Sacred Texts + Modern Conversations: Women, Violence, and Power

This short course is designed to further enrich biblical interpretation skills — specifically the work of engaging difficult texts — and bring that learning into how women as leaders address equally challenging modern contexts.

In the synchronous online sessions, participants will come together to study a series of biblical passages that many refer to as “difficult” or “troubling” texts for their depiction of sexual violence or oppression. With the instructor, they will discuss why these passages trouble us now, how they have been read by various communities in the past, and what broader relevance these ancient texts might have to our own confrontations with the ongoing forms of violence and inequity we witness, face, and work to resist in the present. Together they will also consider the substantive challenges of engaging these texts in congregational or educational settings, and how to do so without reinscribing the traumas and harms they narrate.

Following the synchronous sessions, participants will be given access to pre-recorded conversations between our biblical expert and subject matter experts from fields outside of traditional theological education where they explore how church leaders can address individual experiences of trauma or harassment, and how congregations can best support and respond.

Scholarships are available. Fill out the form at isi.ptsem.edu/supplementary-scholarships

Learn more about this event at: https://isi.ptsem.edu/shortcourse/