Karen Jo Torjesen

Karen Jo Torjesen
OccupationScholar of religion
EmployerClaremont Graduate University
TitleProfessor Emerita of Religion
Academic background
Alma materClaremont Graduate University (PhD)
Claremont School of Theology (MA)
Wheaton College (BS)
Academic work
DisciplineReligious studies
Sub-discipline
Early Christianity, patristics
Notable works
When Women Were Priests (1993)

Karen Jo Torjesen is an American scholar of religion and early Christianity. She is professor emerita of Religion at Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of, among others, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity.

Selected works

  • Torjesen, Karen Jo. Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen's Exegesis. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1985.
  • Torjesen, Karen Jo. When Women Were Priests. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.
  • Torjesen, Karen Jo; Kirk-Duggan, Cheryl (eds.). Women and Christianity. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010.
  • Torjesen, Karen. "The Role of Women in the Early Greek and Syriac Churches." In V. C. Samuel, Geevarghese Panicker, and Jacob Thekeparampil (eds.), The Harp, vol. 4. Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2012, pp. 135–144.