BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
the study does not undertake an exegesis of the selected texts, but high-
lights how these readings have been applied by the larger society against
the backdrop of the emergence of women preachers through Pentecos-
talism. For interpretations of Biblical texts with reference to women, this
is available elsewhere, for example, (Phiri and Nadar eds. 2005) and
(Dube 2001) amongst other texts.
The next section illuminates on the politics of naming. It focuses on
what a church is in this study, and what the term politics refers to.
The politics of identity: Who/what is the church in Zimbabwe?
For the purposes of this article, the church shall refer to all adherents of
Christianity, which is the presumably the fastest growing religion in
Zimbabwe, apart from the already existing African traditional Relig-
ion(s). As Frans J. Verstraelen (1998) has argued, Zimbabwean Christi-
anity is hugely diverse. One finds the Catholic Church, Protestant
churches, African Instituted/ Independent/ Initiated Churches (AICs)
and Pentecostal churches. It is important to note that as Christianity
expands, it is not exactly homogeneous on views on all issues which
could be relating to dress, food, and particularly for this article, to
women preachers in the church. This chapter particularly focuses on
Pentecostalism as an aspect of the church. But, just how political are the
issues of women preaching in these Pentecostal churches?
How political are women’s issues: redefining ‘politics’
It is a common phenomenon that when one thinks of politics, it is only
formal office such as being a prime minister, a minister, a president or
councilor, or formal elections and voting that come to mind. There is a
general assumption that politics should evolve around that which con-
cerns offices of the nation or state. This is erroneous. Anything that
involves decision, and usually characterised by diversity and conflict, can
be identified as political. Resultantly, the issue of women preachers in
the church has brought a lot of disagreement in the society at large and
may thus be labelled political. This is one aspect that falls into the
broader category of what is called feminist politics. According to Mary
Holmes, ‘feminist politics is an attempt to represent women’s interests
in order to overcome the gender inequalities which disadvantage
women’ (Holmes 2007: 110).