Women's Faith Development

Patterns and Processes

Nicola Slee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780754608868
• eBook ISBN: 9781351871303
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Presenting a rich account of women's faith lives and, mapping women's meanings in their own right, this book offers an alternative to dominant accounts of faith development which failed to account for women's experience. Drawing on Fowler's faith development theory, feminist models of women's faith and social science methodology, the text explores the patterns and processes of women's faith development and spirituality in a group of thirty women belonging to, or on the edges of, Christian tradition.    Integrating practical theological concern with Christian education and pastoral practice, this book will be of interest to all concerned with women's faith development, spirituality, education and formation, and those working in the fields of practical theology, pastoral care, adult theological education, spiritual direction and counselling.

Chapter 1

The Nature and Aims of the Study

Feminist practical theology is beginning to emerge as women cease to remain complicit in networks of institutional power that work against our wellbeing.

Heather Walton¹

… This requires a refusal of the pretense of pure objectivity, an invitation of face-to-face encounter, confrontation, and messiness, and a willingness to participate proactively in a revisionary project that changes the lives of the marginalized and of all the participants.

Bonnie J Miller-McLemore²

What we want to change we curse and then

pick up a tool … If you

can’t bless it, get ready to make it new.

Marge Piercy³

Introduction

This study is an examination of the patterns and processes of women’s spirituality and faith development⁴ in a group of thirty women belonging to, or on the edges of, Christian tradition. It is offered as a piece of interdisciplinary and practical theological reflection written from a perspective of Christian feminist commitment, arising out of my own experience and using the tools of social science research methodology, to investigate an area of central concern to the life of the churches and to the women’s movement within and on the edges of the churches. In this chapter, I set out to acknowledge as explicitly as I can, the factors which have shaped the study. I begin by describing the personal and professional context of my own experience out of which the research took shape. Next, I summarise the basic aims of the study, before going on to delineate the broader academic context which provided the theoretical background to the study. Finally, I provide an overview of the book.

The Personal and Professional Context of the Study

At the outset, it is important for me to acknowledge the rooting of the study in my own personal and professional commitments. This is a way of insisting upon the hermeneutical bias of all research and, in particular, a way of naming the specific precommitments of this study so that readers can understand and interpret accordingly the factors which have shaped it. It is a way of saying how and why this study matters to me, how it emerges out of my own lived experience and grapples with issues pertinent to my life and my work, and how it has come to take the particular shape and focus that it has. A writer necessarily writes out of her own life context and writes at least partly to make sense of and shape that life experience. The life makes sense of the work, but, in a reciprocal way, the work makes sense of the life. This is as true in social scientific empirical research, I suggest, as it is in fiction, biography, poetry or ‘pure’ theology (whatever that is!), although not all traditions of social science acknowledge the subjective rooting of scientific enquiry as openly as others. My own commitment to a qualitative rather than a quantitative research approach arises at least in part because of the transparency of such an approach to its own grounding in subjectivity – both the subjectivity of the researcher and the subjectivity of those participating in the research. But this is to anticipate a more expanded discussion of qualitative research further in this chapter and, more substantially, in Chapter 3. At this point, my intention is to name as transparently as I can the precommitments which have motivated and inspired this study, as well as limited its sights and insights.

The study has its roots in my personal faith journey as a lay Christian woman and my work as a professional religious educator involved in adult faith formation within the churches. In my nurturing and development as a Christian, women have, from the beginning, played a crucial role. I do not want this to be read as a negation of the nurturance and inspiration I have received from many men, from my grandfather and father to many teachers, ministers, friends and colleagues subsequently. However, as a woman I have needed to know in a very particular way that women before me have walked the way of faith and paved a way, leaving some signs – landmarks, cairns or marks on a map – for other women, including myself, to follow. Though few of my formal theological teachers or pastors have been women, women have been significant as those who have mediated to me the reality and understanding of what it means to be a follower of the way of Jesus. Women in my family – my mother, two sisters, my grandmothers, my Devon aunts, my cousins – and female friends, colleagues and members of the churches I have belonged to or had contact with have lived out faithful discipleship in ways which have inspired, empowered and enlarged my own growing Christian identity. Yet, despite such female faithfulness at the core of living Christian tradition, women’s faith lives have generally not been accorded significance, their stories have not been recorded, their struggles and conflicts have not been noted, their gifts and ministries have not been accorded public recognition in the literature, traditions and practices of the churches. With the advent and flourishing of feminist theology since the 1960s, this is gradually changing, and there is a growing literature in women’s spirituality (for example, Spretnak, 1982; King, 1989; Zappone, 1991), faith history (Fiorenza, 1983; MacHaffie, 1986; Coon et al., 1990), ministry (Herzel, 1981; Ruether, 1985; Russell, 1993) and pastoral care (Graham and Halsey, 1993; Glaz and Stevenson-Moessner, 1991; Bons-Storm, 1996; Miller-McLemore and Gill-Austern, 1999), as well as formal feminist theology (Ruether, 1983; Fiorenza, 1983; Loades, 1990). I see my study as part of this wider feminist project of reclaiming and describing in its own terms women’s religious experience, in ways which can both complement, challenge, widen and enlarge the androcentric traditions of faith and spirituality we have inherited.

In my professional work as a religious educator, I have worked for some twenty years teaching adults in a variety of church-related institutions. I have worked with both men and women colleagues and taught both male and female students, and learnt much from both, finding my own faith and educational practice constantly challenged, enriched and extended. Yet my developing sensitivity to the reality of women’s marginalisation within Christian tradition has alerted me to the particular spiritual and educational struggles and needs of female students and colleagues. I have become increasingly aware of the myriad ways in which the realities of institutional life within both the church and the academy function to silence and disempower women, as well as other groups such as black, working-class and gay people. Here, it is important to acknowledge the myriad and often subtle forms of discrimination that operate within church and academy, themselves both reflecting wider patterns of social exclusion, of which gender is only one of the more obvious. It is essential to pay attention to the interlocking forms of discrimination in which race, class, age, sexuality, geographical location and physical and mental abilities play a crucial part alongside gender. At the same time as acknowledging the multiple forms of what Miller-McLemore describes as ‘exploitative classificatory systems’ (1999, p. 79), gender itself, of course, is undergoing constantly shifting reconfigurations, both in terms of its expression in diverse settings and communities, and in terms of its academic analysis and explication.

Nevertheless, without buying into simplistic notions of gender oppression which themselves are liable to perpetuate binary ways of thinking and operating, I do not believe we have achieved a post-feminist era in which we may safely abandon the agenda of women’s liberation. Certainly within the churches, the project of female liberation has barely begun, and has a very long way to go before women and men can be sanguine about its fruits. In the relatively small world of British theological education, which nevertheless might be expected to be more rather than less attuned to the voices and interests of marginalised groups and individuals than the wider church it serves (if only because it is likely to be more abreast of contemporary thinking than the wider church), there is movement towards gender equality but significant obstacles still to be overcome. Patterns of training, ways of learning and modes of practice have not, by and large, reflected or served the needs of women, thereby functioning to perpetuate women’s marginalisation and oppression. Many of the existing theological, psychological and educational models of spiritual maturity which have shaped the church’s praxis are more or less androcentric in nature, predicated upon the experience of boys and men and, to greater or lesser extent, impervious to the particular struggles and gifts of women.⁵

Out of these different but related contexts of church and educational settings, this study has been generated. It is rooted in my growing concern for and commitment to, the religious development and education of women and girls within the churches – a concern which should be at the heart of practical theology, but which, at least in the British context, has barely begun to be articulated. The developmental, pastoral and educational focus of the work is what sets it apart from myriad other studies of women’s spirituality, both popular and academic. It is concerned with women’s faith and spirituality as something that is dynamic, contextually specific and in the process of change. It seeks to explore the dynamics and possible patternings of that process of change, as well as to identify particular developmental crises and opportunities in the unfolding of women’s faith lives. When I began this study, I could find no single published work which corresponded to my own concerns (with the possible exception of Joann Wolski Conn’s pioneering anthology of texts on Women’s Spirituality, which first appeared in 1986). Since then, several volumes have appeared from the United States which address these issues centrally, most particularly Carol Lakey Hess’s Caretakers of Our Common House: Women’s Development in Communities of Faith (Abingdon, 1997) and Joanne Stevenson-Moessner’s edited collection of essays, In Her Own Time: Women and Developmental Issues in Pastoral Care (Fortress, 2000). I am delighted to add to this select but vital literature on the religious development and education of women and girls. In the British context, no study has previously been conducted, to my knowledge, of the specific religious developmental needs of women, nor have I been able to locate any published work, beyond the occasional article, in the wider European context. For all its manifold failings (of which I am only too aware), my study may at least have the merit of calling the attention of both practioners and reflectors within the churches to a much neglected area.

The Aims of the Study

The overarching purpose of my study is to examine the patterns and processes of women’s spirituality and faith development in a group of women belonging to, or on the edges of, Christian tradition. A subsidiary aim is to discern whether current models and theories of faith development are able adequately to account for women’s experience. In relation to this second aim, I dialogue in particular with the faith development theory of James Fowler and suggest ways in which this theory both illuminates women’s faith development and itself needs to be reframed in the light of my own findings. I recognise at the outset that, since the study is not a comparative one, any findings can only be hypothesised to be distinctive of women, and would require further testing on mixed, or men-only, samples, before any hard and fast claims could be made about differences between men and women. Nevertheless, my hope is to have produced a qualitatively rich account of women’s faith lives which is self-authenticating in its own terms, which allows theoretical constructs to be developed from the ‘ground’ upwards, and which suggests avenues for further exploration and study. The intention is to listen to women’s stories as valid in their own right, and to ‘map’ women’s meanings in as much detail as possible, as a way of providing an alternative and a corrective to dominant accounts of faith development which have been shaped within an androcentric culture.

Within the broad terms of the study, I gradually formulated a number of more discrete aims and objectives, as the research proceeded, allowing for a sharper focus, as follows. First, how do women of faith, in different contexts and at different stages of development, describe and understand their faith? What images, metaphors, models and stories do they employ? What themes, issues, tensions or questions emerge as salient? What models of mature faith emerge? Second, is it possible to identify common and recurring developmental patterns? Are there common developmental phases or stages, crises or transitional points? Can one identify developmental ‘triggers’ or spurs to faith? Third, what are the significant differences in women’s accounts of faith development? What are the surprising, unexpected or neglected aspects of the woman’s accounts which might be hypothesised to be distinctive? Where are the conflicts, tensions and differences between the women’s accounts, as well as within each woman’s account?

In practice, my findings allowed some of these questions to be addressed more fully than others, although the data yielded at least indicative responses to each. In addition, the data suggested other areas of potential exploration which there has not been scope to investigate within the limits of the present study. However, these were the questions that were in my mind at the outset of the study and that shaped the research design.

The Nature of the Study

This study is contextualised within, and offered as an example of, feminist practical or pastoral theology, a newly emerging field within the broader literature of feminist theology (for example, Glaz and Stevenson-Moessner, 1991; Demarinis, 1993; Graham and Halsey, 1993; Bons-Storm, 1996; Neuger, 1996; Stevenson-Moessner, 1996, 2000; Graham, 1997; Ackermann and Bons-Storm, 1998; Miller-McLemore and Gill-Austern, 1999), concerned with a feminist theological analysis, critique and transformation of the life and practice of the Christian community, and having its roots within practical and pastoral theology more widely as well as feminist discourse and theory, including feminist theology. In order to explicate my understanding of a feminist practical theology, let me first delineate my understanding of practical theology more generally, including an understanding of how it relates to social science theory and qualitative empirical research, before going on to outline the feminist theological commitment of such a theology.

Practical or pastoral theology⁶ can be understood as the theological discipline concerned with the life or practice of the Christian community.⁷ Although in the past practical theology has been concerned narrowly with matters of ministerial formation, it is now generally understood in a much wider sense as the articulation of the theological meaning of the practice of the whole church. Thus, Laurie Green describes practical theology as ‘an active and critical ministry’ of the church, which ‘investigates and reflects upon God’s presence and activity in our lives, and asks what that means for us’ (1990, p. 12). Carol Lakey Hess defines the aim of practical theology as ‘discerning God’s call (Holy Spirit to human spirit) for just and righteous life together in this world and in particular concrete communities of faith’ (1997, p. 17). Paul Ballard and John Pritchard offer the following description:

[Practical theology] focuses on the life of the whole people of God in the variety of its witness and service, as it lives in, with and for the world. It asks questions concerning Christian understanding, insight and obedience in the concrete reality of our existence. It is, therefore, a theological activity, descriptive, normative, critical and apologetic, serving both the Church and the world in its reflective tasks. (1996, p. 27)

Practical theology can be understood both as a separate theological discipline in its own right, with its own subject area (the practice of the Christian community within the world) and methodology (the hermeneutical circle or pastoral cycle method), and as a way of delineating the orientation of all theology towards practice and ‘rooting all theology in its existential responsibility’ (Ballard and Pritchard, 1996, p. 27).

Practical theology is thus particularly concerned with the relation between Christian belief and practice. There is a variety of models for understanding and explicating this relationship. The model which has informed the present study most profoundly is the praxis model, particularly as this has been expressed in the so- called ‘pastoral cycle’ method of doing theology. The praxis model emerged out of the political theologies of liberation (for example, Gutierrez, 1988; Cone, 1974; Bonino, 1975; Segundo, 1977; Boff, 1987), feminist (Russell, 1974; Ruether, 1983; Fiorenza, 1983) and womanist theologies (Weems, 1988; Grant, 1989; Williams, 1993), as well as a broader movement of local and contextual theologies (Winter, 1980; Donovan, 1982; Schreiter, 1985; Amirtham and Pobee, 1986). It has been very widely adopted and employed by pastoral theologians, both in Britain and the United States (Holland and Henriot, 1983; Green, 1990; Ballard and Pritchard, 1996; Lartey, 1997).

The praxis model explicitly roots all theological enquiry in concrete, historical and social experience as the ‘first act’ of theology, upon which the ‘second act’ of reflection is dependent. It holds a strong commitment to story as the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 The Nature and Aims of the Study
• 2 Women’s Faith Development: A Framework
• 3 Developing a Feminist Research Methodology
• 4 The Processes of Women’s Faith Development
• 5 The Patterns of Women’s Faith Development: Alienation
• 6 The Patterns of Women’s Faith Development: Awakenings
• 7 The Patterns of Women’s Faith Development: Relationality
• 8 Conclusions and Implications for Christian Education and Pastoral Practice
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index