Being a woman and involved in the Church: an experience of power relationships
(2024) Embodiment and positionnality — Location: Oslo (16.December.2024)
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Details
- Authors
Florin, Marie Anne 
- Abstract
- Studying places of power in the Church leads us to question our own involvement and the positionality of the researcher, as well as that of the witnesses to the empirical investigation. No point of view is neutral. My research work is based both on the use of an objective methodology and on an experiential proximity to my object of study. As a lay woman and theologian, but also a member of an episcopal council, I was already involved in my own subject, with a different awareness of the power relationships within the institution. This also enabled me to enter into a relationship with the people I interviewed during the course of the interviews with around forty people, men and women, clerics and lay people. The words of these ‘witnesses’ who are members of episcopal councils should also be considered from a positional point of view: the process of calling members of episcopal councils by the bishop alone leads to forms of allegiance. With little training in theology, these women are - more than men - associated with these places of power. But what personal and professional experience can they draw on to overcome their feelings of incompetence and inferiority in the face of ordained men? By taking into account their incarnation and positionality, we can better understand the challenges of co-responsibility between men and women in the Church.
- Affiliations
Citations
Florin, M. A. (2024). Being a woman and involved in the Church: an experience of power relationships. Embodiment and positionnality, Oslo. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/235350