the #MeToo discussion map onto responses to biblical “texts of terror.” It then draws on the work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Renita Weems to reveal deficiencies in the debate. It argues that the overly-narrow focus in public commentary on what to do with these artists’ work comes at the expense of needed analysis of the broader cultural, structural, and institutional reforms needed to combat sexual violence and promote women’s flourishing.
Karen V. Guth is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. She holds a PhD in religious ethics from the University of Virginia and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Christian Ethics at the Boundary: Feminism and Theologies of Public Life (Fortress, 2015), as well as numerous articles at the intersection of political theology and feminist ethics. She is currently at work on a new book project, tentatively titled The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts, that explores the ethical ramifications of engaging religious, cultural, and political traditions implicated in past wrongs.