From Domesticity to Mission

Women’s Missionary Agency in African Christian Communities in Buhera, Zimbabwe

Abstract

This study examines the missionary agency of African Christian women in Buhera District, Zimbabwe, arguing that everyday domestic and community practices constitute significant yet often unrecognised expressions of Christian mission. Although mission is frequently associated with formal church structures, ordained leadership, and organised evangelism, African Christian women participate in mission through the ordinary spaces of family and community life.  This study makes use of contextual missiology and an Afrocentric-womanist paradigm, which provide a theological lens and a culturally-grounded lens for interpreting women lived experiences and missionary agency within the Shona context. A qualitative phenomenological approach is employed, using semi-structured interviews, observations, and desk research. The research findings reveal that, first, marriage provides a context through which women transmit and sustain Christian faith within households and kinship networks. Second, women exercise missionary agency through spiritual giftedness, including prayer, healing, counselling, and spiritual care. Third, caregiving for children, orphans, older people, and other vulnerable members of the community constitutes an embodied expression of Christian compassion. Fourth, women’s participation in funerals create spaces for pastoral care, consolation, worship, and Christian witness. Fifth, domestic utensils including clay pots, cooking sticks, and brooms, acquire religious significance within African Christian practices and become material resources through which women participate in mission. The study argues that Christian mission in African contexts extends beyond formal ecclesiastical structures into everyday spaces where faith is embodied, transmitted, and sustained. It concludes that recognising women's domestic and community practices as missionary agency contributes to a more contextually grounded understanding of mission and affirms African Christian women as significant agents in the life and growth of Christianity in rural Zimbabwe.