Black women theologians used historical-context exegesis to neutralize Paul’s silence injunctions

Evidence

During the late nineteenth century feminist theology turned to the example of women leaders in the Old and New Testaments as sanction for more aggressive church work. Both Cook and Broughton reinterpreted biblical passages that had traditionally restricted woman’s role— particularly Paul’s dictum in the book of Corinthians that women remain silent in church. For Cook, an analysis of the historical context of Paul’s statement revealed that his words were addressed specifically “to a few Grecian and Asiatic women who were wholly given up to idolatry and to the fashion of the day.” Her exegesis denied the passage universal applicability. Its adoption in the late nineteenth century served as merely a rationalization to overlook and minimize the important contribution and growing force of woman’s work in the church. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 609

Categorization

• XREF: The rhetorical move of citing historical context to strip a sacred text of universal force parallels how other dominated groups reinterpret canon — similar to abolitionist readings of Scripture and later womanist theology’s critique of biblical interpretation. — connects to: Black Baptist women deployed biblical orthodoxy to claim gender equality — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 563
• QUESTION: Did this contextualizing exegesis route — denying universality by historicizing the text — prefigure or parallel later liberation-theology methods like those of James Cone or womanist scholars decades later?

Broader Connections

• Black Baptist women deployed biblical orthodoxy to claim gender equality #corroborates (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 563