Katharine Doob Sakenfeld ’61

Professor of Old Testament and director of Ph.D. studies, Princeton Theological Seminary

by Karol Crosbie

Perhaps with enough study and enough meticulous historical analysis, Christians can be unified in their interpretation of the Bible.

Well, probably not. No way, actually.We can never completely escape our own cultural perspectives. That’s the message Katharine Doob Sakenfeld introduced in 1975, when she and a colleague created Princeton Theological Seminary’s first course that used a feminist perspective to interpret scripture. Back then, almost no one in the Presbyterian church had heard a female minister preach, and there were no women in Sakenfeld’s elective classes.

Women and men who want to understand more fully what it means to be in God’s image will approach the Bible’s diverse prose and poetry with “radical suspicion,” says Sakenfeld, an ordained Presbyterian minister who has taught at Princeton Theological Seminary for 35 years. Looking closely at the culture in which the text was written reveals biases that are important not only for women, but for all minorities, she says. “And when you begin to incorporate ethnicity and economics, as well as gender, you can help students see how all of these pieces are interconnected.”

Today, Sakenfeld’s classes are equally divided between men and women, and her research has expanded to include differences in the way women from different nations and with different socioeconomic experiences interpret Bible stories. Her book, Just Wives (2003,Westminster John Knox Press), gathers examples of how white, Hispanic, African, and Asian women respond to the stories of Old Testament female protagonists.

Sakenfeld also studies the importance of language differences in translations of the Bible. English patterns, for example, that refer to questions of gender,may appear quite different in Thai, Korean, or Swahili, and none may match precisely the grammars of Hebrew or Greek languages used in the Bible. “It is impossible to neatly separate what equals culture and what equals Christianity,” says Sakenfeld.

Thirty-five years after she began her pioneering work in this area, Sakenfeld continues to counsel young women who feel unsupported in their decision to pursue the ministry. But she says she is optimistic. “Women are taking a significant role in ordained leadership and are continuing to tackle issues of gender, race, and class.”