The author of 1 Peter adapts aspects of a Greco-Roman socio-cultural expectation, that of the hierarchically ordered relations within households, and prescribes this adaptation for the behavior of certain members of the religious communities. Since the exhortations are related to behavior in their own homes, drawing upon household relationships in discussing faithful discipleship blurs the line between family households and the religious family gathered in households. As a result, the structure of the basic religious communal unit within burgeoning Christianity mimics the basic unit of the State.
I argue that such a move has socio-political implications that lead to collusion with Empire, thus, 1 Peter is one of many new testament texts that perpetuate imperial ideology. Church structure and relations of power are modeled upon the kyriarchal socio-political relations of dominance and control that are endemic to their context.
This collusion also constructs womens subjectivity and agency in terms of their silent Christ-like suffering and submissive relationship to their husbands, all of which circumscribes them within the household domain. This silenced, circumscribed subjectivity, which is maintained by dynamics common to abusive relationships, is perfectly in line with the imperial ideology of the letter. This subjectivity is not only materialized within the subsequent faith communities, but is also necessary for the perpetuation of the church.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-11102007-130321 |
| Date | 10 July 2012 |
| Creators | Bird, Jennifer Grace |
| Contributors | Fernando F. Segovia, Daniel Patte, Ellen Armour, Robert Barsky |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-11102007-130321/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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