How does inhabiting a female body affect the experience of indigenized Christianity in Africa? Spirit, Structure, and Flesh addresses this question by exploring ways ritual, symbol, and dogma circumscribe, constrain, and empower women in African Instituted Churches (AICs)—new denominations founded by Africans skeptical of dogmas offered by mainstream churches with roots in European empires. Crumbley investigates the beliefs and practices associated with institutionalized female roles in three of the most important AICs. These practices include the prohibition against the ordination of women, the expectation that women avoid holy objects and sites during menstruation, and the congregational seating arrangements that construct asymmetrical relations of power. While gender distinctions seem to signal an absence of female autonomy and power, Crumbley argues that women count in the day-to-day life of these churches, whether ordained or not, and that these women exercise agency.
