Battered Love: God and the imagery of sexual violence in scripture

In our scriptures we find narratives and poetry that use the image of a wayward woman to symbolize the sins of the community, presenting God as her aggrieved husband who sometimes responds violently. This imagery bears the unfortunate and dangerous implication that spouse abuse is something God does. We will read Renita Weems’ book, Battered Love: Marriage, Sex, and Violence in the Hebrew Prophets and consider how we can construct a counter-narrative to combat this implication. The class will culminate with a weekend workshop in which we will produce both spoken and visual art to represent that counter-narrative. Come help us re-envision what it means to be in relationship with God.

DateTopicPages
February 26, 2023Introduction: A Metaphor’s Fatal Attraction1–11
March 5, 2023The Rhetoric of a Metaphor12–34
March 12, 2023No class
This is the week of the women’s retreat.
No reading recommended for this day
March 19, 2023Speakers, Audiences, and Expectations35–67
March 26, 2023God as husband68–83
April 2, 2023Us as readers and the language of romance and rape84–119
Saturday,
April 8, 2023
Oral and Visual Art WorkshopNo reading recommended for this day
April 9, 2023
Presenting our art as a new way of readingNo reading recommended for this day
Index of Class Sessions

If you register with this site, you will be able to log in and comment on anything you find here.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.