When Women Reject Women’s Ordination: Reframing and Semanticizing in the Speeches of Two Female Seventh-day Adventists

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-2020

Keywords

church, critical discourse analysis, religion and gender, Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s ordination

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2020. This study analyzes two public speeches of two North-American Seventh-day Adventist women who oppose women’s ordination, in order to understand how they reconcile inequity perpetuated by their religious position that denigrates women. The two women in this study address the apparent disadvantage by reframing the issue and reordering their reality. Whereas one speaker creates other formidable sub-issues that make exclusion of women from church leadership imperative, the other speaker resorts to the elusive notion of female privilege. I demonstrate how their discourse surrounding ministry and headship illuminates the fact that gender relations and religious convictions are ordered through permeable boundaries of arbitrary lexico-semantics.

Journal Title

Feminist Theology

Volume

29

Issue

1

First Page

33

Last Page

47

DOI

10.1177/0966735020944895

First Department

English

Link to Full Text

@ the James White Library

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