In Memory of Her

Abstract

In Memory of Her Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (bio) In her keynote address at the 2017 Women in Ministry Conference at Princeton University, Dr. Katie Cannon shared with the audience that she had on July 18, 2016, a "widow-maker" heart attack but—as she said—"kicked [her]self back to life." The last time I saw her, she shared and we reflected on this experience. At the time, I was just glad as her friend that she did so; today, I am convinced that she "kicked herself back to life" in order to fulfill her long-standing dream of launching the Center for Womanist Leadership. Katie and I were colleagues at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1980s. Although we were at different levels of the academic ladder, we became good colleagues and collaborating friends, since we were both "outsiders" as the first two non-Episcopalian faculty members. Katie was a wonderful colleague, an engaging and challenging teacher, and an exceptional mentor, to which I can testify from experience. We taught a Scripture and Ethics course together at the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), and she tried hard to mentor me out of my German habits of teaching; however, as she publicly recognized, this was done with mixed results. She also helped me, a "resident alien," understand the debates and altercations between black and white feminists, which often puzzled me and left me the*logically stranded. For instance, when I returned from a feminist conference in the Midwest, where an African American speaker had berated a room of Catholic, mostly Irish American and Italian American wo/men for their heritage of being the slave mistress and lady of the house, Katie pointed out that neither feminist nor womanist the*logians reflect much on class. During the years, she also mentioned again and again that she was attacked for referencing my work on a critical feminist the*logy of liberation, because feminist/ womanist the*logians often adopted unconsciously the Southern strategy of using race to divide poor black and poor white people. Hence, what bonded us most was probably our very different but nevertheless common class background, which compelled her to articulate womanist the*logy [End Page 129] and me a critical feminist the*logy of liberation.1 We shared the same experience, as both of our mothers worked as domestics and our grandmothers took care of us. But, of course, this experience was very different because of our historical-cultural background: Katie's in the culture of the Cannon Cotton Plantation, mine as an ethnic German refugee from Romania to Germany at the end of World War II. As children, we both knew hunger and greatly desired to own books to read. Despite all cultural differences, we could become friends because, on the one hand, we were inspired by the same the*logical vision of justice and liberation. On the other hand, we were strangers to socialization into high academic culture and hence could approach it with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Since we met around the same time as Judith Plaskow and I were planning to launch the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Katie was from the beginning a part of JFSR, as a founding member of the editorial board and later also the board of FSR. Her dream, however, was not a journal but a center. Hence, already at EDS, we dreamt and worked together on a proposal for a womanist/feminist center, which Katie wanted to name the Pauli Murray Center. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful at that time. Hence, I am so very glad that she "kicked herself back to life" and was blessed to inaugurate the Center for Womanist Leadership as her legacy to all of us. In her last interview (with Dr. Alison Gise Johnson in JFSR) she promised: "For my third chapter, I am willing to continue excavating my own soul and work to make the Center for Womanist leadership happen."2 Let's support her to keep her promise! [End Page 130] Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is the Krister Stendahl Professor at Harvard University Divinity School and cofounding editor of JFSR. Her latest book, Ephesians was...