The Rev. Dr. Vanessa Lovelace is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her BA in radio & television from San Francisco State University, MDiv from McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, and PhD in Hebrew Bible from Chicago Theological Seminary. Vanessa can be found on Twitter @womanisthbprof.
How did you decide to become a biblical scholar? Share your autobiographical journey.
Funny that you should ask. I recently reflected on my journey as a biblical scholar for an article for a forthcoming book on Women and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) in honor of the 125th anniversary of the first woman admitted to membership in the SBL. My journey began with a call to congregational ministry when I was living in San Francisco. At the time, I was attending a Baptist church where the pastor affirmed women in leadership roles in the church. The Sunday he ordained a woman, Rev. Dr. Martha Simmons, to the Christian ministry I was listening to the local Christian radio station on the way to church and the callers were excoriating him for what he was preparing to do that morning. He welcomed other ordained women to the pulpit as well and it was during one such visit from African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie that a voice said to me, “That will be you someday.”
I was working in the publicity department at the Fox affiliate in the San Francisco Bay Area when the company downsized and my position was eliminated. I relocated to Chicago where I found my theological home (The United Church of Christ) and I became a member of Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC). It would be a few more years before I would accept my then vocational call to congregational ministry and become an ordained minister in the UCC. Before my path to ordination, I matriculated at McCormick Theological Seminary spring 1997 (three months after giving birth to my youngest son). A couple things happened that diverted my vocation from congregational to academic ministry. The first was my Introduction to Biblical Studies class at McCormick. I was hooked on the major theoretical arguments for the development of the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Learning Martin Noth’s theoretical construct of the Deuteronomistic History would prove to be essential for my research later. The second influence was hearing Hebrew Bible scholars Randall C. Bailey and Renita J. Weems teach and preach at TUCC. I was blown away by how they read and interpreted the Masoretic Text within an African American context. Together, my enthusiasm for the study of the biblical texts along with the attraction to the Hebrew Bible engendered by Bailey and Weems instilled in me the desire to pursue a doctorate in Hebrew Bible.
Tell us about your work (past and present). What are you most excited about right now? What do you hope your work will contribute
My teaching and research interests are in the areas of women and gender in ancient Israel, especially in the Deuteronomistic History and Hebrew Bible prophetic literature. I analyze the texts using literary, sociological, and critical race approaches through a womanist hermeneutics. I am particularly interested in pursuing further my dissertation methodological approach using feminist theory of gender and nation as it pertains to the study of the Hebrew Bible. I was able to use this approach in a chapter titled “The Deuteronomistic History: Intersections of Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Nation” in The Hebrew Bible: Feminist and Intersectional Perspectives edited by Gale A. Yee (Fortress 2018) and an article “This Woman’s Son Shall Not Inherit with My Son: Towards a Womanist Politics of Belonging in the Sarah-Hagar Narratives” in the Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center (2015). Currently, I am working on a monograph titled Outsiders Within: A Womanist Reading of Hebrew Bible Narratives as the Politics of Belonging. I am excited about this work because it will be my first expansive effort to bring womanist hermeneutics and the politics of belonging – the processes by which individuals are included or excluded as members of the national collectivity and who gets to decide – to my analysis of how both Hebrew Bible texts and interpreters participate in the politics of belonging. I hope that this monograph will add to ongoing conversations around the Hebrew Bible, women, gender and nation, and identity formation.
The publication of Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse coedited with Gay L. Byron was also an important milestone in my scholarly pursuits. This volume is a significant contribution to the field of biblical studies. It contains never-before-published essays on womanist readings of biblical and extra-biblical texts. These essays explore the inherently simultaneously interlocking dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, and class in the texts and contemporary black and brown women’s lives. The writing that I would say holds a sentimental place in my scholarly repertoire is “Deborah in the African American Church” in Judges (Wisdom Commentary Series) by Mercedes García Bachmann (Liturgical Press 2018). My dissertation was on women prophets in the Hebrew Bible, with special attention to Deborah and Huldah as symbolic border guards in the Deuteronomistic History. However, Deborah is a particularly important figure for women in the African American church tradition. This is what led me to pursue the study of women prophets in the first place. Yet, the study of that reception history has been largely overlooked. This contribution to the study of Deborah will hopefully pique the interest of other researchers to follow up on Deborah’s prominence as a model for church leadership for black Christian women.
Who has most influenced you as a scholar? Tell us a bit about it?
My response is similar to some others that you have interviewed. I cannot identify a single individual as having the most influence on me as a scholar. There have been numerous people who have helped me in different ways along my journey. In my seminary studies, ironically, New Testament professors Robert Brawley and Sarah Tanzer encouraged my interests in biblical studies. If it weren’t for Bailey and Weems, I probably would have gone into New Testament studies. It was not for a lack of trying on Brawley’s part. (Laughs aloud.) As a doctoral student my advisor, Ken Stone and his work on gender and sexuality in the Deuteronomistic History was helpful for me to think about these issues in my writing. Womanist theologian and anthropologist Linda Thomas, who was one of my dissertation readers, helped me to frame my work as womanist methodologically. Still, I would have to say that the work of British Israeli scholar Nira Yuval-Davis, who was one of the earliest researchers to examine the role of gender in the construction of nationalist projects, has had the most influence on my scholarship. When I was trying to understand the symbolic significance of the inclusion formed by Deborah and Huldah in the Deuteronomistic narrative, it was the discovery of Gender & Nation by Yuval-Davis and her recent The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations that led me to examine Hebrew Bible narratives as modes of identity construction. I hope that I will have the opportunity to meet and hear her speak in person the next time she is in the U.S. – or I get to London where she lives and works.
What are the most pressing issues or concerns you have related to the broader field of biblical studies?
I have found that when I engage first-year undergraduate and graduate students in discussions on the Bible, both churched and unchurched are woefully lacking in biblical knowledge. Yet, some of their most deeply held beliefs are based on the Bible, especially literal readings of the text. For example, I participated in a faculty seminar on integrating gender and sexuality studies into college curricula. A few participants approached me as a biblical scholar to share their difficulties with talking about gender and sexuality in the classroom when most of their students hold conservative religious views on the subject. The students, of course, reflect the wider culture’s attitudes toward the Bible and what they believe that it says about gender and sexuality and other social-political issues. Therefore, in my opinion, there is a pressing need for more biblical scholars who can find creative ways to engage the public in textual and exegetical studies of the Bible that both connect with those who are interested in the Bible as literature only and those who read it for devotional purposes or to find meaning in life.
Why study the scriptures/biblical text?
The appeal for studying the Hebrew Bible for me was partly due to the complexities of the personalities in the text. Their stories are so interesting. They are so much like us with all the drama, dysfunction, and crises, yet also so joyful, loving, and proud. On the other hand, I find pleasure in exploring just how different their social worlds are from ours and how important it is to acknowledge that the world of the Hebrew Bible cannot be superimposed on modern society.
What do you like to do for fun?
I find that I have to be intentional about making time to do fun things so, my husband and I have a monthly date night of dinner and jazz. What relaxes me is gardening and being near a body of water. Let me relax with a lounge chair, a wide brim hat, and a book next to a lake, an ocean, or on a cruise deck at sea and I’m good.
Is there anything else you would like us to know?
My future stirrings are to develop courses that engage the role and influence of the Bible on contemporary practices and policies in the U.S. around gender, women, and sexuality to be taught in women and gender studies programs in U.S. colleges and universities.