Circumscribed Symptomatic Subjectivity in 1 Peter's Haustafel

• Main Author: Bird, Jennifer Grace
• Other Authors: Fernando F. Segovia
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: VANDERBILT 2012
• Subjects: Religion
• Online Access: http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-11102007-130321/

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.