Abstract
Inclusion of women in the Church is most often discussed in scholarship in the context of the ordination of women, as found in most of the academic literature associated with women and inclusion. Within the Anglican context, where women have been ordained into the priesthood for more than 25 years, there still seems to be a conditional inclusion by some who continue to hold onto the patriarchal structures that exist in the Church. If this is true for ordained women, then the question to explore is how do those women who are not ordained, and yet make up the majority of the church composition, experience inclusion in the church setting? The research available on non-ordained women in the Anglican church has not been broadly studied. Inclusion in the Church has also been researched with some emphasis placed on criteria that hinder inclusion. In this research, I explore how inclusion is understood and experienced from the perspective of non-ordained women in the Anglican church in selected parishes in Johannesburg, through the intersectional lens of age, race, cultural background, language and socioeconomic groups within an African women’s theology framework. The methodology applied to this research followed a qualitative approach. The primary data collection method was in the form of semi-structured interviews, which were conducted with the total of eighteen participants, selected from two parishes in Johannesburg using purposive sampling. Some participants were interviewed with a total of 32 interviews conducted. The analysis of this data applied open coding as a significant step in the analysis process, from which concepts, and later, categories emerged. The key findings, related to the perceptions and experiences of inclusion by non-ordained women within the Anglican parish setting, were described in five categories of which acceptance was one category expressed by most participants. The remaining categories of inclusion as community, as choice, as a voice and as support, surfaced through the interpretation of the data. The latter two categories related to the participants taking an active role in creating an inclusive space for themselves. The categories inclusion as choice and support, are less prevalent in previous literature on inclusion. Despite some similarities on what constitutes inclusion for participants, inclusion does not hold the same definition for everyone, as is evident both from the 4 review of the literature and the research participants interviewed. Language and culture became evident as important intersectional lenses in how inclusion was understood by the research participants. It also emerged that the significance of each participant’s (childhood and current) personal and religious context impacted the way in which inclusion was described. This, in addition to each participant’s previous parish experience, broadened the way in which inclusion was described and provided valuable comparisons as to whether their current parish experience strengthens or weakens the practice of inclusion. The findings of this study speak to how experiences influence the ways in which inclusion is perceived and experienced.
M.A. (Biblical Studies)