Folk

Dr.art. Karina Hestad Skeie (post-doctoral project)
Gender and spirituality in the Malagasy Lutheran Church (FLM) and the Fifohazana Awakening Movement in Madagascar
The aim of this project is to probe into aspects of gender and spirituality in the Malagasy Lutheran church and in the non-denominational Awakening Movement called the Fifohazana. Women constitute a substantial part of the Lutheran church's 2,4 mill members. Within the Fifohazana, women have founded two of its four branches. Women constitute a majority of the clients as well as of the movement's consecrated shepherds (Austnaberg 2006:226-227). So far, however, women's roles and voices in Malagasy Christianity have not been systematically studied. Comparing women's roles and opportunities in the more formal organizational structure of the FLM with roles and opportunities in the Fifohazana, I will study the relationship between gender, spirituality and religious authority in these Christian milieus through a number of case-studies. Some cases will be based on historic, archival material, while other cases will be based on interviews and field-studies in Madagascar.
Malagasy women were targeted from the start in the Norwegian missionary enterprise in Madagascar. The religious understanding that everyone irrespective of sex and race had a right to and a responsibility for their own personal relationship to God, justified the Norwegian mission's massive educational effort in the Malagasy highlands from the 1880s. The ideal of the Christian family made education and conversion of women equally important as the conversion and education of men. Norwegian missionary women also exported particular women's Christian organizations to Madagascar, such as organized women's church groups (Fikambanan'behivavy) and the Teachers' Mission Association (LMF). We also know that women were eligible and elected members of parish councils from the nineteenth century. From the beginning, the seminary for educating Malagasy Lutheran pastors also provided a separate education for pastor-wives-to-be. Later, lower and higher theological education has been open for men and women on equal terms. However, the Malagasy Lutheran church does not yet ordain women to pastors. In contrast, women have traditionally had leading positions in the awakening-movement, which places more emphasis on divine inspiration and personal calling than on formal (religious) education. Are there different notions of gender and gender-roles in the FLM and the Fifohazana respectively? Does the Fifohazana constitute a specific spirituality within Malagasy Christianity, a spirituality which empowers women differently than in other contexts of the church-organization? Christianity has been state religion in highland Madagascar since 1869 and an integral part of every-day life in these central and most densely populated areas in Madagascar. Therefore, this study will provide insight into the situation for women in the Malagasy society more generally.