The role of women in church ministry and leadership remains a major issue facing the Pentecostal/charismatic movement into the 21st century. Throughout the history of the movement, this issue has set Pentecostals apart from much of the rest of the Evangelical church while at the same time, galvanizing them. Yet though women have been vital in the movement since its inception, opportunities for leadership have gradually eroded and many highly-trained women are moving into traditions which provide them a more public role. Leading scholars from around the world and from both within and outside the movement will join Regent faculty and Ph.D. students in a year-long colloquium designed to look at the historical struggles, contributions, current trends, and future challenges related to this issue which is vital to the future of the renewal movement.
The symposium on Women in Pentecostal/Charismatic Leadership is the first in a five-part series reflecting on major trends within this vital movement which has shaped not only American, but world Christianity in the 21st century.
Global Perspectives (June 9, 2007)
Gaston Espinosa, Ph.D. – Dr. Espinosa is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He is a graduate of Princeton (M.Div.), Harvard (M.Ed.), and UC Santa Barbara (Ph.D.). He served as manager of the $1.3 million Pew Charitable Trusts-funded Hispanic Churches in American Public Life (HCAPL) project, which surveyed the religious and political attitudes of 3,000 Latinos across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Espinosa is the author or co-author of four books, nineteen refereed articles, book chapters, and reviews, 54 encyclopedia entries, 76 scholarly keynotes and presentations, has made eight television and radio appearances, and has served as the director of six conferences. In 2002 he spoke at the National Hispanic Presidential Prayer Breakfast with President George Bush and Senator Joseph Lieberman. In recognition of his work, the Generations Center of Princeton named him one of the nation's 100 Positive Men of Color.
Paper title: "Third Class Soldiers: A History of Hispanic Pentecostal Women in Ministry in the United States"
Pamela M. S. Holmes, Th. D. (candidate) – Pamela Holmes is an ordained pastor who has ministered in Edmonton, Alberta, Ottawa and Trenton, Ontario. Spurred on by concerns arising from both her own and other women’s experiences, Holmes returned to school to work on an advanced degree in systematic theology focusing on the possibilities of a dialogue between feminism and Pentecostalism. Her dissertation entitled “Feminist Critical Theory of Religion and Pentecostal Spirituality and Praxis: An Examination of Select Themes” explores the relationships between ideology and power particularly as it influences and affects Pentecostal women in leadership positions. Currently she is teaching and overseeing the Field Education programme at Queen’s Theological College, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario an ecumenical, United Church of Canada college. Pamela and her husband, Tom, reside in Trenton, Ontario and are the proud parents of two sons and two daughters-in-law and one baby granddaughter.
Paper title: "Canadian Pentecostalism and its Ministering Women: A Pentecostal Feminist Critique"
Deidre Helen Crumbley, Ph.D. – Deidre Helen Crumbley is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies in Interdisciplinary Studies at North Carolina State University. Her forth coming book, Sprit, Structure and Flesh: Gender and Power in African Churches, explores the interplay of gender, power, doctrine, and ritual in African Instituted Churches (AICs). Her current research project focuses on the intersection of race, gender, migration, and religious innovation in the rise of an African American, female-founded storefront church. In addition to her terminal degree in anthropology from Northwestern University, Dr. Crumbley also holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is on the editorial board of Religion, an international and interdisciplinary journal, and she is an active member of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.
Paper title: "Sanctified Saints – Impure Prophetesses: A Cross-Cultural Study of Gender, Purity, and Power in Two Afro-Christian Spiritual Churches"
Julie Ma - Ph.D. - Julie C. Ma served as a faculty member of Anthropology and Biblical Theology of Missions at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary, Baguio City, Philippines (1996-2006), while serving as a field missionary with her husband, Wonsuk, since 1981. She has also served as editor of Journal of Asian Mission (2003-2005), published When the Spirit Meets the Spirits (Peter Lang, 2000) and Mission Possible: Biblical Strategies for Reaching the Lost (Regnum, 2005), and edited with Wonsuk Ma, Asian Church and God's Mission (2003). She is now preparing a third book, Pentecostal Mission in Asian Context. Her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Intercultural Studies and Theology are from Fuller Theological Seminary. Currently she is serving as Research Tutor of Missiology at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
Paper title: "Phenomenological Change of Woman's Image in Global Setting and It's Influence on the Role of Women in the Church"
Here is a link to this Colloquium: http://www.regent.edu/acad/schdiv/newsandevents/women_colloquium.shtml.
