African women and spirituality: a study of narratives and agency
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Date
2024
Authors
Malowa, Rose Besnart
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Free State
Abstract
The background to this thesis is the pervasive religiosity of women in Africa, as well as the social and academic turn to spirituality. Some scholarship on the spirituality of African Christian women has already been produced. This research explores a hiatus in the current knowledge, by focusing on the notions of ‘narrative’ and ‘agency’. The central research focus addresses the question as to whether narrating a spiritual journey could contribute to the empowerment and enhancement of women’s agency. In the Introduction, the notions of ‘agency’ and ‘narrative’ are explained with reference to applicable scholarship and these prove that there is substantial evidence for the current interest in these categories of interpretation in both the humanities and theology. Five secondary questions
structure the layout of the research and explore specific dimensions of the research focus.
In Chapter 1, the plight of women in Africa and, more specifically, in Zambia and in the church is discussed. The Chapter concludes that, despite commendable changes, patriarchy still deeply inhibits women’s agency. This justifies the approach of this study of the spirituality of women. Chapter 2 attends to the developments in spirituality as academic discipline over the past few decades and opens perspectives to approach this research, and to redress a weakness in much of the reflection on the spirituality of African women. Chapter 3 investigates the current state of scholarship on African womanist spirituality, with reference to general African and feminist spirituality, and to specific proposals by African female scholars. Significant emphases and motifs emerge, as well as the significant contribution by the Circle of Concerned Women Theologians.
The quest for agency is pervasively present, but often in the form of referencing to related terms such as empowerment, liberation, identity, and autonomy from the same semantic domain. The discussion is not about the central role of story-telling. The explicit proposal of this thesis to approach African womanist spirituality from the combined and explicit perspective of agency and narrative is evidently a scholarly contribution. Chapter 4 makes another contribution, by selecting autoethnography as additional research methodology to literature study. This proves to be a most applicable approach to retrieve marginalised voices and to attend to the continued impact of culture on the life of African women.
Chapter 5 is an application of this method, and presents the personal story of the researcher about her own spiritual journey, her struggle to assert her agency, the critical role of communality in the form of the Church Women Fellowship, and the importance of the Nsenga culture. The Conclusion to the study analyses the personal narrative and answers the central and secondary questions of the research. The research persuasively argues that there is an intricate connection between womanist spirituality, agency, and narrative. This makes a substantial contribution to the current study of African womanist spirituality. Finally, some suggestions are made on the further study of agency and narrative in spirituality, and on the role of constructive theology, especially trinitarian theology.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.(Systematic Theology))--University of the Free State, 2024
Keywords
Agency, Autoethnography, Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, Narrative, Patriarchy, Reformed Church in Zambia, Spirituality, Women’s fellowship, Zambia