Transnational Biblewomen

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Hugh McLeod (2006) Introduction, in Hugh McLeod (Ed.) World Christianities c.1914–c.2000, The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 1. [2] Dana L. Robert (2002) Introduction: historical themes and current issues, in Dana L. Robert (Ed.) Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers: missionary women in the twentieth century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books), xi, p. 13. See also Dana L. Robert (2006) World Christianity as a Women’s Movement, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 30(4), pp. 180–187. [3] Peggy Brock (2005) New Christians as Evangelists, in Norman Etherington (Ed.) Missions and Empire, Oxford History of the British Empire, Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 134. She does, however, footnote (ibid.) P. O. Boddington’s biography, Sona: the life and deeds of a Christian Santal lady, based on reminiscences the Danish missionary had persuaded new Christian, Srimati Sona Murmu, to write. [4] Two of the best are Padma Anagol (1998) Indian Christian Women and Indigenous Feminism, c.1850–c.1920, in Clare Midgley (Ed.) Gender and Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press) (on Ramabai as well as a second generation of women converts); and Edith J. Blumhofer (2008) Consuming Fire: Pandita Ramabai and the global Pentecostal impulse, in Ogbu U. Kalu (Ed.) Interpreting Contemporary Christianity: global processes and local identities, (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans), pp. 207–237. Ramabai has 26 book references in SOAS catalogue alone. [5] Silas H. L. Wu (2002) Dora Yu (1873–1931): foremost female evangelist in twentieth‐century Chinese revivalism, in Robert (Ed.), Gospel Bearers, p. 85. [6] Young Lee Hertig (2002) Without a Face: the nineteenth‐century Bible Woman and twentieth‐century female Jeondosa, in Robert (Ed.), Gospel Bearers, pp. 186, 198, which also notes the 1922 protest against salary disparities by 300 Southern Methodist women jeondosa in Korea. On the ‘[dust] rag/dusting cloth’ term, see further Chang, this issue. [7] Melissa Lewis Heim (2002) ‘Standing behind the Looms’: American missionary women and Indian church women in the devolution process, in Robert (Ed.), Gospel Bearers, pp. 47, 59. See also the informative chapter by John C. B. Webster, Assumptions about the Indian Woman Underlying Protestant Church Policies and Programs, 1947–1982, in John C. B. Webster & Ellen Low Webster (Eds) (1985) The Church and Women in the Third World (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press), a varied, pioneering volume to which there is no space here to do justice. John C. B. Webster, Deborah Premraj, Ida Swamidoss, Rashilda Udayakumar & Chandra Yesuratnam (1997) From Role to Identity: Dalit Christian women in transition (Delhi: ISPCK), p. 37, note that women constituted 37 per cent of full‐time paid evangelistic workers in the Church of South India in 1964, but only around 12 per cent by 1994. See also pp. 116–117 for the thirty‐five Biblewomen in the diocese of Madras then working alongside seven better educated diocesan women workers. [8] More space is devoted to Africa in the rest of this Introduction, as reflecting the area of the editors’ particular expertise, and also to make up for its relative neglect in the special issue as whole, with only two of nine articles covering African countries. [9] See Carrie Pemberton (2003) Circle Thinking: African women theologians in dialogue with the West (Leiden: Brill); Susan Rakoczy, IHM (2004) In Her Name: women doing theology (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications). [10] See Isabel Apawo Phiri, Devakarsham Betty Govinden & Sarojini Nadar (Eds) (2002) Her‐stories: hidden histories of women of faith in Africa (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications), for accounts of/by women pastors in South Africa, Malawi and Kenya; also Isabel Apawo Phiri (1997) Women, Presbyterianism and Patriarchy: religious experience of Chewa women in central Malawi, Kachere Monographs (Blantyre: Christian Literature Association in Malawi). [11] Isabel Mukonyora (2007) Wandering a Gendered Wilderness: suffering and healing in an African Initiated Church (New York and Oxford: Peter Lang), on the Vapostori of Zimbabwe. [12] Timothy Scarnecchia (1997) Mai Chaza’s Guta re Jehova (City of God): gender, healing and urban identity in an African independent church, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23(1), pp. 87–106; Robert R. Edgar and Hilary Sapire (2000) African Apocalypse: the story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a twentieth‐century South African prophet (Athens: Ohio University Press). See also Janet Hodgson’s research on Mrs Elizabeth Paul, preacher‐founder of a prayer and healing movement, in (2003) ‘Stones the Builders rejected’: ecclesial communities of the excluded in the Anglican Church of southern Africa, Missionalia, 31(1), pp. 147–150. [13] Marc Epprecht (2000) ‘This Matter of Women is Getting Very Bad’: gender, development and politics in colonial Lesotho (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press), ch. 8, largely about Basotho women’s ‘pious associations’; Marja Hinfelaar (2001) Respectable and Responsible Women: Methodist and Catholic women’s organisations in Harare (1919–1985) (Zoetemeer: Boekencentrum); Filomina Chioma Steady (2006) Women and Collective Action in Africa (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), ch. 9, Christianity and Women’s Associations; Helen E. P. Van Koevering (2005) Dancing their Dreams; the lakeshore Nyanja women of the Anglican diocese of Niassa (Zomba: Kachere Series); Deborah Gaitskell (1997) Power in Prayer and Service: women’s Christian organizations, in Richard Elphick & Rodney Davenport (Eds) Christianity in South Africa: a political, social and cultural history (Cape Town: David Philip; Oxford: James Currey); Beverley Gail Haddad (2002) The Mothers’ Union in South Africa: untold stories of faith, survival and resistance, in Phiri, Govinden & Nadar (Eds), Her‐stories. [14] M. J. Daymond, Dorothy Driver, Sheila Meintjes, Leloba Molema, Chiedza Musengezi, Margie Orford & Nobantu Rasebotsa (Eds) (2003) Women Writing Africa: The Southern Region, The Women Writing Africa Project, vol. I (New York: Feminist Press; Johannesburg: Wits University Press), pp. 195–200, 131–134, respectively, with quote from p. 133. [15] S. Bourquin (Ed.) (1986) Paulina Dlamini: servant of two kings, comp. by H. Filter (Durban: Killie Campbell Africana Library; Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press), pp. 86, 93, 108. [16] St Cuthbert’s Mission in the Diocese of St John’s, Kaffraria, Report for 1916. [17] All from Line Nyhagen Predelli (2003) Issues of Gender, Race, and Class, in the Norwegian Missionary Society in Nineteenth‐Century Norway and Madagascar (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press), p. 233, and see pp. 216–232 for Emma Dahl and the question, ‘Can Bible women preach?’ (p. 224)—by which were meant Norwegian women speaking to ‘heathen’ women in their homes. [18] Birgitta Larsson (1991) Conversion to Greater Freedom? Women, Church and Social Change in North‐western Tanzania under Colonial Rule (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell). [19] Quoted in Isobel Reid (2005) From Slave Ship to Prison House: the case of women in colonial Malawi, 1875–c.1927, Women’s History Magazine, 51 (Autumn), p. 27. [20] Pirjo Markkola (2006) The Church as Women’s Space, in McLeod (Ed.), World Christianities, p. 565. [21] Joan F. Burke (2001) These Catholic Sisters are all Mamas!: towards the inculturation of the sisterhood in Africa: an ethnographic study (Leiden: Brill). Hers is one of the best chapters in a strong showing on African women and Christianity in Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood & Shirley Ardener (Eds) (1993) Women and Missions: past and present. Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Providence, RI and Oxford: Berg). [22] Those by Griffiths and Chang in this issue. [23] Not least because several authors only subsequently completed their doctoral studies, which made thorough revision possible. [24] Empowering the Powerless: gender, class and race in modern missionary initiatives, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 27 June 2001. [25] Lori Williamson (1996) Heavenly Bodies: the Biblewomen in 19th century London, paper presented at the Women’s History Network Conference, London, September 1996; and (1996) Soul Sisters: the St John and Ranyard nurses in nineteenth century London, International History of Nursing Journal, 2(2), pp. 33–47. See also her entry on Ellen Ranyard (2004) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Other commitments prevented Williamson from being involved in the eventual final editing of the issue. Deborah Gaitskell is extremely grateful to Wendy Urban‐Mead for her invaluable collegial support in this task over the past months, and for thinking up the term, ‘Transnational Biblewomen’. [26] Deborah Gaitskell (2000) Hot Meetings and Hard Kraals: African Biblewomen in Transvaal Methodism, 1924–60, Journal of Religion in Africa, XXX(3), pp. 277–309; republished (2003) Missionalia, 31(1), pp. 73–104. This cross‐racial link was severed in 1996, as inappropriately dependent in the new South Africa; ibid., pp. 102–103. We have adopted the South African Methodists’ one‐word version of the term ‘Biblewomen’ in this issue. [27] Jane Haggis (1998) ‘Good Wives and Mothers’ or ‘Dedicated Workers’? Contradictions of Domesticity in the ‘Mission of Sisterhood’, Travancore, South India, in Kalpana Ram & Margaret Jolly (Eds) Maternities and Modernities: colonial and postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). [28] Ruth A. Tucker (1985) The Role of Bible Women in World Evangelism, Missiology, 13(2); Ruth A. Tucker & Walter Liefeld (1987) Daughters of the Church: women and ministry from New Testament times to the present (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House), pp. 340–343. [29] See Jean Comaroff & John Comaroff (1991) Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa, vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); Susan Thorne (1999) Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth‐Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press). [30] Deborah Valenze (1985) Prophetic Sons and Daughters: female preaching and popular religion in industrial England (Princeton: Princeton University Press); Olive Anderson (1969) Women Preachers in Mid‐Victorian Britain: some reflexions on feminism, popular religion and social change, Historical Journal, 12(3), pp. 467–484; Jocelyn Murray (1995) Gender Attitudes and the Contribution of Women to Evangelism and Ministry in the Nineteenth Century, in John Wolffe (Ed.) Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: evangelicals and society in Britain 1780–1980 (London: SPCK), pp. 97–116. [31] See historical examples of Methodist women in Norma Virgoe (Ed.) (2007) Angels and Impudent Women (Oxford: Wesley Historical Society). [32] Peter Williams (1993) ‘The Missing Link’: the recruitment of women missionaries in some English evangelical missionary societies in the nineteenth century, in Bowie, Kirkwood & Ardener (Eds), Women and Missions, pp. 47–48, helpfully documents Ranyard’s inspiration of Hudson Taylor of the CIM, but seems to echo Taylor in a misuse of Ranyard’s ‘missing link’ term to signify women missionaries indiscriminately, rather than particularly those working‐class urban dwellers who were like the ‘native agents’ of foreign missions. See further Griffiths, this issue. [33] The wider history of the Friends’ Mission and African female advance feature in Esther Mombo (2002) Harahamisi and Jumaa: the development of the Women’s Meetings in the East Africa Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers), in Phiri, Govinden & Nadar (Eds) Her‐stories. Rasoah is mentioned (along with her peers) on pp. 71–73, 80. [34] Pietermaritzburg scholars have been particularly active in church oral history. See Isabel Phiri & James Worthington (2002) The Leaders of Black Christian Women’s Organizations in the Natal Midlands and in Umlazi from Oral Evidence, in Philippe Denis & James Worthington (Eds) The Power of Oral History: memory, healing and development, vol. II (Pietermaritzburg: Sinomlando Project). Worthington presented a paper at our 2001 conference. [35] See Vanessa Wood (1999) ‘Uninvited Guest’: Myfanwy Wood, Welsh missionary in China 1908–1951, paper presented at the Symposium of the Gender in Empire and Commonwealth Seminar Series, titled ‘Welsh Women in Christian Mission’, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London University, 3 June 1999, pp. 6–7. [36] Jane L. Parpart, Shireen M. Rai & Kathleen Staudt (Eds) (2002) Rethinking Empowerment: gender and development in a global/local world (London and New York: Routledge). [37] See her classic ‘development’ text: Jo Rowlands (1997) Questioning Empowerment: working with women in Honduras (Oxford: Oxfam). [38] See Gaitskell, Hot Meetings, pp. 284–294, for confrontations with men by Edith Mgabhi, Claudia Nkosi and Elizabeth Patosi

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