Seminar: Gender, power and submission in Nigerian Pentecostalism

Or how theology can help anthropologists better understand relationship dynamics

Tuesday 7th June 2022, 2.15 p.m.

Bernice Martin’s coining of the phrase, the ‘Pentecostal gender paradox’ to describe the apparently contradictory place women hold in the Pentecostal movement has served for anthropologists as the dominant framework in discussions about Pentecostalism and gender for the last two decades. As productive as this line of enquiry has been, my paper moves the conversation about gender in Pentecostalism in a new direction by exploring how the theological beliefs and bodily practices of a prominent Nigerian Pentecostal church shape their perspectives on sexual differences. I expose the ways that theological notions not only of egalitarianism and submission, but creation, salvation, and the Trinity function to organise gender relations and power dynamics, and so the ways that theology can be of use to the anthropology of religion, more generally.

Speaker: Dr Naomi Richman (University of Cambridge)