In recent years Ugandan born-again Christians have regularly engaged in forms of social protest—against homosexuality, in support of youth sexual abstinence—that they characterize as acts in defense of the African family. At the center of these protests was an overriding concern with the effects of a global discourse of rights-based gender equality on Ugandan cultural norms. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a born-again church in Kampala, this article examines the underlying moral conflict that shapes born-again women’s and men’s rejections of gender equality. At the center of such conflicts were concerns about the ways rights-based equality undermined other models for moral personhood and gendered interdependence that existed in Uganda, models that were characterized as essential for social stability and personal well-being. This conflict is analyzed in relation to a broader sense of moral insecurity that pervaded discussion of gender and family life in Kampala.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Asad Talal Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity 2003 Stanford, CA Stanford University Press
Beidelman T.O. “Swazi Royal Ritual.” Africa 1966 36 4 373 405
Beidelman T.O. Beidelman T.O. “Nuer Priests and Prophets: Charisma, Authority, and Power Among the Nuer.” The Translation of Culture: Essays Presented to E.E. Evans-Pritchard 1971 London Tavistock Publications 375 415
Boyd Lydia “The Problem with Freedom: Homosexuality and Human Rights in Uganda” Anthropological Quarterly 2013 86 3 697 724
Brusco Elizabeth The Reformation of Machismo: Evangelical Conversion and Gender in Colombia 2005 Austin University of Texas Press
Cheah Pheng Goodale Mark “Acceptable Uses of People.” Human Rights at the Crossroads 2013 Oxford Oxford University Press 210 226
Chen Carolyn “A Self of One’s Own: Taiwanese immigrant women and religious conversion” Gender and Society 2005 19 3 336 57
Chong Kelly H. “Negotiating Patriarchy: South Korean Women and the Politics of Gender.” Gender and Society 2006 20 6 697 724
Cole Jennifer “The Love of Jesus Never Disappoints: Reconstituting Female Personhood in Urban Madagascar.” Journal of Religion in Africa 2012 42 4 384 407
Cowan Jane K. “Culture and Rights after Culture and Rights.” American Anthropologist 2006 108 1 9 24
Englund Harri Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. 2006 Berkeley University of California Press
Englund Harri Human Rights and African Airwaves 2011 Bloomington Indiana University Press
Fallers Lloyd The King’s Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence 1964 London Oxford University Press for the East African Institute of Social Research
Frahm-Arp Maria Professional Women in South African Pentecostal Charismatic Churches 2010 Leiden Brill
Gill Leslie ‘ “Like a Veil to Cover Them’: Women and the Pentecostal Movement in La Paz’ American Ethnologist 1990 17 4 708 721
Goheen Miriam Men own the Fields, Women own the Crops: Gender and Power in the Cameroon Grassfields 1996 University of Wisconsin Press
Goodale Mark Goodale Mark “Human Rights After the Post-Cold War.” Human Rights at the Crossroads 2013 Oxford Oxford University Press
Griffith Marie Ruth God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission 1997 Berkeley University of California Press
Heald Suzette “The Power of Sex: Some Refelctions on the Caldwell’s ‘African Sexuality’ Thesis.” Africa 1995 65 4 489 505
Hepner Tricia Redeker “Religion, Repression and Human Rights in Eritrea and the Diaspora.” Journal of Religion in Africa 2014 44 2 151 188
Hodgson Dorothy The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters Between Maasai and Missionaries 2005 Bloomington, IN Indiana University Press
Iliffe John Honour in African History 2005 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Kodesh Neil Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Uganda 2011 Charlottesville, VA University of Virginia Press
Kron Josh Resentment Towards West Bolsters Uganda’s New Anti-Gay Bill. The New York Times 2012 February 28 A4
Mahmood Saba Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject 2005 Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press
Mair Lucy Native Marriage in Buganda. 1940 London Oxford University Press for the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures Memorandum 19
Marshall Ruth ‘Power in the Name of Jesus’ Review of African Political Economy 1991 18 52 21 37
Mate Rekopantswe “Wombs as God’s Laboratories: Pentecostal Discourses on Femininity in Zimbabwe” Africa 2002 72 4 549 568
Merry Sally Engel “Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism.” American Anthropologist 2006 108 1 38 51
Meyer Birgit & Pels Peter Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment 2003 Stanford. CA Stanford University Press
Mills David “Life on the Hill: Students and the Social History of Makerere.” Africa 2006 76 2 247 266
Mills David & Ssewakiryanga Richard Cornwall A. ‘No Romance Without Finance: Masculinities, Commodities and hiv in Uganda’ Readings in Gender in Africa 2005 Oxford James Currey
Mills David & Ssewakiryanga Richard “ ‘That Beijing Thing’: Challenging transnational feminisms in Kampala” Gender, Place and Culture 2002 9 4 385 398
Mugambi Helen Nabasuta “Gender, Orality, and Female Space in Contemporary Kiganda Radio Songs.” Research in African Literatures 1994 25 3 47 70
Musisi Nakanyike B. “Women, ‘Elite Polygyny,’ and Buganda State Formation.” Signs 1991 16 4 757 786
Musisi Nakanyike B. Morality as Identity: the Missionary Moral Agenda in Buganda, 1877-1945. The Journal of Religious History 1999 23 1 51 74
Mutongi Kenda “Worries of the Heart”: Widowed Mothers, Daughters and Masculinities in Maragoli, Western Kenya, 1940-60. The Journal of African History 1999 40 1 67 86
Obbo Christine “Dominant Male Ideology and Female Options: Three East Africa case studies.” Africa 1976 46 4 371 389
Peterson Derek R. Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935-1972. 2012 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Peterson Derek R. “Wordy Women: Gender Trouble and the Oral Politics of the East African Revival in Gikuyuland.” The Journal of African History 2001 42 3 469 489
Robbins Joel “The Globalization of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 2004 33 117 143
Sacks Karen Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality 1979 Westport, Conn. Greenwood Press
Sanders Todd “Making Children, Making Chiefs: Gender, Power, and Ritual Legitimacy.” Africa 1998 68 2 238 262
Sharlet Jeff “Straight Man’s Burden: The American Roots of Uganda’s Anti-Gay Persecution.” Harper’s Magazine. 2010 September 36 48 2010
Soothill Jane E. Gender, Social Change and Spiritual Power: Charismatic Christianity in Ghana 2007 Leiden Brill
Southall A.W. & Gutkind P.C.W. Townsmen in the Making: Kampala and its Suburbs 1957 Kampala East African Institute for Social Research
Van Klinken Adriaan S. Transforming Masculinities in African Christianity: Gender Controversies in Times of aids 2012 Burlington, VT Ashgate
West Harry & Sanders Todd Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order 2003 Durham, NC Duke University Press
Whyte Susan Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty 1997 Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Wyrod Robert Between Women’s Rights and Men’s Authority: Masculinity and Discourses of Gender Difference in Urban Uganda. Gender & Society 2008 22 6 799 823
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2021 | 253 | 37 |
Full Text Views | 238 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 126 | 1 | 0 |
In recent years Ugandan born-again Christians have regularly engaged in forms of social protest—against homosexuality, in support of youth sexual abstinence—that they characterize as acts in defense of the African family. At the center of these protests was an overriding concern with the effects of a global discourse of rights-based gender equality on Ugandan cultural norms. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in a born-again church in Kampala, this article examines the underlying moral conflict that shapes born-again women’s and men’s rejections of gender equality. At the center of such conflicts were concerns about the ways rights-based equality undermined other models for moral personhood and gendered interdependence that existed in Uganda, models that were characterized as essential for social stability and personal well-being. This conflict is analyzed in relation to a broader sense of moral insecurity that pervaded discussion of gender and family life in Kampala.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2021 | 253 | 37 |
Full Text Views | 238 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 126 | 1 | 0 |