Gina Zurlo | Why Christianity’s future is female – and African
At the start of 2019, Bill and Melinda Gates released a list of facts that had surprised them the previous year. Number four on their list: “Data can be sexist.”My interest was piqued – not only as a demographer, but also as a woman and mother of girls.
Social scientists have shown for decades that women are more religious than men by a variety of measures – everything from frequency of private prayer to worship service attendance. Christianity, the world’s largest religion, is no exception.Data from the Pew Research Center show that, compared with Christian men, Christian women are more likely to attend weekly church services , pray daily and say religion is important in their lives .
“Women, according to an old saying in the black church, are the backbone of the church,” notes religion and gender scholar Ann Braude. “The double meaning of this saying is that, while the churches would collapse without women, their place is in the background”, behind male leaders.My current research is illustrating that women are the majority in a church nearly everywhere in the world and that its future is poised to be shaped by African women in particular.
“The church in Africa has a feminine face and owes much of its tremendous growth to the agency of women,. In Congo, women have advocated building peace, including through groups like the National Federation of Protestant Women. Next door, in the Republic of the Congo, Catholic sisters were at the forefront of providing shelter, education and aid in post-war recovery efforts.
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