Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half-title Page -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Abbreviations -- Map of Kenya with locations of YWCA branches -- Part 1 -- Introduction -- The YWCA in Nairobi -- Methods and fieldwork -- Summary and outline -- Identity and ethics in narrative -- 1.1 Narrative and identity -- 1.2 Organizational identity -- 1.3 Narrative and ethics -- 1.4 Moral narratives in the development industry -- 1.5 Sexuality and scandal -- 1.6 Summary -- Part 2 -- Imperial maternalism, 1855-1965 -- 2.1 The extension of his kingdom', 1855-1912 -- 2.2 Imperial maternalism, 1912-55 -- 2.3 Conceptualizing whiteness and Christianity -- 2.4 Sex work and public health in colonial Nairobi -- 2.5 The 'female circumcision' crisis -- 2.6 Becoming 'multiracial', 1955-65 -- 2.7 Summary -- From welfare to development, 1965-2000 -- 3.1 International development industry -- 3.2 Welfare and development, 1965-2000 -- 3.2a Women's welfare, 1964-78 -- 3.2b 'Self-reliance', 1979-89 -- 3.2c Gender and development, 1990-2000 -- 3.3 Postcolonial feminist critique of sexuality in development -- 3.4 Summary: Sexuality and Christianity in development -- African, Christian, feminist? 2000-12 -- 4.1 Abortion and nationalism -- 4.2 FGM: 'Harmful cultural traditions' and 'African' identities -- 4.3 HIV: Condoms, Christianity and maternalism -- 4.4 SRHR, development and feminism -- 4.6 Summary -- Part 3 -- Controversial faith issues -- 5.1 Defining controversial faith issues -- 5.2 Condoms -- 5.3 Abortion -- 5.4 LBTQI women -- 5.5 Summary -- 'We are Christians' -- 6.1 The YWCA's ontological narrative -- 6.2 Origins: 'We have always been Christians' -- 6.3 Ecumenism: 'We are all Christians' -- 6.4 Piousness: 'We are staunch Christians' -- 6.5 Christian emphasis -- 6.6 Summary -- Everyday Christian ethics -- 7.1 Living fulfilled lives.

While feminist theology is not necessarily Christian, it emerged out of Christian European and North American contexts. This chapter focuses on postcolonial feminist theological interventions in Christianity because of the inextricable connections between Christianity, gender, racism, and European colonialism. Postcolonial feminist theology asserts that Christian actors and epistemologies—frameworks of knowledge—perform a central role in European colonial projects of the past and present. Thus, Christianity's continuing significance in national and global politics; individual, local, and national identity formation; and the constitution of gendered subjectivity necessitates further analysis and critique (Donaldson and Kwok 2002). While the particular conditions of European colonial regimes varied enormously over time and between each colonized territory, Christianity, in general, spread alongside political and cultural colonization, through the dismantling, exclusion, and disparagement of indigenous peoples' worldviews. Widespread hostility and suspicion of indigenous traditions and practices resulted from unconscious and overt Eurocentric evaluations of indigenous cultures. Eurocentrism, the measuring of other cultures according to European Christian social and cultural ideals, also encouraged colonizers to interpret indigenous gender roles, social structures, and systems of knowledge as evidence of savagery and the absence of ''civilization.'' Therefore, postcolonial feminist theologies are particularly concerned with imagining and enacting new concepts of, and relationships with, God that depart from the imperialistic theologies of colonizer cultures and restore indigenous traditions and practices as inherent aspects of their theological imaginaries.

This chapter addresses issues of identity and racial exclusion by looking at Christianity and whiteness at the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in the context of late colonial Kenya. Between 1955 and 1965, Kenya YWCA rejected its identity as an organization for white/European women, and became inclusive of African women for the first time. The history of Kenya YWCA written by its last white leader, Vera Harley (1995), is an important source of information about this period in Kenya YWCA's history. The narrative Harley constructs is an important part of the identity of the organization in the present day. Studying this narrative of 'race' and inclusion yields two key insights; firstly, that in late colonial Kenya racial and religious identity were strongly connected, even mutually constitutive. Secondly, women in African contexts have histories of exclusion from Christian organisations. The complex interaction of the history of white/European women's Christian voluntary action, widely-held prejudices about Africans, and the inconsistent effects of the politics of decolonization, all contributed to the nature and speed of Kenya YWCA's journey towards racial integration.