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Wombs As God's Laboratories: Pentecostal Discourses of Femininity in Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Rekopantswe Mate
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Abstract

Studies of born-again Churches in Africa generally conclude that they help members embrace modernity. Their teachings provide the ideological bases for members to embrace changing material realities. Such studies are rather silent on the demands of this ideological frame on women and men. This article looks at two Zimbabwean women's organisations, Gracious Woman and Precious Stones, affiliated to Zimbabwe Assemblies of God in Africa and Family of God respectively. Using ethnographic methods, it argues that such organisations teach women domesticity and romanticise female subordination as glorifying God. They discourage individualism by exalting motherhood, wifehood and domesticity as service to God. These demands emerge at a time when life is changing drastically in urban areas as women get educated and enter the professions. Economically a small but growing number of black families have experienced some upward mobility—something these Churches encourage through ‘the gospel of prosperity’. Although accumulation and upward mobility free families from (traditional) kin obligations which the Churches encourage, women are discouraged from resisting the patriarchal yoke even when material circumstances make it possible. The organisations repackage patriarchy as Christian faith. The article concludes that if these Churches are concerned with managing modernity, then they see modernity as female subordination.

Résumé

Les études menées par les Eglises régénérées en Afrique concluent généralement qu’elles aident leurs membres à accepter la modernité. Leurs enseignements fournissent les bases idéologiques permettant aux membres d'accepter l'évolution des réalités matérielles. Ces études sont plutôt muettes quant aux contraintes que ce cadre idéologique fait peser sur les femmes et les hommes. Cet article étudie deux associations féminines zimbabwéennes, Gracious Woman et Precious Stones, respectivement affiliées aux Assemblées de Dieu en Afrique du Zimbabwe et à la Famille de Dieu. Usant de méthodes ethnographiques, il affirme que ces associations éduquent les femmes à la vie familiale et idéalisent la subordination des femmes en tant que glorification de Dieu. Elles découragent l'individualisme en exaltant la maternité, le statut d'épouse et la vie familiale en tant que service à Dieu. Ces exigences surviennent au moment où la vie évolue de façon radicale dans les zones urbaines, là où les femmes font des études et embrassent une profession. Sur le plan économique, un nombre faible mais croissant de familles noires ont connu une certaine ascension sociale – ce que ces Eglises encouragent à travers «l'Evangile de la prospérité». Bien que l'acumulation et l'ascension sociale libèrent les familles des obligations familiales (traditionnelles) encouragées par les Eglises, les femmes sont dissuadées de résister au joug patriarcal, même si leurs circonstances matérielles le leur permettent. Ces associations reconditionnent le patriarcat en croyance chrétienne. Cet article conclut que si ces Eglises sont soucieuses de maîtriser la modernité, elles voient dans ce cas en la modernité la subordination de la femme.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , November 2002 , pp. 549 - 568
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2002

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