Women’s Religious Authority in a Sub-Saharan Setting

Abstract

Western scholarship on religion and gender has devoted considerable attention to women’s entry into leadership roles across various religious traditions and denominations. However, very little is known about the dynamics of women’s religious authority and leadership in developing settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a region of powerful and diverse religious expressions. This study employs a combination of uniquely rich and diverse data to examine women’s formal religious authority in a predominantly Christian setting in Mozambique. I first use survey data to test hypotheses regarding the prevalence and patterns of women’s formal leadership across different denominational groups. I then support and extend the quantitative results with insights on pathways and consequences of women’s ascent to formal congregation authority drawn from qualitative data. The analysis illustrates how women’s religious authority both defies and reasserts the gendered constraints of the religious marketplace and the broader gender ideology in this developing context.

Women’s Schooling and Religious Mobility: Joining, Switching, and Quitting Church in a Christian Sub-Saharan Setting

“…Our findings are based on a sample of women. Previous research in Mozambique has found that women greatly predominate among churchgoers (e.g., Agadjanian 1999; 2005; 2015), which is typical of the gender makeup of religious service attendees in Africa and many other predominantly Christian parts of the world, including many western societies (de Grotenhuis and Scheepers 2002; McFarland et al 2011: 177, 179; Pew Research Center 2016;Schwadel 2014: 13; Schwadel 2015:410 ). Moreover, as Brown’s (2012) historical account demonstrates, women’s involvement with religion has been particularly consequential for social and demographic change in western contexts.…”

“…As with many other couple-based decisions and choices in patriarchal settings, where the man’s word, or at least his presumed preference, are usually dominant, religious switching among women should be seen within the context of their marital partnerships and their partners’ characteristics, which we cannot do fully with our data. Yet, we should also note that for rural and small-town African women, whose traditional productive and reproductive functions tend to confine them to the lineage-circumscribed social world, organized religion offers a rare channel and venue for non-traditional, lineage-unrelated social belonging and, by extension, of emotional, spiritual, and even civic expression (Agadjanian 2015). Moreover, religion is one of the few spheres of social life where women can exercise considerable agency and leadership (Agadjanian 2015; Agadjanian and Yabiku 2015).…”

“…Yet, we should also note that for rural and small-town African women, whose traditional productive and reproductive functions tend to confine them to the lineage-circumscribed social world, organized religion offers a rare channel and venue for non-traditional, lineage-unrelated social belonging and, by extension, of emotional, spiritual, and even civic expression (Agadjanian 2015). Moreover, religion is one of the few spheres of social life where women can exercise considerable agency and leadership (Agadjanian 2015; Agadjanian and Yabiku 2015). The dynamics of reaffiliation and disaffiliation that we examined in this study therefore not only illustrate the changing complexity of the religious landscape of this and similar sub-Saharan settings but also relate to fundamental transformations of its gender ideologies and hierarchies.…”

Clergy-Perpetrated Sexual Abuse in Ghana: A Media Content Analysis of Survivors, Offenders, and Offence Characteristics

“…This is to be expected as the leadership positions/roles in Christian churches and other religious groups are predominantly occupied/played by males. Most Christian religious groups and belief systems in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, “favour” male leadership, while some prohibit females from holding top leadership positions (Agadjanian, 2015 ; Mhando et al, 2018 ). Thus, it is not entirely surprising that perpetrators of CPSA are typically males.…”

Relationship Between Women Leadership and Implementation of the Mission of the Methodist Church in Kenya. A Cross-Sectional Survey

“…Therefore the status of women mission has remained inferior compared those of men due to such gender based conceptions hence suppressing women from top mission roles (Aune, 2008). This study therefore examines retrieval of the voice of women in the of the Methodist church in Kenya employing gender empowerment theory (Agadjanian, 2015). Missiology is the meditative discipline that spearheads the Churches direction enabling growth to the full knowledge of the gospel to all people of the nations (Newell, 2019).…”