Questioning ‘the man of God’: Selina’s story
Abstract
This paper utilises a poststructuralist understanding of power and knowledge to enquire into the construction of problematic practices of religious authority within Christian communities. Focusing on one person’s narrative, and one theology of church leadership, it shows how the use of narrative enquiry and discourse analysis can help explain how it is that people in Christian communities—both leaders and those who are led—are recruited into subject positions and power relations which sabotage their best hopes and intentions for life together. This form of analysis usefully complements other approaches to problematic uses of religious authority, such as the application of psychological models, and opens space for revisiting the taken-for-granted status of ideas which are failing to foster life, freedom and justice.References
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