In the last post I suggested that Tanzanians do not necessarily view hierarchy as inherently abusive, in contrast to how I and many westerners think. So if hierarchy is not abusive, what is? How do you define abuse? Here I try to process some of the factors involved in this […]
A well-known egalitarian scholar once told me that the reason Africans read hierarchical gender roles in the Bible is because they don’t have the theological scholarship that we do, so we need to go and educate them. I smiled politely because this guy was significantly older than me, and ironically wasn’t […]
One of the striking things about women in Tanzania for us as Aussies has been the number of women who work, and how this is largely uncontroversial. Tanzanian household structures provide for this. So does the cultural concept of the ‘strong woman‘. And the way they access cultural paradigms around […]
Making Sense of Motherhood brings together some work from writers of quite diverse Christian and Jewish backgrounds. Several of the chapters converge to form a polyphonic discussion of spirituality in motherhood which is more sustained than what Motherhood as Spiritual Practice offered. If contemplation is key to spirituality, as it so often seems, […]
Earlier this year I was one of the speakers on the panel at Grace Conference, and I also gave a seminar on a Christian engagement with feminism. That seminar has now been written up as a series of three articles at Fixing Her Eyes. Feminism 102: Beyond stereotypes Three Christian […]
Tanzanians draw their gender roles and distinctions in all kinds of different places to us in Australia. They call themselves a patriarchal society, but women have freedom in places where they don’t in the west. So when our friend Isaac got married to Jema on the weekend, there was no […]
I’m really enjoying ‘Making Sense of Motherhood’, which includes contributions from a number of Aussies, and is edited by Beth Stovell. I’m going to write a review of it once I’m finished, but here’s a little snippet. In her chapter, ‘The Birthing Spirit, The Childbearing God’ Stovell discusses the same […]
Meet Jesus at uni 