Decentering Jesus: From Self-Sufficient Great Man to Multicentered Collectives of Wo/men

Abstract

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation (2000) presents a thoroughgoing feminist analysis and critique of the boom in Historical-Jesus scholarship in the late 20th century. In this article, we review two interrelated themes that feature significantly in this landmark book, and which persist across Schüssler Fiorenza’s work: (1) practices of decentering Jesus, and (2) conceptualizing a movement of wo/men of which Jesus was a part. Given her interests in reframing the entire Historical-Jesus enterprise and her abiding commitment to wo/men’s movements for change, we present here feminist and womanist scholarship since the publication of Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation that resonates with these two themes and develops them with further attention to race, wo/men’s social-religious organizing and agency, and conceptualizations of Jesus among and as wo/man.