View from the Pew
A look inside Hawaii's houses of worshipBy Mary Adamski
Saturday, June 30, 2001
A powerful man falls in love with a beautiful married woman, then uses his authority to send her husband to his death so he can have her. No problem, he's still a hero. Lecturer puts feminist
spin on Bible talesBut when a powerful woman uses her authority to kill a landowner so her husband can have the vineyard he covets, she's a villain.
It's all a matter of what the storytellers considered politically correct, Michelle Lopez told a small gathering Wednesday in the last of three lectures on "Beauty Queens" of the Bible at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church. Tapping into the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, Lopez brought a feminist viewpoint to those familiar Old Testament stories of David and Bathsheba and Jezebel and Ahab.
The bubbly style of the young Christian education teacher in the Aina Haina church's elementary school kept the audience amused rather than irate at the unfairness of those chauvinistic times and the spin by Jewish writers making points in support of their religious perspective. "David was not vilified for assassination ... he was the beginning of the kingdom, and he continued in his relationship with Yahweh," she pointed out.
"Jezebel couldn't be acceptable -- she was a pagan, she worshipped Baal -- and she was a woman, so she was vilified."
Lopez pointed out that a third beauty, Esther, was given favorable treatment -- not to mention her name on a book of the Bible -- by the male chroniclers. "Unlike Bathsheba, whose beauty was the source of her disempowerment, and Jezebel, who had way too much power, Esther's power was balanced. She stood up to the king, but she didn't stand over him. Her power was the ability to influence, not to control."
Lopez said her penchant for looking at Scriptures with a reviewer's eye has its roots in her Temple University degree in English literature: "I was taught to analyze text."
"These are just ideas to try on; I'm not trying to persuade ... just to have fun."
Esther was chosen by King Xerxes after participating in the equivalent of a beauty contest. Lopez challenged her listeners to compare that choice -- no way politically correct from a feminist viewpoint -- with a modern equivalent, the "How to Marry a Millionaire" television show.
"You've got to wonder about modern-day women, strutting their stuff to try to marry some anonymous millionaire. They don't know anything about him. These are women who can vote, can work ... who can get their own million dollars. But for (women) like Esther, wife was the only option."
Penelope Smith-Mitsuyuki said, "My pastor would consider this heresy."
She described the church to which she belongs as "very conservative" but said she was drawn to the lectures, which were described in a newspaper story. "This makes me think. There is something very moving when you consider what the circumstances of the times were. It may make me question more, but I believe it more."
Yvonne Lau said, "In my church there are people who would be uncomfortable to think the Bible was written by people influenced by their culture as well as by God."
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Mary Adamski covers religion for the Star-Bulletin.
Email her at madamski@starbulletin.com.
