Religion, women, and gender in the Brethren in Christ Church, Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, 1898--1978

This thesis analyzes church leadership in the Brethren in Christ Church in the province of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe during the colonial period. The tensions and coalescence between official and unofficial, or spontaneous, leadership efforts are examined in light of gender dynamics and the religious worlds of the Ndebele people in Matabeleland. Beginning with an overview of nineteenth-century Matabeleland under the Khumalo kings, the thesis then traces the arrival of the Brethren in Christ, a North American-derived denomination with Pietist, Wesleyan, and Anabaptist elements, and their reception by the Africans who affiliated with the mission. Ndebele understandings of gender and leadership interacted with those of the missionaries in ways that both limited and opened opportunities for Ndebele female members of the Brethren in Christ. Missionary and African ideas about gender and appropriate avenues for African leadership in the church changed over time to adapt to the changing conditions of colonial rule in twentieth-century Rhodesia. The thesis treats subjects such as African-initiated evangelism, the emergence of female pastors, mission education, gendered forms of piety, the Rhodesian government's policies of land alienation, urbanization, and the complexities of the church's engagement with the mass nationalist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.