Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers

8/8/2019 Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers

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W O M E N N W O R L DM I S S I O N :C O N T R O V E R S I E SN DC H A L L E N G E SR O M A N O R T HA M E R I C A NE R S P E C T I V E Dana L.R o b e r t

Dana L.Robert LI Eunmn C o l l h Profaidor .fW o r DM k w n at the Bodton Univerdity School oTheohyy, USA. 9

Since the times of Jesus, women have spread the gospel message of his life, death, and resur-rection. Upon meeting Jesus at the well, the Samaritan woman ran and told her neighbours thathe was the Lord. The women at the tomb were the first to learn of the resurrection. MaryMagdalene, one of Jesus supporters in life, became the apostle to the apostles,as she spreadthe news of his victory over death. In the Book of Acts, we see that Priscilla gave theologicalinstruction to the convert Apollos, who subsequently became an important evangelist.Consecrated virgins, widows, and female martyrs were some of the most important witnesses tothe gospel during the first few centuries of the church. Even in periods of history in whichwomen have been discouraged from engaging in mission and ministry, the memory of earlywomens mission work lingered in Christian legend. One legend told of Mary and Martha ofBethany, who were sisters of Lazarus and close friends of Jesus. In the Bible, we read of howMartha waited on her guest while her sister Mary sat listening to his words. The story spreadthat, after Pentecost, the two sisters sailed across the Mediterranean Sea and became mission-aries to the Gauls. Both sisters publicly preached the gospel. Then M artha settled into pastoralministry and even fought a duel with a man-eating dragon . Mary gave up public preaching andbecame an anchoress, living a life of prayer and meditation in a remote cave.2Although thestory of the missionary travels of Mary and Martha was a legend and not h istory n the mod-

Sections of this paper were published earlier as, Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers: Issues for Women andMission Today, CurmntJ in Tbeuhgy and Mb~bn 94 , August 2002. pp. 246-257. Dana Roberts publicationsinclude Aimrican Wumn in Mkrdwn: A Such[ Hbhry uf T?ugbt and Pnzctie. With M.L. Daneel, she edits AfricanIndhtiuw bz Cbrwthn Mbdbn, which is a series published by the U niversity of South A frica Press.Jo Ann Kay McNamara, Sbfer.i in A r m : C a tb u h NUMTbruugb Zvu Millmnin, Cambridge, Harvard UniversityPress, 1996, p. 61 .

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ern sense, it nevertheless points to the neglected reality that women have enacted missionaryvocations since the time of Je su s Christ.In the history of North American Christianity, mission work was the m ajor way in which 20th-century women engaged in ministry. In the early 1900s, over three million lay women belongedto over forty different denominational missionary societies, thus making missions the largestgrassroots movement of North American women. Around the time of world war I, the UnitedStates overtook the United Kingdom as the largest provider of Protestant foreign missionariesin the world. This expansion of the American mission force in the early 20th century coincidedwith a n increase in wom en missionaries, so that by 1916 women constituted 62% of Americanmi~sionar ies .~hroughout the 20th century North Americans made up the largest body ofcross-cultural missionaries, and a substantial majority of these formally appointed mission per-sonnel were female.Yet, despite theprecedents in scripture, Christian tradition, and womens roles in the expansionof Chris tianity over the last cen tury, insufficient attention is paid today to the mission theoriesand contributions of women. Appalling ignorance of their own rich mission legacy characterizesmainlinechurches. In theologically conservative denominations, on the o ther hand, the roles ofwomen in mission can be lightning rods for dissent over the larger role of women in church lead-ership. In this paper I will speculate on why the topic of women and mission was neglected inmissiological circles in the late 20th century, and w hy global realities demand that issues of gen-der be reintroduced into broader discussions on the meaning and fu ture of Christian mission.I. Where are women in missiological analysis?Every January, the International B dh ti n o MbciionaryRedearch publishes the highly regardedAnnual Statistical Table on Global Mission by David B. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson. Thisstatistical tour Je force, based on information supplied by informants around the world, andmeticulously compiled by skilful researchers, has become the benchmark for analysing trendsin world mission. For example, the 30 J une 2003 cover story in Time magazine, ShouldChristians Convert Muslims?, relied on the database of Barrett and Johnson . Not only arelong and sho rt term trends in mission updated regularly, but Barrett and Johnson analyse theirinformation in numerous ways: geographic regions, population by religion, categories ofChristians, ecclesiastical megablocs, national and alien Christian workers, finance, numbersof computers in use, Christian literature, distribution of scriptures, urban mission, Christianbroadcasting, and rn01-e.~ ut unlike the missionary atlases of the late 19 th and early 20th cen-

Dana L. Robert, Introduction: Historical Themes and Current Issues. Gmpe/ Bearpr~, ender BarricrJ: M b h n a r yWomenbz the Tuvntkth Centiiry, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Press, 2002, p. 5.David B. Barrett and Todd M . John son, Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 2003 .hternatwna/Buf/ethofMbC&ary ReJearcb, Vol.27: l. January 2003, pp. 24-25.

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turies, the annual statistical survey does not analyse Christian world mission in terms of gender.It is easier to find ou t how many Christians use computers, which mission societies operate inwhich countries, and how many unreached peoples exist in every corner of the world, than itis to find out how many women are serving as cross-cultural missionaries.The lack of gender analysis in this major survey for charting Christian world mission is symp-tomatic of the serious lack of awareness about the centrality of women in world mission fromthe early church to the present. While social scientists are quick to note tha t the majority ofChristians in many parts of the world are women, and that women are the leading force inbringing families into the church, the need for gender analysis in missiology was virtuallyignored, if not suppressed, in the late 20th century. Reasons for the neglect of gender analysisin mission studies range from the political to the theological.Resistance to womens leadership in the churchThe first and foremost reason for the neglect of gender analysis in missiology is resistance towomens leadership in the church . This reason is particularly pertinent in evangelical churchesthat are providing the bulk of the cross-cultural mission force today. In theologically conserva-tive denominations that send the largest numbers of North American missionaries, intuitiveawareness of the connection between womens mission service and womens empowerment forordination fuel active struggles to suppress missionary womens work. Such strugglesemerged after the 1970sout of reaction to movements for the expansion of womens ordination,and the spread of purportedy biblicalhierarchical notions of male headship through thewidely popular leadership seminars run by Bill Gothard. Redefinition of the meaning of theChristian family has run in tandem with efforts to suppress the considerable power base accu-mulated by the missionary leadership of women in some conservative churches.Events in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) provide the most prominent example of howthe role of missionary women became the focus of opposition to womens ministry6 TheSouthern Baptists send the largest number of missionaries of any American mission sendingorganization; around 5000 SBC missionaries are active at any one time. A major source of

Informants in several denominations attribute the spread of male headship ideas of authority t o the influenceof Bill Gothard an d his seminars during the 1970s and 1980s. In my research, I found that durin g the first twothirds of the 20th century, invocation of the Christian home by missionaries referred to male-female partner-ship under Christ as head of the home. See Robert, Th e Christian Home as a Cornerstone of Anglo-AmericanMissionary Thought and Practice, NAMP Position Paper #98, Cambridge, UK, North Atlantic MissiologyProject, 1998. Forthcoming in Dan a Robert, ed.. Refracted Vbwmnnd ColonialRefhctwm in Mbdwn HGtory, 1706-1938. Curzon-Eerdmans. 2004.My comments on the Southern Baptists stem partly from my own research and partly from that conducted byCatherine Allen, former Associate Executive Director of the Womans Missionary Union of the SBC, andPresident for five years of the Womens Department of the Baptist World Alliance. A similar pattern of recentrepression of womens ministry can be described for t he Christian and Missionary Alliance, ano ther denomina-tion with a strong history of womens leadership in mission.

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financing for SBC missionaries is the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, collected by thewomen of the W omans Missionary Union (WMU) in the name of their pioneer female Chinamissionary, Lottie Moon, who died of malnutrition a century ago. The Womans MissionaryUnion is an auxiliary to the SBC. Not only has the WMU provided much of the money for mis-sions, but it also produced the S unday School materials for mission study, and ran youth organ-izations to encourage missionary commitment. With 1.5 million mem bers in the mid 1960s, itwas the biggest womens organization in the coun try. While the WMU has maintained a single-minded focus on missions, it has nevertheless been the major rou te to leadership for women inSouthern Baptist life.7In 1978, in response to the growing numbers of SBC women attending seminary, leaders ofeleven SBC agencies held the first and only church-wide consultation on the role of women inchurch-related vocations. The missions leadership at that consultation provided the backboneof su pport for women in ministry, including the possibility of ordination. But the nex t year, doc-trinal conservatives in the SBC began to stack the boards of trustees of various SBC organiza-tions. Catherine Allen believes that the concerted effort of fundamentalists to take over theSouthern Baptist Convention must have partly been related to the growing acceptance ofwomen in ministry by the missionary wing of the SBC. As the fundam entalists gradually tookover the Convention, they began passing legislation against the ministry of women. In 1984, the-ologian Carl Henry introduced a resolution indicating that women were to be under the autho r-ity of men, that womens roles in public prayer and prophecy were different from mens, andthat women should be excluded from pastoral leadership, Because man was first in creationand the woman was first in the Edenic fall. Passage of Henrys resolution quickly led to restric-tions on the funding of women m issionaries by the Home Mission Board. A crackdown againstordained Southern Baptist women began, and the Home Mission Board withdrew its financialsupport for any woman in a pastoral role, including chaplaincy positions.8Also in 1984, moderate Sou thern Baptists began meeting to oppose the increased control soughtby the fundamentalists. Many of the moderate men had warm relations with the WMU. Whenthe Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was founded as an alternative to the SBC, one of its non-negotiables was its suppo rt for the m inistry of women. Stories began circulating about the fail-ure of the SBC to reappoint women missionaries, especially to traditional womanswork areaslike social work, womens education, and nursing. As the WMU began providing mission Iiter-ature to th e C ooperative Baptist Fellowship, it was attacked a s a traitor by the SBC. The chairof the SBC trustees even called the WMU an adu lterer who was tak ing other men into bedwith her. As rank and file Southern Baptists sent letters and petitions in support of the belea-

Lydia Huffman H oyle, Queen s in the Kingdom: Southern Baptist Mission Education for Girls, 1953-197 0, inRobert, Goqwl Beartw, Geider Bm-rkr


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guered WMU, the Foreign Mission Board of the SBC tried to secretly cop+ght the nameLottie Moon Christmas Offering (foreign missions) and Annie Armstrong Easter O ffe rin g(home missions). When, in 1995, the WMU found ou t about this disgraceful move, the SBCbacked off on the condition that the womens mission organization should license the nameexclusively to the SBC. In other words, any money for missions collected by the women had togo to the official projects of the SBC. As the bickering between the WMU and the SBC con-tinued, polls showed that Sou thern B aptists were losing some of their strong commitment toChristian mission^.^This painful story of the crippling of the Southern Baptist womens mission organization hasmany other pieces that cannot be discussed here for lack of space: the closing of the CarverSchool of Social Work; the elimination of women from all teaching positions in Southern Baptistseminaries; the redefinition of mission to evangelism in such a w ay tha t eliminated historic ecu-menical relationships and womens work; structural reorganization to take away the WMUsrole as curriculum provider to the SBC; and so forth. Among the results of these struggles hasbeen a reduction in missions interest among women, and the loss of leadership roles for womenin the SBC, including as chaplains. In 1990, the Convention asserted that the primary role ofmissionary wives was to be homemakers. In 1998, the Convention passed a revision of theBaptist Faith and Message with a subordinate role for women, and required that all SouthernBaptist missionaries sign the revision as a condition of employment.Around the world, non-W estern branches of the WMU have lost their funding, even thoughfemales make up two-thirds of Southern Baptist membership in most countries. In reaction,WMU women in Nigeria chastised the SBC for its mistreatment of their American sisters. Thestance of the SBC toward womens leadership in missions shows profound ignorance of both thelegacy of womens mission work in the SBC, and the leadership of non-Western women inSouthern Baptist churches around the world. The fundamentalists in the SBC have failed tonotice that commitment to mission conce rns declined in mainline denominations that strippedtheir womens organizations of power before world war 11. Women do not care to be namelesscollectors of funds for a cause in which they have no say. They will rather vote with their feetand become involved in other activities.As history shows us, when there are theological disagreements, or so-called culture warsbetween conservatives and liberals, there is a tendency for womens work to get caught in the

See Allen fo r details on this situation. I n response to the strangulation of the WMU, leading Baptist women,including former WMU officers and young ordained women, launched Global Women on 13 December 2001,as a womans mission-sending agency dedicated to womens work in mission. This new venture for SouthernBaptist women has been opposed in the Baptist Press and by denominational officials. See the website:www.globalwomengo.org.

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crossfire. Such tendencies are not confined to conservative evangelical denominations. In theongo ing struggle between conservatives and liberals in the United Methodist C hurch, for exam-ple, the Institute on Religion and Democracy has targeted the work of the United MethodistWomen as too radical, and has condem ned specific beneficiaries of womens money as contro-versial political organizations. The controversial mission beneficiaries include the NationalCouncil of Churches, Church Women United, the Childrens Defense Fund , and the WomensInternational League for Peace and Freedom. Structural issues also work against denomina-tional support for lay-based womens mission programmes. In the downsizing of the Board ofGlobal Ministries that took place in 2002 for financial reasons, a disproportionate number ofhighly placed lay women personnel lost their jobs because they lacked the security of structuresdesigned to protect ordained pastors.When I began doing research on the subject of women and mission fifteen years ago, I inter-viewed women missionaries and leaders from a range of denom inations and ecclesial traditionsincluding United Methodists, Assemblies of God, Southern Baptists, Christian and MissionaryAlliance, and Roman Catholics.* I heard the common lament that it was harder now for awoman to get an appointm ent as an unmarried missionary than it had been years ago. I startedhearing horror stories: an unmarried woman in a Protestant mission in Latin America deniedadvancement because the North American males said there was no cultural model for unmar-ried women in Latin American societies (conveniently forgetting the roles of sisters and themodel of Mary in Roman Catholicism); Catholic sisters ejected from their mission posts by bish-ops who rejected their work with poor women as too radical; missionary women denied pen-sions or study leaves routinely granted their male colleagues. And yet, these complaints wereshared in whispe rs because missionary women do no t wish to dam age the mission of the church.All of the missionary women I interviewed believed in the church, wanted to be part of it, anddid not want to rock the boat.Bias against womensworkA second reason for the paucity of missiological analysis about women and gender is a biasagainst the kind of holistic work typically performed by women in m ission. With church plant-ing and preaching seen as male tasks in many denominations, the kind of work usually per-formed by women in hospitality, teaching, ministries of compassion, and childrens ministry wasseen as auxiliaryh r secondary to the primary missionary task. The unintended consequenceof some renewed evangelistic programmes was that they marginalized women workers andlo For an overview of ho w mainline churches suppressed their wom ens missionary organizations in the mid-20th

century. see Dana L. Robert, Aineririzii Wuineiz iz i W i ~ ~ & m :Si,eitzlH h y f Their ThoiiyhtntzJ Priii?ie9 Macon, GA,Mercer University Press, 1997, chapter 6. Reiieii*/UMAct&)izripfi,q, September 2002, p. 8.l 2 Se e Robert, Revisioning the Womens Missionary Movement , in Charles Van Engen, D ean Gilliland. Paul

Pierson. eds, TheGmJNeiiv qf the KiizqOoiiz:M i a h i i Tbeohqyfcir the Nuzetht, Maryknoll, NY, Orbis Books, 1993.

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ignored the needs of women in strategic planning . Renewed strategies of evangelism typicallylacked analysis of gender in the spread of Christianity. The hidden work of missionary wom enis parallel to the refusal to count housework in measures of the Gross Domestic Product:womens work behind the scenes s essential to the survival of humanity and to Christian mis-sion, but it does not always Iicount n the statistics.Previous generations, however, considered well-defined mission strategies direc ted specificallytoward women to be an important part of evangelistic mission. In the 1850s, British missionarywives in India made a missiological breakthrough com parable in importance to the d iscovery ofso-called unreached peoples in the 1970s. The w ives realized that upper class women inHindu, M uslim and Confucian families were not allowed to leave womens quarters. Unlesswomen could be mobilized and financed to devote themselves to household visitation, thechurches of India and China would remain entirely male and the gospel message would notbecome part of the family structure. If mothers could be reached with the gospel, thenChristianity would become central to family life and thereby transform the larger society.WomansWork for Woman meant that women should be educated both to found Christianhomes and also to raise the status of women in society by providing them education and med-ical care.By the early 1870s, women in the American Congregationalist, Methodist, B aptist andPresbyterian churches had founded their own independent mission societies to send unmar-ried women missionaries. Some male clerical authorities opposed the advent of what wascalled the iwomansmissionary movem ent.By he end of the 19th century, however, the pio-neer unmarried female missionaries in Asia had opened schools for women, trained non-Western women to become nurses and doctors, conducted social work and home visitation,cared for the leprous and handicapped, and undertaken itinerant evangelism. The motto,Womans Work for W oman provided the first widely embraced motivation for allowingwomen in ministry, albeit as missionaries rather than pastors of congregations. Missionwork became the proving ground for women in ministry. It is no coincidence that when-mainline denominations began ordaining women in the mid-20th century, some of the firstwomen ordained in the Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches were former mis-

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sionaries.At the 1938 meeting of the International Missionary Council (IMC ) in Madras, India, the gen-dered mission theory of The Christian Hom e was discussed and embraced by de legates fromall over the w orld. By Christian Home the delegates referred to the home as a democracycharacte-rized by male and female partnership, under the headsh ip of Christ. With the home thebuilding block of modern society, the education and nurtu re of women and children would bebuilt into social structures. D uring the 1940s and 1950s, missionary women continued to pro-mote female equality through the m eans of the Christian home ideal. In 1949, the International56


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Missionary Council commissioned Dr Irma Highbaugh to work with national councils ofchurches in Asia on the C hristian home. The Christian Council in China appointed a permanentofficer to work on Christian home issues, including child nurture, gender equality, opposition topolygamy, forced marriages and female slavery. By 1960, cross-cultural teams from the IMCwere conducting home life seminars in Africa. As recently as 1977, the theme of the GeneralAssembly of The Association of Evangelicals in Africa, held in a t e dIvoire, was TheChristian Home.Despite the paternalism and cultural bias of many W estern missionaries over the decades, thehistoric support for the human rights of women and children has nevertheless been one of themajor achievements of Christian missions. The equality of women in the home, and the advance-ment of women in society, have long been the centrepiece of Christian missionary work. It was,therefore, not surprising that when, in the 199Os, the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regimecame into power in Kabul, Afghanistan, they closed down the work of the InternationalAssistance Mission for the education and training of women.By the late 20th century, most studies of missionary contextualization dealt with fitting intoexisting social structures rather than challenging them in the name of justice for women andchildren. With the notable exception of World Vision, which has focused on womens needs asa vital factor in successful development and mission programmes, most evangelical missionagencies considered womens issues as secondary to evangelism and church planting. Only asthe pligh t of women under Islamic fundamentalism has recently come to the fore have some mis-sion. agencies awakened to the necessity of gender analysis in missiology, despite their biasagainst it.13On the liberal side, feminist theory has focused largely on attacking patriarchal structures inchurch and society, rather than formulating constructive mission theories that include evangel-ism.4 In the West, the secular framework for understanding womens issues often blindsChristians to the deep issues of worldview that previous generations of missionaries took seri-ously. Yet commitment to the gospel demands that we proclaim the good news as relevant towomens lives. The conviction that worldview and the treatment of women are linked has alwaysbeen intrinsic to the missionary work of women. It remains to be seen whether in the 21st cen-l 3 Promising books for the necessity of gendered mission theory that are aimed at evangelicals include Miriam

Adeney, Lhiighter.r of LrLzin: Buihi i y B r $ p with Miul iin Wiinen, Downers Grove, 111.. Intervarsity Press, 2002, andthe classic historical study by Ruth Tucker, Giiardizmi of th e Great Ciiinmiui.n: Th e Story of Wmen in ModernHi&tz.i, Grand Rapids, Mich., Academie Books, 1988.

l4 The most important North American feminist theologian whose work shows engagement with missiologicalissues is undoubtedly L t t y M . Russell, whose early experiences in cross-cultural urban mission shaped her per-spectives. For deliberate engagement of North American feminism with missiology. see Margaret E. Guider,Daii.qhter.i o Rahab: Prchititiitiin and the Cbiirch of Lderatiiii bi ! h i d Minneapolis Fortress Press, 1995; Frances S.Adeney, Cbriitizn Wmeiz LI I d m . m i z : A N izrriitiir Stii3y uf GwOwmid Reliqum, Syracuse, Syracuse University Press,2003. For an historical study, see Ruth C Brouwer, AiOtr i i W%iiieii, , ~ i , i ) ~ r i i ~ i i i ~ j , ~ e n :he ChangingMir.iwm of T b mProfe..siinnal Woiiienin Riiz and Afrhi , 1902-69,Vancouver, Canada, UBC Press, 2002.

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tury the gap between feminist deconstruction and missiological analysis can be bridged fo r thesake of producing holistic mission theories that address the unique roles played by missionarywomen, and that meet the spiritual and physical needs of ordinary women an d child ren aroundthe world.11. Role of women in the expanding world churchIt is ironic that the neglect of gendered missiological analysis today, and the a ttack on womensmissionary roles in Western denom inations, comes at a time when women in the Southern hemi-sphere are taking a leading part in what is prob ably the greatest expansion of C hristianity sincethe conversion of Europe. Today, 43% of the Christians in the world live in Africa and LatinAmerica; this represen ts the m ost dramatic change in the Christian population since the middleof the last century. At least 70% of Christians in A frican Indigenous Churches are women; 70%of house church members in China are p robably women; and Latin American Pentecostalism isgrowing fastest among women, who typically bring their men in to the church rather than theother way around. Even as Catholic religious congregations are having trouble attracting NorthAmerican women, they are being filled with women from Latin America and Africa. The growthof Christianity in the two-thirds world today should be analysed asa womans movement. In theevangelistic leadersh ip of non-Western women, especially in societies that have entrenched pat-terns of gender separatism, we can see the continued relevance of a gender-based approach tomission.Researchers are trying to understand the missionary role of women in the grow ing churches ofthe Southern hemisphere. As part of a cooperative project on A frican initiatives in Christianmission in southern Africa, I have been analysing data from interviews undertaken over the p astfew years with chu rch women in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. The women interviewed camefrom two mainline denominations, viz. the Reformed Church of Zimbabwe, and RomanCatholicism, as well as from several indigenous African denom inations: Zionists, Apostles, andothers. Although the analysis is a t a preliminary stage, it is fascinating to see how the goals ofthe supposedly pass6 womans missionary movement have been contextualized by women in theReformed Church of Zimbabw e, which is the strongest historic Protestan t church in the area.Married women in the church organize themselves into the M others Union, led by the pastorswife. They hold mid-week preaching and prayer events, and also send their best preachers onevangelistic crusades from Fridays until Sundays. At a time when AIDS is affecting more andmore people, Mothers Union m embers run income generating projects with which to supportwidows and o rphans in the larger community. The women also raise money to pay school feesfor their own children. The Mothers Union holds conferences for girls, and give them biblical-ly based and culturally appropriate teaching about marriage and child-rearing.Zimbabwean Reformed women draw upon the roles of the Marys in the Bible: the Virgin Mary,to argue that a girls self-worth is not based on having a man; Mary the mother of Jesus, to

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underscore the im portance of being patient with ones children; and Mary M agdalene, who wasamong the wom en a t the tomb a s the first witnesses to Jesus resurrection and a justification forwomen to be preachers. One woman interviewed mentioned the biblical model of Dorcas, orTabitha, whose serv ice was valued by othe r women. Wh at has pow erfully struck me is the sim-ilarities between the work of the Mothers Union (MU) and the social outreach of widows inthe early church; many MU members are themselves widows because of AIDS. The MothersUnions are the main group involved in outreach to the poor, the theological and moral educa-tion of girls, and th e care of the sick. Many also encourage women to preach. The activity ofchurch women in Zimbabwe demonstrates the continued relevance of the traditional aspects ofwomens missionary work, viz. women acting as pastors to women; concern for educating girlsin self-respect, Christian virtue, and academic subjects; evangelistic mission through the meansof preaching, house visitation, charity, and modelling the C hristian home. On e way in which theZimbabwean Reformed women show their continu ity with mission Christianity is in their sup-port for monogamous marriage. They not only oppose polygamy as unfair to women, but theyalso oppose such traditional practices as public examinations of girls for virginity, in the beliefthat such practices discriminate against women by supporting a double standard for male andfemale conduct.Not all African Indigenous Churches have Mothers Unions. The Apostles of Johane Marankeare probably the most patriarchal of all the churches in Zimbabwe. They practice polygamy,conduct virginity examinations of unmarried girls, and do not allow women to speak in church.They do, how ever, have an office of female prophet, who is a healer. Although a female prophetdoes not lay on hands as do the male prophets, she does pray with the women, injects them withholy water, and counsels them. She also works with women on issues of barrenness and childbirth. The role of female healer is a missionary role. Many women Apostles indicated that theyjoined the church because they were healed of barrenness or other problems. In a subsistenceeconomy, and among illiterate peasants who are struggling to survive, the healing ministry ofthe church is a major reason why people join. Healing can occur because needy people areembraced by the community and treated in a supportive manner for their ailments.I5 TheZimbabwean Zionists, in fact, have healing colonies in which the needy are welcomed to live forextended periods of time near the prophets, who act as both counsellors and physicians.Influence of the Western missionary movement can be seen in that such healing communitiesare often called hospitals.The missionary role of women in the African chu rches is consistent with their role as wives andmothers. When one asks women about their theology, they usually talk about their relationshipl5 The relationship between healing and missions in African Christianity is explored in M.L. Daneel. ed. . AfriaizChriithii Outreach, Rd. I:Afrinzii Iizithted Cbiirche.i, Pretoria, South African Missiological Society, 2001, and DanaL. Robert, ed. , Africiztz Chriithtz Oiitrcach, Rd I f : ML.i.tinli Cbiircbfii, Pretoria, South African Missiological Society,

2003.

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with their husbands and children, and the state of their homes. One woman after another justifiesher involvement n Christian outreach because it strengthens the home. They judge the church bythe kind of relationships they see modelled in the home of church members. Jus t as Americanwomen have long used the ideal of the Christian home as a sta rting point for mission, similarly theAfrican women of Masvingo Province today use a Christian vision of the home as a source of theirevangelistic power, and their justification to go into the world to preach, teach, and heal.Anthropological studies of church women in other pa rts of the w orld are also finding a gender-specific approach to church recruitment and outreach. In her study of women, religion andsocial change in Brazil, Carol Ann D rogus concludes that gender affects the way liberation the-ology has been received by Catholic women.l6 To her great surprise, when she studied theimpact of liberation theology on women in Base Christian Communities (BC Cs), Drogus foundthat ordinary women worked for social change because of their common interests as mothers.Despite all the talk about the class basis of the peoples church in Latin America, Drogusfound that womens self-identification as mothers was actually the glue that held together theBase C hristian Communities. While men used the BCC s as steppingstones to political activity,the women used them as support groups for female nurturing activities. Even when engaged insocial movements for day care and better sanitation, women from Base Christian Com munitiessaw such involvement as an extension of their role as mothers, whilst outsiders saw it as evi-dence of class consciousness or liberation movements.In a study of gender and evangelical conversion in Colombia, Elizabeth Brusco found thatwomen who became Pentecostals did so not in order to have larger roles in society, but to ele-vate domesticity so that men became more attached to their fa1ni1ies.l~n a urbanizing societyin which the traditional family was losing its role, conversion to evangelical Christianity helpedstrengthen the household by encouraging the male to give up drinking, smoking and extramar-ital affairs, all of which took valuable resources away from the children. Reforming gender rolesthrough conversion meant reforming male ethics to bring them in line with family needs. Inother words, conversion to evangelical Christianity weakened macbidmo, and strengthened thepower of women in relation to their husbands. Evangelical households eat together around afamily table, go to church together, and confer with each other over major decisions. Bruscoconcludes that Colombian evangelicalism is a strategic womens movement: it raises the statusof women by making the family the centre of the mans life.What can we conclude from the history of North American women in mission, and from recentstudies of gender in the world church? As we celebrate the growth of Christianity today, we see

arol Ann Drogus, Women,Re[gion,and Sock1 Change in Brazifi Popiihr Chiirch. Notre Dame, University of Notre Elizabeth E. Brusco, The Reformation ofrllaebbnw: Euan.qeI~ialConuefiiion and Genderin Cofombia,Austin, UniversityDame Press, 1997.

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clearly how supposedly old-fashioned womens wo rk remains important to the spread ofChristianity around the w orld. Th rough ministries of healing, hospitality and economic empow-erment, as well as direct evangelism and mothers organizations, the outreach of Christianwomen is a major way in which women and their families are attracted to the church.I would emphasize that, statistically speaking, world Christianity is a womans movement.While cultural contexts differ, in each culture women have found ways of reaching out to otherwomen. When we ask the question of why the world church seems to be predominantly female,we are not just making a sociological observation. We a re actually raising the profoundly impor-tant issue of gender-based approaches to m ission.111. Challenges for women in mission in the 21st centurySome of the m ajor challenges that mission faces in the 21st cen tury are to take seriously the cen-trality of women in the mission of the church, to recognize their contributions, to develop mis-siologies that put gender analysis back into mission theory, and to respond to the needs ofwom en for social justice, security, hea1ing;and hope. As churches reflect on theologies of mis-sion for the 21st century, they should re-examine the relationship between theories of contex-tualization and womens issues. They should exp lore gender-based models of mission that cutacross cultures and across ecclesiastical affiliations, as well as sharpen their own particular tra-ditions reflection on women and mission. Ongoing struggles against structural evils must belinked with evangelization so that the good news of Jes us Christ is truly good news for womenboth in the world and in the church. The hostility between evangelism and feminism must endfor the sake of realizing the full liberating potential of the gospel. The existence of a femalemajority in the world church must no longer be ignored, or seen as the problem of missingmales. Rather, it should be celebrated and become a source of inspiration for a more authenticform of mission. As we move in to the 21st cen tury, we shou ld affirm the kind of holistic womensvision for mission that anticipates the reign of God, in which all are one in Christ Jesu s (Gal.3:28).

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Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers

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