Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Christianity was introduced to East Africa by foreign missionaries associated with colonial power structures, but by the middle of the twentieth century it had become a central feature of intellectual life for many communities. Scholars of religion and society in Africa have demonstrated the ways that Western patriarchal norms and expectations placed boundaries and domestic expectations on African Christian women. Fewer have considered how Christian women mobilized religious ideas and structures for their own purposes. Drawing on church archival materials and interviews with over one hundred Kenyan and Tanzanian women, I argue that religion was central to developing ideals of womanhood and the actual lives of Christian women in mid-twentieth century East Africa. Christian communities were spaces of discipline, in which particular understandings of womanhood were developed and communicated. But they were also living communities that women actively shaped. This paper addresses both sides of religious life, demonstrating the boundaries and possibilities Christian identity contributed to East African society.