“In the Image of God”: Reconstructing and Developing a Grassroots African Queer Theology from Urban Zambia

This article is a contribution towards the development of queer theologies in contemporary African contexts. Based on fieldwork in the gay community in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, the article explores the significance of the theological notion of the Imago Dei, the image of God, in the self-understanding of Zambian gay men as being gay and Christian. Bringing this incipient grassroots theology into conversation with broader theological discourses, in particular African theology (including African women's theology) and queer theology, we interrogate current understandings of the Imago Dei that either ignore sexuality or exclude same-sex loving people (in African theology) or that conceptualize queerness from white Western privileged perspectives (in queer theology). Hence we develop the notion of the Imago Dei as a stepping stone towards an African queer theology.     

An Interpretation of Evangelical Gender Ideology: Implications for a Theology of Gender

Abstract

One of the core findings in the sociology of religion literature regarding evangelicals is the penchant for the adoption of traditional family values. Despite the availability of alternative gender ideology models, evangelicals in general espouse a male headship and female domestic understanding of gender and concomitant domestic division of labor. There has been a "softening" of male headship language as this language is translated into a servant leadership model. This essay asks the question: What is the cost or impact for evangelicals to espouse a traditional model for gender ideology?     

Duplicity Writ Large: A Response to The Silence of Sodom

Abstract

Mark D. Jordan's marvellous work reveals the deep layered lies of the Roman Catholic Church. This essay explores the Catholic gay structures of duplicity, the economics of ecclesial injustice and the implications of Professor Jordan's analysis for women. It is an appreciative view that invites further critical reflection on the misogynist dimensions of kyriarchal Catholicism and the gay male welfare system called Catholic theological education.     

I have cried to Him a thousand times,but it makes no difference: sexual abuse,faith, and images of God

Experiences of sexual abuse may lead to religious struggles and affect a person's faith. This study focused on how victims of sexual abuse describe their relationships with God and with other parishioners. Our interest was in sexual abuse that had occurred outside the religious congregation, not abuse perpetrated by a minister or any other representative of the church. Interviews conducted with seven women and one man were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The informants described a wavering relationship with God and with the congregation. They felt that God had betrayed and abandoned them, and they struggled with different aspects of anger. These emotions made the informants feel different from, and sometimes excluded from, the Christian community. Along with these feelings, however, the informants expressed a strong longing for God and a need to feel protected by the congregation. All informants described the effect the abuse had on their faith as essential to their trauma, and as an issue they needed to work through to learn how to live with their experiences.     

Older Mexican Americans and God-mediated control: exploring the influence of Pentecostal/Evangelical affiliation

A growing number of Mexican Americans are leaving the Catholic Church to join Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. The purpose of this study is to explore the benefits that are associated with joining Pentecostal and Evangelical congregations. A latent variable model is specified that contains the following core relationships: (1) older Mexican Americans who affiliate with Pentecostal/Evangelical congregations will attend worship services more often; (2) older Mexican Americans who attend church more often will receive more spiritual support from their fellow church members; (3) older Mexican Americans who receive more spiritual support will develop a closer relationship with God; and (4) older Mexican Americans who have a close relationship with God will develop a stronger sense of God-mediated control. Findings from a nationwide survey of older Mexican Americans provide support for each of these linkages.     

Theoretical Paradox and Practical Dilemma

Emmanuel Levinas sets up alterity as a fundamental ontological category, irreducible to being and nothingess. There are two difficulties in understanding this ontological alterity. On the one hand, Levinas formulates it with negative terms – infinition, abstraction, ab‐solutenes, trace of a past that has never been present. On the other hand, Levinas invokes the notions of the superlative, the Good, and God. These notions are very difficult to separate from the notion of a redoubling of the positivity by which the things of the world are posited in their own subsistent being. The quasi‐concepts with which Levinas has thematized the alterity of the others who face us in an ontological sphere of infinition, absoluteness, and abstractness have determined negatively what he envisions as beyond negativity and positivity. They reduce the determinateness of the wants and needs of another, and reduce the otherness of one other from other others. In addition, the positivism with which Levinas eliminates the imperatives with which the elements summon us and the material imperatives with which the things put demands on us effaces the phenomenality of the other whose want and needs are inscribed on the susceptibility and vulnerability of his surfaces of skin.     

Young men’s minimisation of their body dissatisfaction

Abstract

Objective: To examine men’s body dissatisfaction qualitatively.

Design: Forty-two British men aged 18–45 years took part in a two-session group intervention across 12 groups. The intervention was designed to improve body dissatisfaction by engaging them in a critique of the appearance ideal through written and behavioural exercises.

Main outcome measures/results: Analysis of the topics discussed during the intervention generated two core themes. Theme 1 showed that, in general, men minimised the existence of their own body dissatisfaction while (somewhat surprisingly) outlining the ubiquity and potency of the appearance ideal for men in general. Theme 2 involved men reporting the problematic impact of body dissatisfaction in their lives (despite earlier minimisation), such as social avoidance, strict eating and supplement regimes, or difficulty in situations where the body was exposed.

Conclusion: The results stress the need to acknowledge that men experience a range of impacts of body dissatisfaction beyond clinical presentations (such as disordered eating) that influence their everyday lives, while also recognising that they tend to minimise this dissatisfaction in conversation. These findings have important implications for advocacy and interventions to improve men’s body dissatisfaction.     

‘Use what God has given me’: Difference and disparity in breast reconstruction

African-American women are significantly less likely to undergo postmastectomy breast reconstruction compared to white women in the USA. These observed differences have been interpreted as evidence of a healthcare disparity. The current study examines breast reconstruction decision-making among African-American women, locating reconstruction decisions in a context of culture, racial inequality and biomedicalisation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 African-American women who underwent mastectomy for breast cancer to add patient-centred perspectives to existing conceptualisations of racial/ethnic differences in reconstruction. Participants were socio-demographically diverse, and resided in the New York metropolitan area. Data analysis was informed by grounded theory. Spiritually and culturally informed body ethics often guided surgery decisions. Participants expressed reservations about breast implants, preferring autologous procedures that use ‘what God has given’. For some, breast reconstruction restored a sense of normalcy after cancer; others challenged an imperative to reconstruct. Several participants redirected our focus on access to reconstruction toward access to alternatives, noting the low reimbursement for prostheses, or their unavailability in patients’ skin tones. We suggest that a framework of ‘stratified biomedicalization’ better addresses the complexities of race, class and gender that inform preference, access and recommendations for breast reconstruction, and focuses attention on access to high and low-tech interventions.     

Do People Who Believe in God Report More Meaning in Their Lives? The Existential Effects of Belief

I conduct the first large‐N study explicitly exploring the association between belief in God and sense of purpose in life. This relationship, while often discussed informally, has received little empirical attention. Here, I use the General Social Survey to investigate how form of and confidence in belief in God is related to sense of purpose in life, as measured by a Likert item level of agreement with the statement “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.” Using logistic regression analysis, I find that those who indicate that they are confident in God's existence report a higher sense of purpose compared to nonbelievers, believers in a higher power, and those who believe but occasionally doubt.     

Assessment of Body Image in Younger and Older Women

Body image was compared in younger versus older women using questionnaires and women's responses to fatter and thinner images of their own bodies versus responses to line drawings of bodies in the Figure Ratings Scale. We found that younger and older women have similar body dissatisfaction but that younger women have a higher drive for thinness and experience more societal influence on their body image. Using images of one's own body versus line drawings did not result in different body dissatisfaction in younger versus older women. These data suggest that age affects some facets of body image but not others and that ratings of body image do not differ in normal, healthy younger and older women when personalized measures are used.