'Housewifely prayers' and manly visions : gender, faith, and family in two Victoria churches, 1945-1960
Date
1999
Authors
Block, Tina Marie
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Abstract
The decade and a half following World War II is commonly thought of as a time of traditional gender roles and shared "family values." Despite the stereotype that postwar churches were bastions of conformity, the meanings of gender and family were considerably complex in the local congregations of Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church and First United Church, Victoria, British Columbia. Official church discourses both reflected and helped to reproduce dominant ideals of femininity, masculinity, married heterosexuality, and nuclear family life. Although these ideals significantly shaped the nature of church life in these two congregations, they cannot be taken as clear windows into the experiences and values of church members. In private prayer, church services, church groups, and at home, the men and women in these congregations both accepted and challenged, aspired to and were marginalized by, dominant and Christian ideals of gender and family.