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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Gendered Leadership in South African Churches: Case Studies of African Instituted Churches and the Dutch Reformed Church
Authors:Heuser, AndreasISNI
Körner, Peter
Rosenfeld, Annette
Year:2004
Periodical:Journal for the Study of Religion
Volume:17
Issue:2
Pages:67-101
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:clergy
Calvinist churches
African Independent Churches
gender relations
women
Religion and Witchcraft
Abstract:The authors show that churches in South Africa during the apartheid era until today are perceived as male-dominated. They present developments where women challenged the male pattern of church structures and took up leadership functions on the basis of three case studies: the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC) and St. John's Apostolic Faith Mission, two African Instituted Churches (AIC) serving a constituency of the formerly discriminated black population, and the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), one of the so-called mainline churches representing a formerly powerful and politically influential church with a white-only constituency. In the NBC two prophetesses - Ma Dainah Zama and Ma Mpungose - took up charismatic leadership in the 1960s and 1970s, when apartheid became firmly consolidated and resistance silenced. St. Johns was founded by Christina Nku at a time when industrialization brought about black urbanization and marginalization. After a period of male leadership from 1970 onward, female leadership reemerged in the persona of Christina Nku's daughter, Lydia August. Women in the DRC appeared completely limited to their own circles with regard to any kind of leadership until the 1980s. After the collapse of the apartheid State in the 1980s, the rules of the Dutch Reformed Church started to change and charismatic as well as legal forms of power exercised by women opened up - at least in theory. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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