Category: 2023

“The narrative of faith is characteristically about a journey in and through the wilderness.” ^1] So begins Walter Brueggemann’s marvelous book A Wilderness Zone. Brueggemann understands wilderness to involve vulnerability and dislocation, coupled with fear and anger, all elements of Israel’s original wilderness sojourn which are present in our contemporary social crisis. Brueggemann’s work is significant for the way it weaves biblical theology with the contemporary socio-political concerns of COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of Trumpism, and economic disparity supported by capitalism and the cheap labor that makes that very capitalism possible and sustainable. In some ways, the global pandemic ushered in nothing new. Trumpism merely highlighted what was already present among us—an unwillingness at a political level to engage with those different from ourselves, a weariness and xenophobia that drives our policies about immigration and boundary or border crossing of any kind, a mistrust and even disgust of brown and black bodies and communities, and a denial of science rooted in mistrust of medical authority. Brueggemann’s work underscores what the last six or seven years have already shown us—that wilderness is not a concept relegated only to the pages of the Bible. Wilderness remains part of our own lived experience in the here and now. Further, Brueggemann’s A Wilderness Zone is a decidedly Christian book. He orients his work squarely in the biblical story. Brueggemann reminds us—the narrative of faith is a journey through wilderness.

This means that for people of faith, wilderness is a journey we takewith God.Wilderness is the part of our faith journey that in fact shapes and stretches the very faith we proclaim. As such, our experiences of wilderness raise questions of faith that we might not grapple with in other seasons of life with God. When the world begins to bottom out around us, suddenly our theological systems undergo a kenosis, an emptying, a bottomless collapse. Theologically and spiritually, we become children again. This childlike vulnerability awakens in us a curiosity that dismantles the very adult and systemized language we develop in higher education generally and in seminary particularly. In short, our experiences of wilderness collapse the language we have for and about God.

Brueggemann’s work on wilderness, as well as my new book, Hope in the Wilderness: Spiritual Reflections for When God Feels Far Away, also reveals that our personal experiences shape our scholarship. While Brueggemann’s work largely addresses the global crisis of the pandemic, thus examining wilderness at the macrocosmic level, Hope in the Wilderness addresses interior spaces of wilderness. I began writing about wilderness in the wake of a personal crisis. While that crisis is no longer in the foreground of my life, the experience of it remains in the background of the research and writing that I do, in some ways continuing to drive my own research on the subject. In the Academy, it has been my experience that our disciplinary subjects find us. After spending time speaking and writing on the subject, I have also found that wilderness is a distressingly portable image. Most of us have experienced some form of spiritual or existential wilderness. Out of nowhere, The Big Terrible Thing happens (the cancer diagnosis, the job termination, the dissolution of an important relationship). Or, out of nowhere, life becomes startingly barren—the usual things upon which we have relied are stripped away (our self-determination and resilience, the nearness of our friends, or the felt nearness of God). Perhaps a significant birthday compels us to reexamine our priorities and shift our paradigms. Perhaps a major move or career change proves more disorienting than we had imagined. Any number of things can plunge us into a metaphorical wilderness in which the life we had once known seems very far away indeed.

For those of us who make our vocational home in theological education, these experiences texture us not just theologically, not just in what we say about God or believe about God. More importantly, if we are present to our own experiences and to those around us, our wildernesses can become the center from which we teach. Academics need not bifurcate head and heart—we bring all that we are with us into the classroom. If we are people of prayer and not only of study, the wisdom or compassion we glean from our wilderness experiences can ricochet beyond us out into the hearts and minds of people we may never know. When I consider my own scholarship on biblical wilderness or any other topic, this is the most I can hope for.

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[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Wilderness Zone (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021), 1.

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Noel Forlini Burt teaches and lectures widely in the intersection of Bible and spiritual formation. An academic, spiritual director, retreat leader, and author, Noel believes the Bible is a deep well from which people can draw in their own spiritual formation. Her publications include Hope in the Wilderness: Spiritual Reflections for When God Feels Far Away (Cascade Publishing, 2022), Encounters in the Dark: Identity Formation in the Jacob Story (Semeia, 2020), and articles in The Other Journal, The Journal for Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, and others.

 

Anyone who grew up in the eighties or had children in the eighties will most likely associate these words with the anti-drugs campaign that spanned the US and the UK. My only recollection of “Just Say No!” as a young teen is the “Grange Hill” song. These lyrics still reverberate in my head. The song is not great. Consider yourself warned if you decide to google it– it’s an earworm.

Wars on drugs aside, these words are a useful refrain for women in academia. In fact, I wrote this little mantra on a sticky note and pinned it to my desk where it remained for a number of years. I did not take it down until I trained myself to pause before accepting an invitation to write, speak, or join someone else’s project.

Why did I need my sticky so prominently placed?

1. The first reason is positive. I love to inspire people and so if you invite me to speak I’m going to want to say “yes” in the hope of encouraging/educating some folks. I also find other people’s projects interesting and so being part of these is fun for me, another “yes.” Lastly, I’m a team player and enjoy contributing to something other than just my own work. However, these days I am invited to do more than is physically possible. Learning to say “no” was essential for me.
   
2. The second reason is negative. During my PhD, I was concerned that each invitation would be the last one and so I felt that I must say “yes” because no further invitations would follow. This was a real issue for me early on in my academic career and even now it’s occasionally present as a background voice. One could say that it’s an academic version of FOMO. An older, wiser and more experienced friend suggested that I keep a list of invitations I’d refused. This was good advice. I still keep that list because I find it a helpful record and it reminds me that another invitation is around the corner.

Why is saying no so important for women in the academy?

1. Your own life matters. Your time matters. Your research matters. Does saying “yes” mean that you’ll miss out on valuable time for your own research and writing? Or, dare I say it, will you miss out on time for something “fun”?
   
2. Avoid burnout. Saying no helps manage time and energy so that you don’t take on more than you can realistically achieve.
   
3. Creates a new culture of healthy boundaries (much needed in the academy).
   
4. Makes space for someone else to respond. Even better if you know someone who might like to say yes to and would benefit from the opportunity.
   
5. Better to say no to that invitation to contribute to an edited collection than to let people down in a few years’ time when you realise you cannot meet the submission date.

So, you’ve politely declined. What happens next?

1. Often, nothing. Sensible people will accept that whatever they are asking is not for you at this time.
   
2. Sometimes, there will be pushback. Not so long ago, I was invited by an editor of a peer-reviewed journal to write a piece contributing to a series he was running. He framed the invitation flatteringly, explaining that he could not think of any scholar more suitable for writing this particular piece than me (really!). I wrote back politely, explaining that I could not commit to the article because I simply have too much on my plate (I’d just moved jobs and was going through all te things for relocation). Rather than thanking me for my response he tried again, “But we really want a woman to write this and I don’t know any women other than you in your discipline” (reader, I kid you not!). I remained firm in my original response and he now ignores me at conferences. I can live with that more easily than if I’d given in and written the article for him. But, why do I share this little tale? Because women will sometimes experience pushback but it’s worth standing your ground.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that we should be declining every invitation we receive. But with so many people burning out after the pandemic we need a culture of pausing before we respond. Taking time to weigh the pros and cons. Chatting it through a colleague if we are unsure.

If you can’t think of any reason to say “yes,” then “Just Say No.”

Gabrielle Thomas is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at Candler School of Theology of Emory University. She is ordained in the Church of England and serves as Theologian in Community at St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Atlanta. Her publications include The Image of God in the Theology of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge University Press, 2019), For the Good of the Church: Unity, Theology and Women (SCM Press, 2021) and articles in Modern Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Exchange, and Ecclesiology. 

When anyone new asks what I am doing my PhD on, there is generally a slight ripple of laughter around the room as I try and describe the latest development and collection of interlocutors. A kind listener might be in for a long story, another might be in for a bit of a mess as I try and cover a lot of ground very quickly.

Similarly, if anyone were to ask me why I am doing my PhD, or why I switched from English to Theology, they might be in for another multi-faceted story. Part of it involved a convenient footnote four years ago in some secondary literature on devotional poetry talking about radical prophetic women in the 17^th century. Part of it involves a long-standing fascination with all questions theological, such that as a child I would try and distract my mother before going to sleep by announcing my confusion about why God didn’t destroy evil just as she turned out the light. Part of it involves a sudden broadening of faith and the way I perceived the world, how I came to terms with and celebrated my queer identity, how I reread Scripture, how I slowly forgave the church I was a part of. Part of it involved learning how to be right and wrong at the same time, in different contexts and to different people, and caring about those people.

During this time of transition and learning, I emerged with an agency over how I interpreted the world, faith, and God that I had never really experienced before. I could change my mind, people could change their minds, and the world did not cave in and swallow me up. There were choices involved in who and what held authority, and where I located trustworthiness. I had moved from the certainty that characterised my childhood faith to something less stable, more fragile, which I had to take responsibility for. I also gave myself the grace to make mistakes in the process, to explore and push boundaries. And I have found, in the midst of this, that I can love God even when I don’t know God, when God takes less obvious forms, and that this might be a new form of knowing.

A lot of my research centres around the fragility of theology, how we take care amidst ambiguity, and how and why we centralise certain people and things. It has been a joy to start understanding how and why my faith has been structured, how doctrines were shaped, and how the lives and experiences of theologians became part of the scaffolding of what we discern as true. It has also been immensely freeing to start reading theology having already been denounced as somewhat heretical, and to be honest in the process that I would prefer to be kind than right, and that compassion takes precedence over coherence.

I have always been drawn to between-spaces, half-expressed things, the kind of truths that slip by as you glimpse them. I have just written an article on T. S. Eliot’s ‘Marina’ (and queer use, and the unwieldy process of forgiveness), partly because the lines ‘Whispers and small laughter between leaves and hurrying feet / Under sleep, where all the waters meet’ have haunted me for years with their quiet, translucent beauty. I would love to articulate the contours of this translucent space, partly because it is a space I have always lived in, a chameleon identity between races and sexualities. It is my hope, as I write the PhD, that we might treat fragile things and spaces with the care they deserve. That if how we talk about God and how we construct doctrine, does not require robustness or coherence to be taken seriously, we might emerge with a richer, more textured theology, full of incongruent people and experiences.

And yet these half-expressed things are different, I think, from a quick appeal to mystery. They exist in space and time, they can be loved, they can be lingered upon and wagered upon. And I think it is important to talk well about our priorities of attention. Why have we chosen our interlocutors? How long do we take risks for? Where do we see authority, and why – and really why? My hope is that spending time examining these questions, whatever we are working on, can help us disagree without arriving at a compromise that inevitably ends up reinforcing the status quo. To find common ground not by softening the edges of our convictions, but by intentionally carving a space with those edges that we can both inhabit, for a time, and from which we can care for the fragility of our world.

Tanya Kundu is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge writing about the fragility of theology, which often involves putting Augustine in conversation with queer and disability theory. She also works part time for the Aspire programme at local charity Romsey Mill, which runs youth groups for autistic children and young people. 

I recently submitted my PhD thesis for examination to the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. In celebration, I announced this on Twitter, including a reflection on how I had made it here despite being told I was not good enough at various times in my life. I specifically mentioned how multiple men during my undergraduate years had told me that graduate studies and academia were not for women. In the days leading up to my submission, I had remembered one particular instance, after I had already been accepted to Cambridge for my masters, when a fellow (male) biblical studies student asked me if graduate studies was really a prudent choice when I likely would not finish once I settled down to have a family.[1]

“Why waste the money [on graduate studies] when you could be saving up for your family’s future?”

To be honest, I never took these words to heart. From a young age, my parents had told me I could be anything I wanted to be, and even encouraged me to have a career before being getting married. As they helped me fund my graduate studies, they certainly did not think it was a waste of our family’s money. I knew many women from much more conservative backgrounds who had faced much worse pushback and stigma in their communities. So, if anything, this story became something I laughed about with my girlfriends while we set out to do amazing things in the world. I only brought it up in my submission announcement because it made the triumph that much sweeter to know I proved those who doubted me wrong.

What surprised me were so many comments shocked to hear this blatant sexism still alive and well in the world.[2]

“Do people still say graduate studies are not for women? Unbelievable.”

“Really?! Who said grad studies and academia aren’t for women…!!??”

“Can’t believe those attitudes [exist] in the 21^st century.”

“I’m not sure who these days would tell a woman that women’s aspirations end at a certain age or qualification.”

One commentor found this so unbelievable that they, in fact, did not believe me.

“No one told you that. It’s a cheap ploy to get social media cred. Pathetic.”

However, there were a few comments voicing similar experiences.

“Our head technician said to me ‘I don’t know why they let you girls do phds. You just go off and have babies.’”

“My university careers advisor told me he wouldn’t recommend me for a post grad in English literature for exactly the same reason you were given.”[3]

The prevalence of sexism within biblical studies and adjacent fields was all too fresh for scholars active on social media, as just two months ago, a male academic claimed in a YouTube video that Francesca Stavrakopoulou, one of the most eminent Hebrew Bible scholars of our time, was only considered influential because of her looks, using the terms “theology by cupsize” and “theological windowdressing.”[4]

But many of those in disbelief were outside of academic theology and biblical studies. I think part of the disconnect stems from the assumption that universities are generally progressive spaces—as we can see from the last two comments, this is not necessarily the case. But because of their close connection to religious communities across the theological and social spectrum, the fields of theology and biblical studies attract students and scholars from equally varied backgrounds. This is for me part of the beauty of these fields, as we get to learn from a wide breadth of traditions and experiences, and I am thankful for initiatives like Logia which seek to amplify the diverse voices which are not heard enough. However, just as much as we benefit from this diversity, we are also met with challenges from the traditions and communities who have yet to embrace the equal academic gifting of women.

As many of my female colleagues can attest to, sexism in academia is not limited to religious or conservative spaces. In an adjacent sub-discipline to mine in Cambridge, none of my female colleagues’ spouses or partners were invited to an annual department dinner while all the male colleagues were granted a plus one.

But equally, support can come from any corner. At my first-ever Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, Charlie Trimm, who taught me as an undergrad, arranged ahead of time to introduce me to a middle-career female scholar. “I know the field can be difficult for women, so I want to make sure you have female colleagues you can talk to who will support you.” He himself has supported me in countless ways but recognised that there may be experiences or issues I may not feel comfortable talking to him or other male colleagues about.

For similar reasons, my supervisor, Nathan MacDonald, ensured that my faculty advisor was a woman.[5] He also makes a pro-active effort to rectify the usual gender imbalance in the field by seeking out promising female undergraduates and encouraging them to pursue further study. In part thanks to these efforts, up until recently, the majority of graduate students in my own sub-discipline within the Cambridge Divinity Faculty were women.

The responses on my recent Twitter post reminded me we need to keep talking about experiences of sexism so that others know it is not an issue of the past. Zero formal complaints of sexist or misogynistic conduct were made to the SBL last year. “We solved sexism!” I heard a male colleague pronounce in jest. Even though I knew he was joking, my stomach clenched thinking this was the only narrative some would receive looking only at hard data.

But we also need to share our experiences, both positive and negative, so that other women in the field know they are not alone and that these issues can be overcome; so that they can know who to trust and where to find support.

I love Logia’s motto “You can be what you can see.” So here is part of the visibility I want to contribute: your complaints are never too small. Just because others may have faced “more” sexism than you does not invalidate your own experience or need for support.

Women in the field have come a long way, our predecessors fought many good fights. But there is still work to be done. I look forward to the day when the testimonies of sexism truly are “unbelievable.”

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[1] This man knew nothing of my personal life, my relationship status, or my attitudes towards having a family—let alone my own desires or aspirations for my future—but it was clear from this and past conversations that he felt the main calling and priority of women should be having a family and being a stay-at-home mother if possible.

[2] These comments are taken from my Twitter post here: https://twitter.com/letsgosojo/status/1628086292801105932?s=20 .

[3] Triumphantly, the rest of the tweet is “So I went to law school instead”!

[4] You can find a summary of the ordeal here: https://amateurexegete.com/2023/01/26/the-falks-misogyny-and-solidarity-a-recap-guest-post-by-chrissy-h/.

[5] In the UK, a faculty advisor is a liaison to the department, complementary to the supervisor, who helps oversee the work of a PhD student, similar to a PhD committee member elsewhere in the world.

Sophia R.C. Johnson is finishing her PhD at the Faculty of Divinity, the University of Cambridge, where she is also an associated lecturer. She is currently a DAAD visiting scholar at the University of Göttingen and serves on the Society of Biblical Literature’s Committee for the Status of Women in the Profession. Sophia specialises in diachronic approaches to the conceptual history of the Hebrew Bible, especially the concept of covenant, and the reception history of Old Testament imaginaries in European political thought. She has recently published in the Journal of Biblical Literature and co-edited a special issue of the Journal of the Bible and Its Reception.

The deep purple oil pastel was soft and warm in my hand. It crumbled as I pressed it across the paper, upon which were words written in evaluation of me. I had chosen purple because those particular words bruised me: they were critical, and some of them were untrue. On other parts of the paper, there were words coloured over with gold: these were encouraging, affirming, and true. The purple and gold ran alongside each other. Bruises and affirmations.  

Once the whole paper was coloured over, I folded it into a flower. I placed it onto a river I’d painted on some cardboard. Alongside the river I had written: ‘See, I am making all things new’.

I did this as a way of integrating and processing those words and my experience of them, and working out how to respond to them. The context and particular content of the words don’t matter for our purposes here – rather, what I am hoping to communicate is the process of my response to them. It was an act of hope and prayer: an act of resilience.

Resilience is the ability to persist and grow through change or adversity. Resilience is what allows us to keep going and stay true to who we are, even when times are tough. Resilience is something we’ve all needed and grown in through these last few years of pandemic, recovery, and other global changes and crises. It’s something that we need for all sorts of personal circumstances, and something that we need in the context of our academic work.

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I am a PhD student at Clare College, Cambridge, researching Paul’s use of the ‘body of Christ’ metaphor in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. I’m questioning how this metaphor forms identity: the identity of individual bodies in Christ, in all their diversity; and the identity of the unified corporate ‘body’ in Christ. It’s fascinating, relevant to present-day conversations, and I really am enjoying my time inhabiting this question.

Yet, as I’m sure will be familiar to many researchers, this work takes resilience.

It takes resilience in the day-to-day, at-the-desk work. Even when enjoying research there are those unsettling moments when the concepts aren’t quite coming together, or when you’re staring at a blank page for the third day running, or when you come across that article or chapter which says what you want to say (but better).

The moments that really get under my skin are the ones in which I have started writing something new – but progress is stilted and slow, because I can’t quite hear my own voice in the words that I’m stringing together. It takes resilience to keep returning to the page, and to keep stepping up to the task of reading texts and working out how to say what I want to say about them.

It takes resilience to stay committed to seeking out and trusting my own voice in this process. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if my voice were different – if it were more like the voices of scholars that I admire, or if it had more in common with my colleagues (I am currently the one woman PhD candidate in New Testament in my University). Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if I were less concerned with how my research speaks to wider pastoral and ecclesiological settings, and focused instead on something that was firmly within the academic sphere.

When I encounter these moments, I always circle back through them to the conclusion that if my voice were different than it is, I wouldn’t be me – and the writing I produced wouldn’t be mine, and it wouldn’t be committed to the values that I hold. I remind myself that the question I’m asking through my research is deeply invested in seeking ways to value diverse voices, and to see how we find corporate unity through diversity. I remind myself that just as I value the voices of others, so my voice has value too.

When I remind myself of this, often by taking a long “thinking/praying walk” into the fields near where I live, I find the motivation to return to the blank page and keep listening. I keep listening for how the concepts are actually coming together; how the blank page offers itself to my imagination; how the article or chapter I found doesn’t actually say it better – it says it differently. My own voice has another perspective to offer.

All of this adds up to new resilience: a refreshed resolution to keep going and growing even when I question my voice and my work. It takes the questions, and the critiques implicit in them, and it folds them into something new. I am enabled to grow through the challenge, and to recommit to the research – both day-by-day at my desk, and as I engage with wider academic communities.

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I wonder if any of this resonates. If so, I want to offer an invitation – a kind of guided imagination, based on my story at the start, to give you space to notice the moments in your research life through which you’d like to grow resilient. Give yourself five minutes to imagine with me.

Picture your own piece of paper, like the one in my story. As you imagine that piece of paper, you could fill it in with anything: descriptions of experiences in academic life; words people have written or said of or to you, both affirming and critical; words you have thought, as you’ve rewritten that chapter for the fifth time; stories you have encountered of (in)equality or (in)justice or [fill in the blank] in the academy. You can fill that piece of paper with anything that you need to process and work out. Give yourself space to recognise these things, and to feel how you feel about them.

As you imagine that paper, I wonder what colours you choose to respond to it. Are there colours of encouragement or affirmation? Colours of hopefulness and joy? Colours that represent how you feel when critiqued? Colours of anger, fear, compassion?

Once you’ve coloured your paper, imagine folding it into something new. I folded mine into a flower and placed it on a river. For me this is a helpful metaphor: like a seed buried and breaking open to put down roots, I could take the words written on my paper, and the experiences connected to them, and break them open to new life.

Hannah is a 2nd-year PhD candidate (in New Testament/Paul) at Clare College, Cambridge, where she is also the Decani Scholar (which means she practically supports the life and ministry of Clare College Chapel). When she’s not at Chapel or in the library, you can find her on a long walk through the Cambridgeshire fields, crafting or cooking great food with friends, or planning her next travel adventure! 

When you engage in graduate education, your learning extends far beyond what’s in your textbooks. You also learn what’s in the unwritten syllabus—the unstated expectations of your classrooms and the larger guild. And you learn about yourself, about your hopes and fears, strengths and limitations. When I started my journey in theological education, it didn’t take long for my fears and limitations to come knocking at my door. And they haunted me as I began to imbibe various impressions of what a scholar is supposed to be, magnifying the gaps between my own abilities and the image I sought to realize.

As I sat down to write my papers, I was paralyzed by the fear of failure. I couldn’t write much of anything without the adrenaline rush sparked by an impending deadline. As the deadline loomed, jaws outstretched, I would write in a mad feverish dash toward the safety of the finish line before the beast swallowed me whole. And then as I turned in my work, I would wallow in shame and embarrassment, dreading to hear that all my weaknesses had been exposed.

And I worried that I didn’t have the dedication to be a “real” scholar. My mind often balked at the long hours of reading, wandering off again and again as I struggled to force my attention back to the page. And when I collapsed on breaks or couldn’t stand the sight of my dissertation anymore, all I wanted to do was escape into Jane Austen or Harry Potter. “Real” scholars dove into massive tomes about Assyrian iconography in their spare time.

And I doubted that I could ever enjoy scholarly success because I wasn’t prepared to follow the “standard academic path.” When people asked what I was going to do when I finished my PhD, I would say “have babies.” I wasn’t joking. (Actually, since it took me so long to complete my dissertation, I decided not to wait until I finished, defending 2-months pregnant with a 19-month-old in tow.) Even if I could have landed one of the few coveted tenure-track positions after graduation, I didn’t want to try to navigate all of the attendant expectations during my baby years. So I chose to adjunct and write part-time while serving as the primary caretaker for my three kids. And then our family discerned God calling us to our current church in Chicago, where my husband serves as a pastor. So now we’re geographically rooted, and nine years after graduating, I’ve still never applied for a full-time job.

I haven’t needed a full-time job to immerse myself in the things that drew me to this field. I’ve always loved that moment of discovery when I find a Hebrew wordplay or trace a key word through a passage or explore an intertextual parallel. And I experience deep joy in sharing those insights with my students and walking alongside them as they begin their own adventures of discovery. But in so many ways, I’ve felt like I didn’t fit in the academic world.

I wish I’d known earlier that God called me into this work so that I could bring my whole self to it, not so that I could contort myself into some scholarly mold.[i] I wish I’d known that the mastery I felt pressure to demonstrate but could never achieve was only an illusion anyway and that the fragments of knowledge I had were enough.[ii] I wish I’d known that I didn’t have to construct an artistic masterpiece on my own but could simply offer my fragments as beautiful gifts to form part of a communal mosaic. I wish I’d known that all the things I engaged in that seemed like “distractions” from “important scholarly work” were deeply significant and that they would actually feed my interpretive imagination. I wish I’d known that imagination was a key component in scholarly work.

It’s been a long journey of realizing these things and growing into an understanding of who God created me to be as a scholar—a woman–spiritual director–pastor’s wife–mother–Jane Austen- loving–teacher–writer—because all of those things are deeply interconnected. What’s made that growth possible are the friends I’ve journeyed with, friends I enjoy long conversations with at the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and friends I’ve only ever met in print.

The “canon” of biblical studies research has largely been dominated by white Euro-American males, and for many years they were the primary voices I read. I’m so grateful for the countless things I learned from them, but I often felt some degree of disconnection. It wasn’t until more recently that I began to realize that I had different patterns of thinking than many of the white male scholars I’d been reading. When I came across essays on cultural ways of thinking, the words jumped off the page. The authors explained that academic theological discourse has largely been shaped by rational, linear, and individualistic ways of thinking but that many women and non-white scholars tend toward more holistic, relational, and experiential thinking.[iii] By feeding myself chiefly with scholarship in the former vein, I’d developed a limited vision for what scholarly discourse looked like and trained myself to speak in a language that never quite felt natural.

As I branched out and read more work by women and ethnic minority scholars, it began to quench the desperate thirst I didn’t even realize I had. I drank from the buckets of anger at injustice and hope in the God who makes all things right, drawn from the deep wells of the African American church by Dennis Edwards and Esau McCaulley.[iv] I sat at Wilda Gafney’s table and savored the feast of her “sanctified imagination.”[v] I rejoiced in the many ‘ezerim (“helpers,” see Gen 2:18) who supported Nancy deClaissé-Walford and thanked God for my own.[vi] I saw Hagar, perhaps for the first time, as I experienced her through Asian American and Egyptian Christian eyes in essays by Lai Ling Elizabeth Ngan and Safwat Marzouk.[vii] I mourned with Rizpah (see 2 Sam 21) and marveled at the courage, faith, and theological insight of the abuelitas whose stories are told by Kat Armas.[viii] And I was challenged to broaden my understanding of “neighbor” as I read Palestinian Christian scholar Naim Ateek’s reflections on the parable of the Good Samaritan from the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[ix] I resonate deeply with the ways these authors integrate the biblical text with their life experience, even when my own experiences are significantly different. Though I haven’t met most of them, these friends have become a lifeline, tethering me to a scholarly world where I can flourish and keeping my soul from withering under the unrelenting pressure to conform.

I’m still in the process of disentangling myself from all the (real or imagined) academic expectations that have kept me bound, but I have high hopes for the future. My hope is that every student and scholar in theological education, especially those on the margins, would be set free from the pressure to conform and from the expectation that they have to prove themselves by mastering their field. My hope is that there would always be room at the table for rational, linear, and individualistic thinkers and for those who think in more relational, holistic, and experiential ways. My hope is that we would all lift up our voices and sing in gloriously complex harmony rather than straining to hit the same note. My hope is that we would develop deep friendships of love and support and that we would challenge each other “as iron sharpens iron” (Prov 27:17), not to question anyone’s scholarly worth but to help us grow into all that God has called us to be. And my hope is that together we would forge a multitude of creative pathways for scholars to find success in using their gifts and skills to serve people in a variety of contexts.

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[i] See further Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging, Theological Education Between the Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 6.

[ii] Ibid., 23–46.

[iii] Perry Shaw, “Culture, Gender, and Diversity in Advanced Theological Studies,” in Challenging Tradition: Innovation in Advanced Theological Education, ed. Perry Shaw and Havilah Dharamraj (Carlisle, UK: Langham, 2018], 89–90; Xiaoli Yang, “Poetry as Theology,” in Challenging Tradition, 432.

[iv] Dennis R. Edwards, Might from the Margins: The Gospel’s Power to Turn the Tables on Injustice (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald, 2020); Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020).

[v] Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to the Women of the Torah and the Throne (Louisville: Westminster: John Knox, 2017), 1–3.

[vi] Nancy L. deClaissé-Walford, “Genesis 2: ‘It Is Not Good for the Human to Be Alone,’” Review and Expositor 103 (2006): 343–58.

[vii] Lai Ling Elizabeth Ngan, “Neither Here nor There: Boundary and Identity in the Hagar Story,” in Ways of Being, Ways of Reading: Asian American Biblical Interpretation, ed. Mary F. Foskett and Jeffrey Kah-Jin Kuan (St. Louis: Chalice, 2006), 70–83; Safwat Marzouk, “Interrogating Identity: A Christian Egyptian Reading of the Hagar-Ishmael Traditions,” in Colonialism and the Bible: Contemporary Reflections from the Global South, ed. Tat-siong Benny Liew and Fernando F. Segovia (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), 3–30.

[viii] Kat Armas, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2021).

[ix] Naim Ateek, “Who Is My Neighbor?” Interpretation 62 (2008): 156–65.

Brittany Kim (PhD, Wheaton College) is an adjunct professor at North Park Theological Seminary, director of Every Voice: A Center for Kingdom Diversity in Christian Theological Education, spiritual director, pastor’s wife, and mother of three. She is also the author of “Lengthen Your Tent-Cords”: The Metaphorical World of Israel’s Household in the Book of Isaiah (Eisenbrauns) and co-author (with Charlie Trimm) of Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches (Zondervan).

In the summer we completed our fourth major move in five years—and in those five years I have already experienced a career’s worth of academic trauma.

But is this the best place to begin? It’s not like I didn’t have bumps in the road prior to employment, especially in light of my conservative evangelical church background. In fact, the response that I received when I first articulated a call to teach in the church was: “You can marry a teacher, but you can’t be one.”

In the years that followed, I dreamed about what it would look like for me to be a theologian. Should I publish under a pseudonym? Could I teach theology through music?

As the years passed, I found myself asking God: “Why did you make me like this?” I saw my female body as a burden, an obstacle.

And in the contexts that I was in, my leaders supposedly were doing the “Lord’s work” in tamping down my fanciful dreams of doing ministry and having a career in theology.

By 2016, when I entered the job market, I was used to questions, and I was used to doubt. I also was used to comments about how “easy” it would be for me as a woman in the academy. I heard this refrain as I entered my job interviews that year at the Annual Meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature. I thought: I guess, if I don’t get hired, then I’m remarkably incompetent.  My female body was a token—sometimes of progress but more often of threat. When the winds of change blow, some are knocked out of the way.

So when I landed a tenure-track position out of my PhD, I knew—or at least I assumed—that I could no longer complain. Friends were staring into an unknown future, and I was waltzing into something stable. I had some concerns about things I experienced in the interview process, but I was lucky; I had a job.

A year later, back at SBL, I walked through the book exhibit, and I met faces from my past. “Wow. Congratulations. You’ve made it.” “You’re so lucky.” “We’re going to ride your coattails.”

I smiled. I nodded. I laughed. (That’s what women are supposed to do when they’re uncomfortable.)

Inside, however, I was replaying my most recent weeks. I thought back to the conversation where I was told that my job interview had been constructed in a way to ensure that I was never one-on-one with any men—“for my benefit.” I thought back to the lunch I’d had where I heard one of my supervisors sexually harass a student in a conversation that I was participating in.

According to my peers, I was lucky.

But a few days later, still in Boston for SBL, I received an email. The man that I had just reported for sexual harassment wanted to observe my class. He needed to come in the next week. I sat on the edge of a crowded room in the convention center in Boston—overwhelmed by the conversations that blended together into a chaotic form of white noise.

When I gained the strength, I protested his visit. I spoke up that time and the next time that he caused me harm. Simultaneously, I began to look for a way out, a new job.

That same semester, though, I began to see how my own “femaleness” could somehow be beneficial to others. One day I felt this acutely when a female student training for pastoral ministry said to me, “I haven’t taken your classes, but it’s so good for me to see you.” My female body represented her potential.

In late January, I learned that I was pregnant. I was overjoyed. But sadly, in that season, it felt that my potential happiness was a mirage. My husband and I would attend doctor’s appointments together, and we would plan and rejoice in our baby’s health (and my own). But I would step back on campus and feel an immediate sense of dread. As I turned every corner, I prayed that I would not meet my supervisor (or several others) in the halls.

My health began to deteriorate in the wake of anxiety and depression, resulting from various traumatic experiences that year. Knowing that I needed to care for our baby, I tried to get help on campus again. I trusted someone with a note from my doctor that revealed that I was pregnant. (This was someone whose job it was to receive notes of this kind.)

They went directly to my supervisor. They gave him my doctor’s note. He copied it. He shared it. He complained about my new (and still very fragile) pregnancy to anyone who would listen. Now my female body was a source of contention. I was a stereotype, a woman who caused problems because of her ticking biological clock.

About a week after I found out my supervisor knew, my husband and I decided that, even if I was unable to procure another job, I would not return in the fall. After my teaching finished, I left town. I waddled back into my mother’s house—pregnant with no firm prospects.

As I left town, I began to think about my colleagues who remained. They were traumatized too, they said. How could they stay? I couldn’t stay. I felt isolated, and I began to wonder if the messages I had heard from my supervisor’s supporters were true. Was I too sensitive? Was this just a personality conflict? Did I have a problem with authority?

These were the questions that I carried into my next job.

These were the questions that I asked myself when I complained about a student stalking me and received no practical support. (To be fair, I did receive a hearty laugh about how he was “crazy” when I said I was terrified to come on campus.) I asked myself these questions again when beloved students who were harassed and exploited filed a complaint and were continually re-traumatized in the course of the investigation. I asked again when I was cut off in the middle of my sentence in a faculty meeting and told that the experiences of women on campus were “irrelevant” to discussions of faculty hiring and “fit.” I asked each time a leader spiritually abused us in meetings with faculty and staff. I asked again and again. Over time, the questions merged into just one: “Madison, what is wrong with you?”

Thankfully, I knew that, as flawed as I may be, my experience was still horrible. I might be sensitive, and I might be “difficult,” but I was in a wicked system where predators thrived. So yet again, I left.

This version of my story is sad and infuriating. But something that I have learned is stories (and people) are more than just one thing. One of my favorite sets of narratives in biblical literature is the story of God’s people in the wilderness. These stories show so many examples of God’s people rebelling, seeking their own gain, but simultaneously, and I think more importantly, these stories show God’s gracious provision. My story, similarly, has many villains, but I could tell another version that highlights only the incredible gifts and people that God has provided in my life. Both would be true, and both make me the woman that I am.

Through these stories and countless others that perhaps I will tell another day, the one thing that presses me onward is the truth that God is just and merciful. In the last five years, I have fought hard—for myself and for others. I have made formal complaints. I have pushed for policy changes. I have spoken up in faculty meetings at times when tenured (i.e., secure) faculty were silent.

But I did not achieve the results that I wanted. Perhaps you would say that I failed.

Some days it feels like the person punished the most for my advocacy is me because the people who caused my students, my colleagues and me harm remain in their positions of power, and for my own health and wellbeing, I chose to leave and to find a place that is healthy where I can find a sense of belonging as myself.

So what does my story mean for you if, God forbid, you find yourself in an unhealthy or abusive environment? Is my story a cautionary tale for survivors and advocates to stay silent?

What I have learned through all of this is not that the fight is not worth it; I think it is our call. But it is costly, and we must pursue justice in ways that allow us to preserve our own wellbeing. This work is slow, and it has many layers. For me, some days the work looks like prayer, other days it looks like researching Title IX, and others like confronting someone directly. But knowing what we can do in the strength that we have today is important.

What has changed for me in the last five years is the outcome that I expect. I still fight with the hope that even the most wicked of systems can be changed completely—because I do believe in extraordinary things—but I fight with the knowledge that I likely won’t see the change that I desire.

And this is where the character of God comes back in for me. Even though I feel that I cannot trust (most) people to make the right decisions when they are called to stand up to power, I trust someday I will see true justice and restoration.

Madison N. Pierce (PhD, Durham University) is associate professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary. She has written Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews (CUP, 2020) and has co-edited Gospel Reading and Reception in Early Christian Literature (CUP, 2022) and Muted Voices of the New Testament (2017).