Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre is the Associate Dean of the Theology School at Drew University. [1] She is known for her research into early Christianity, its relationship to the Roman Empire, and modern feminist interpretation. [2]
In 1988, Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Eastern College. She then went on to receive her Master of Divinity (M.Div) in 1992 and her Doctor of Theology (Th.D) in 2002 from Harvard Divinity School. [1] Johnson-DeBaufre worked as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Luther College from 2000 to 2004. Starting in 2005, she continued her career as an Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the Drew Theological School and the Graduate Division of Religion. [3] [4]
The major works of Johnson-DeBaufre are primarily feminist interpretation and analysis of the earliest Christianities. Her feminist approach to religious historiography has allowed her to explore ancient texts and cultures from previously unknown angles. [2]
Johnson-DeBaufre co-edited this compilation of essays focusing on feminist theological research and interpretation. Written to honor Fiorenza's sixty-fifth birthday, the book is composed of essays written by students who studied under her and that focus on topics connected to Fiorenza's own research. [5]
In this major work, published by Harvard University Press, she analyzes theologians’ current knowledge of Q and its impact on modern theology. Furthermore, she questions whether Jesus is an apocalyptic prophet or a wisdom sage in the original work, and frequently connects her questions to the feminine concept of wisdom. [6]
This novel is Johnson-DeBaufre's layman's translation of Jane Schaberg's The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene. [7] Johnson-DeBaufre provides Shaberg's original ideas, condenses and simplifies her research and interpretation of Mary Magdalene, while also inserting her own insights about the figure of Mary Magdalene. Multiple sources on Mary Magdalene are explored including the ancient texts, both canon and apocryphal, and several popular culture renditions such as The Da Vinci Code and Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth. [8]
Mary Magdalene was a woman who, according to the four canonical gospels, traveled with Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to his crucifixion and resurrection. She is mentioned by name twelve times in the canonical gospels, more than most of the apostles and more than any other woman in the gospels, other than Jesus's family. Mary's epithet Magdalene may be a toponymic surname, meaning that she came from the town of Magdala, a fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in Roman Judea.
Denial of the virgin birth of Jesus is found among various groups and individuals throughout the history of Christianity. These groups and individuals often took an approach to Christology which understands Jesus to be human, the literal son of human parents.
The Gospel of Mary is a non-canonical text discovered in 1896 in a fifth-century papyrus codex written in Sahidic Coptic. This Berlin Codex was purchased in Cairo by German diplomat Carl Reinhardt.
The Greek Acts of Philip is an episodic gnostic apocryphal book of acts from the mid-to-late fourth century, originally in fifteen separate acta, that gives an accounting of the miraculous acts performed by the Apostle Philip, with overtones of the heroic romance.
Women as theological figures have played a significant role in the development of various religions and religious hierarchies.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
Judith Plaskow is an American theologian, author, and activist known for being the first Jewish feminist theologian. After earning her doctorate at Yale University, she taught at Manhattan College for thirty-two years before becoming a professor emerita. She was one of the creators of the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion and was its editor for the first ten years. She also helped to create B'not Esh, a Jewish feminist group that heavily inspired her writing, and a feminist section of the American Academy of Religion, an organization that she was president of in 1998.
The Westar Institute, founded by Robert W. Funk in 1985, is a member-supported nonprofit educational institute with a twofold mission:
Lynda Serene Jones is the President and Johnston Family Professor for Religion and Democracy at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. She was formerly the Titus Street Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and chair of gender, woman, and sexuality studies at Yale University.
In feminist theory, kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, speciesism, and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized.
Francis Schüssler Fiorenza is an American theologian who currently holds the post of Charles Chancey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Revd. E. C. John was an Indian Old Testament scholar and a member of the Society for Biblical Studies in India. He was also a member of the George Bell Institute at the University of Chichester, Chichester and the Society for Old Testament Study, England.
Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary refers to a Biblical episode in the life of Jesus in the New Testament which appears only in Luke's Gospel, immediately after the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Jane Dewar Schaberg (1938–2012) was an American biblical scholar who served as Professor of Religious Studies and of Women's Studies at the University of Detroit Mercy from 1977 through 2009.
Letty Mandeville Russell was a feminist theologian, professor, and prolific author. She was a member of the first class of women admitted to Harvard Divinity School, and one of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church. After earning a doctorate in theology at Union Theological Seminary, she joined the faculty at Yale Divinity School, where she taught for 28 years.
Esther Fuchs is an Israeli Jewish feminist biblical scholar. Fuchs is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona.
Janet Kalven was a Catholic educator and writer associated with the Grail, a women's religious movement founded in 1921.
Malestream is a concept developed by feminist theorists to describe the situation when male social scientists, particularly sociologists, carry out research which focuses on a masculine perspective and then assumes that the findings can be applied to women as well. Originally developed as a critique of male dominated sociology, the term has since been applied to geography, anthropology, theology, and psychology.
Mary Ann Beavis is a Professor Emerita, St. Thomas More College, the University of Saskatchewan. She co-founded the peer-reviewed academic journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, together with Helen Hye-Sook Hwang in 2021.
Teresia Mbari Hinga is a Kenyan Christian feminist theologian who is a professor of religious studies at Santa Clara University in California.