Spirit Wives and Church Mothers
Marriage, Survival, and Healing in Central Mozambique
Christy Schuetze
- 280 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Spirit Wives and Church Mothers
Marriage, Survival, and Healing in Central Mozambique
Christy Schuetze
About This Book
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Pentecostal churches have proliferated around the world. Expanding at astonishing rates in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Pentecostalism has shifted Christianity's global center of gravity from the West to the global South. In Spirit Wives and Church Mothers, Christy Schuetze explores how the growth of Pentecostal churches in central Mozambique occurred alongside a striking increase in so-called traditional religious practices such as spirit mediumship and spiritual healing. She follows womenâwho comprise the majority both of participants in Pentecostal churches and of initiates to new forms of mediumshipâthrough two emergent, rival healing networks.Drawing on years of field research, Schuetze offers a richly drawn ethnographic analysis of these important religious transformations in the lives of female participants. Illustrating how economic and social context shapes the possibilities forâand forms ofâwomen's empowerment, Spirit Wives and Church Mothers intervenes in scholarly debates about the nature of agency and challenges universalist Western feminist assumptions about the form of women's liberation.