Description
Book SynopsisThe Gender of Piety is an intimate history of the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe, or BICC, as related through six individual life histories that extend from the early colonial years through the first decade after independence.
Trade Review“Urban-Mead uses African church-goers’ biographies from the early and mid-twentieth century to illuminate, from
the inside, the environment of Zimbabwean nationalism in Matabeleland, its birthplace. A wonderful recovery of the lives of a forgotten and betrayed cohort of people.”
“Urban-Mead should be commended for writing a book that challenges scholars to reconsider how they study and theorize about practices of faith in a social world.” * The Mennonite Quarterly Review *
“Through close examination, Wendy Urban-Mead illuminates the gendered connections of individual women and men to the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe. The detailed biographies to reveal a pattern: proper female behavior intersected with church teachings, while men encountered difficulties in combining Ndebele masculine expectations with church ideology.
The Gender of Piety is a major contribution to studies of family, church, and gender history in Africa.”
