Chloe and Her People offers an Africana Womanist reading of First Corinthians that privileges the knowledge, experiences, histories, traditions, voices, and artifacts of Black women and the Black community that challenge or dissent from Paul's rhetorical epistemic constructions. Smith reads First Corinthians dialogically from the perspective of oppressed and marginalized readers situated in front of the text and those muted within and behind the letter. Struggling toward unmitigated freedom, Chloe and Her People talks back to and throws shade on, sometimes poetically, Paul's muting and subordination of women, rhetorically constructed binary knowledge, the glass ceiling placed on women's heads, heterosexual marriage as a mechanism for managing lust, and androcentric patriarchal love built on women's passive bodies.
Mitzi J. Smith is J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary and Professor Extraordinarius at the University of South Africa, College of the Humanities, Institute of Gender Studies. She is co-editor of Bitter the Chastening Rod (2022); co-author of We Are All Witnesses (2023) and Toward Decentering the New Testament (2018); and author of Womanist Sass and Talk Back: Social (In)Justice, Intersectionality and Biblical Interpretation (2018).
“A stunning womanist reading of resistance of Paul’s 1 Corinthians. Mitzi J. Smith has brilliantly choreographed and conducted this conversation about an ancient text, its patent dangers and continual reverberations, and sent it soaring with her wise, eloquent, and ethically urgent voice.”
—Margaret M. Mitchell, distinguished service professor of New Testament and early Christian literature, University of Chicago
“In Chloe and Her People, Mitzi Smith’s critical engagement with Paul in 1 Corinthians sets the stage for unmitigated freedom for the oppressed seeking answers from the Bible. It is a revelation of how uncritical interpretation and reception of biblical texts can be damaging. Through her Africana, womanist lens, she provides a powerful resource for everyone seeking to impact the world positively through critical life-affirming readings and interpretation of Scripture. This is a must-read!”
—Mmapula Diana Kebaneilwe, senior lecturer of biblical studies, University of Botswana
“With Chloe and Her People, Mitzi Smith brilliantly shatters the mystifying and opaque glass encasement of one of the consequential leaders in the Corinthian assembly and first-century Christianity. Chloe finally emerges from the dark shadows of Pauline dominance in the Corinthian correspondence to assume her rightful place on the world stage of the first-century Jesus movement as a firebrand to be reckoned with. A spectacular achievement and required reading for serious students of early Christian origins.”
—Clarice J. Martin, professor of philosophy and religion, Colgate University
“An incredibly timely and excellent analysis of Paul, Chloe and Her People engages with the notions of gender and slavery within the geopolitics of the Corinthian community. Applying womanist critical dialogue, Mitzi Smith engages the intersectionality of race, gender, and the experiences of Black bodies within the geopolitics of the United States. This book is an essential text for academics, teachers, and pastors.”
—Itumeleng Daniel Mothoagae, head of the department of gender and sexuality studies, University of South Africa
“With her customary penetrating analysis, Mitzi J. Smith provides a robust contextualization into the character and context of Chloe of Corinth as a freedwoman as well as providing analogs to the American slavocracy. Additionally, Smith deftly argues for new understandings of Paul’s prescriptions concerning hair, love, sex, and marriage. Chloe and Her People is an insightful and liberative book that should be read by students, pastors, and anyone wanting to understand, teach, or preach these passages from 1 Corinthians.”
—Lisa M. Weaver, assistant professor of worship, Columbia Theological Seminary
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