Emerging Christian Women’s Transitions at University

Home-ing Emerging Christian Women's Transitions at University Morgans, J.L.

2020

document version

Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record

Link to publication in VU Research Portal

citation for published version (APA)

Morgans, J. L. (2020). Home-ing Emerging Christian Women's Transitions at University.

General rights

Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.

• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.

• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?

Take down policy

If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

E-mail address:

vuresearchportal.ub@vu.nl

Download date: 11. Oct. 2021

Home-ing

Emerging Christian Women’s Transitions at University

Jenny Morgans

Home-ing

Emerging Christian Women’s Transitions at University

ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT

ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor of Philosophy aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,

op gezag van de rector magnificus prof.dr. V. Subramaniam, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie

van de Faculteit Religie en Theologie op vrijdag 18 december 2020 om 13.45 uur

in de online bijeenkomst

door

Jenny Louise Morgans

geboren te Pontypridd, Verenigd Koninkrijk

there was no way of knowing how long or arduous the journey, nor even where or how to begin.

Only the dawning consciousness that much would have to be shed.

1 From the poem ‘Journey’ by N Slee, Praying Like a Woman (London: SPCK, 2004), p. 49.

From conception to birth, this thesis has been shaped, inspired and encouraged by a whole village of folk. ‘Team Jelly’, I am grateful and indebted to you all. Without you, this thesis would not be what it is, and I would not be who I am.

My initial thanks go to the 21 women whose words are the heart of this thesis. It was a privilege to hear your stories, reflections and wonderings; and to be entrusted to handle them with care. I hope I have done them justice. I also wish to thank the university

chaplain who took an interest in my thesis and supported me in the process of locating and interviewing these women.

I am grateful to the Diocese of Southwark and the chaplaincy at King’s College London for resourcing and affirming me in this work, particularly with the gift of time. Permission to read and write is chronically lacking in my experience of church, and your generosity and foresight has been transformative. I was also blessed with funding support for the research and I would like to thank the Church of England’s Research Development Panel, the

Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust, St Luke’s College Foundation, the Dartmouth Fund and the Gilmore fund for their generosity.

A number of friends and colleagues commented upon parts of this thesis in its

development. From its early stages, thanks to Anne Phillips, Rachel Starr and Nandy. More recently, thank you Donna for your professional brilliance as well as your kindness; Gijs for your astute comments, Dutch frankness, and help with translating; Cat for demanding clarity and definition; Jen for your generosity and expertise; and Sophie, Maz and Jane for your speedy insights. Special thanks to Kate – I’m so glad I met you in the lido, not least because of your editing suggestions. Thank you also to Toddy for the wonderful illustration of my Home-ing model.

There have been many communities of belonging and nourishment that have shaped my story, affirmed my voice, and made me laugh along the way. Thanks to the Student Christian Movement for playing such an important role in my becoming. As a curate

struggling to balance research amidst the demands of ordained ministry, the Symposium on the Faith Lives of Women and Girls was invaluable. Alison, Dawn, Gill, Helen, Kim and Manon: conversations with you helped me more than you will know. To research students at The Queen’s Foundation: you are all brilliant and I am so glad to have had you as fellow sojourners, especially Evelyn, Omari, Sin Ai and Tom. I will miss the companionship and insight of all Queen’s research students and staff undertaking the annual pilgrimage to VU, particularly in the bar. And finally, thanks to the friendship groups that sustained me at different points (and in very different ways) especially Cookies and Candles, the Flamingos, and Desperate.

Thanks to the Morgans clan for letting me be me even when I am a mystery to you. Mam

and Dad, you’re both bonkers, a family trait which I have inherited gladly. Thanks to Brawd

Bach and Rachel for being amazing, and for birthing lovely babies while I’ve been birthing

something quite different. Grandad Iori, you didn’t get to see this thesis finished but I know

you would be proud.

the way. Thanks for still liking me despite knowing me through and through.

I have been blessed by a smashing team of supervisors who gave countless hours to discussing, reading, suggesting and encouraging, and were always on my side. Rev’d Dr Margaret Whipp, thank you for your rich theological insight and your poetic way with words. Dr Gerdien Bertram-Troost, thank you for your patience and for always demanding excellence, even when you have had to explain things several times. And special thanks to Professor Nicola Slee, without your patience and encouragement this thesis would not have come to fruition. Thank you for gently but firmly nurturing my voice as a woman and as an academic. You are Super (Slee) and I could not have asked for more.

Finally, Stephen: Thank you for always being my best friend, for bringing me tea and

reminding me to go for a wee. Thank you for insisting that we celebrate every milestone, no

matter how small. Thank you for never doubting that this thesis would emerge, and for all

the love and support that inspired it to do so. And Satine: Thank you for snoring as I work,

sitting on my keyboard and drinking my water, all of which made me smile (almost) every

time. You are both my home.

Chapter One Introduction ... 1

1.1 Introduction ... 1

1.1.1 Beginnings ... 2

1.2 Research Questions and Aims ... 4

1.3 Rationale and Context for the Study ... 5

1.3.1 Higher Education and Emerging Christian Women ... 6

1.3.2 Post-feminism ... 11

1.3.3 Feminist Practical Theology ... 13

1.4 Home-ing ... 14

1.5 Thesis Synopsis ... 18

PART I Theoretical and Methodological Framework ... 21

Chapter Two Theoretical Framework ... 22

2.1 Introduction ... 22

2.2 Transitions ... 25

2.2.1 Definitions and Understandings ... 25

2.2.2 Transitioning Identities ... 28

2.2.3 Transitions and Emerging Adults’ Faith Development ... 39

2.2.4 Transitions in Higher Education ... 47

2.3 Gender, Identity and Faith ... 54

2.3.1 Gender and Identity ... 55

2.3.2 Emerging Women’s Transitioning Identities ... 62

2.4 Conclusion ... 68

Chapter Three Researching Women at University ... 70

3.1 Introduction ... 70

3.2 Guiding Principles ... 72

3.2.1 Listening to Women’s Diverse Experiences ... 72

3.2.2 Empowerment and Advocacy ... 75

3.2.3 Reflexivity ... 78

3.3 The Research Design ... 81

3.3.1 The Research Group ... 82

3.3.2 Data Production ... 83

3.3.3 Analysis ... 94

3.4 Conclusion ... 103

PART II Transitioning from Home to Home ... 105

Chapter Four From Home: Trauma and Unhome ... 106

4.1 Introduction ... 106

4.1.1 Introducing Olivia and Sarah ... 108

4.2 Leaving Home ... 110

4.2.1 Preparation and Support ... 112

4.3.3 Mental Ill-health ... 130

4.4 Identity Maintenance ... 132

4.4.1 Tentative Authenticity ... 134

4.4.2 Alcohol and Boundary Assertion ... 141

4.5 Conclusion ... 148

Chapter Five To Home: Patterns of Home-ing ... 150

5.1 Introduction ... 150

5.1.1 Introducing Ashley and Samantha ... 151

5.2 Creating Safety ... 152

5.2.1 Home from Home ... 153

5.2.2 New Friendships ... 158

5.2.3 Safety in the Middle ... 165

5.3 Undertaking Exploration ... 171

5.3.1 Embracing Difference ... 172

5.3.2 Inner-dependence ... 175

5.3.3 Educational Integration ... 178

5.4 Embracing Becoming ... 182

5.4.1 Confident Awakening ... 184

5.4.2 Inter-dependence ... 188

5.4.3 Changes in Relationships ... 192

5.5 Conclusion ... 196

PART III ‘Being’ at Home: Gender and Faith at University ... 198

Chapter Six Being Women at University: At Home in Self? ... 199

6.1 Introduction ... 199

6.1.1 Introducing Briana and Melissa ... 201

6.2 Unsafe and Unhome ... 202

6.2.1 Post-Feminist Essentialism ... 203

6.2.2 Bodily Femininity ... 207

6.2.3 Christian Femininity: A Double-Bind ... 213

6.2.4 Unhome in the Academy ... 218

6.2.5 Vulnerability and Lad Culture ... 223

6.3 Deferral as Safety ... 229

6.3.1 Choice Feminism ... 230

6.3.2 Girling ... 234

6.3.3 Gender Kept Safe ... 238

6.3.4 Deferring Lad Culture ... 243

6.4 Safe with Other Women ... 247

6.4.1 Female Friends and Family ... 248

6.4.2 Christian Mentors ... 255

6.5 Exploration and Resistance ... 258

6.5.1 Resisting the Double-Bind ... 259

6.5.2 Submission and Leadership ... 262

6.6 Becoming Feminist ... 268

6.7 Conclusion ... 276

Chapter Seven Being Christian at University: At Home in God ... 278

7.1 Introduction ... 278

7.1.1 Introducing Lauren and Nicole ... 280

7.2 Faith as Safety ... 281

7.2.1 Safe Spiritual Spaces ... 282

7.2.2 Separation and Deferral ... 292

7.2.3 A Safe God ... 297

7.3 Faith as Exploration ... 300

7.3.1 Christian Inner-dependence ... 302

7.3.2 Faith in Relationships ... 306

7.3.3 Evangelism and Sermons ... 312

7.4 Faith as Becoming ... 319

7.4.1 Christian Awakenings ... 321

7.4.2 The Labour of Integration ... 326

7.4.3 Volunteering and Social Justice ... 328

7.5 Conclusion ... 331

Chapter Eight Conclusion ... 333

8.1 Introduction ... 333

8.2 Answering the Research Questions ... 335

8.2.1 The Sub-questions ... 335

8.2.2 The Central Question: A Model for Women’s Home-ing ... 338

8.3 Discussion ... 349

8.3.1 Academic Relevance ... 349

8.3.2 Pastoral Recommendations ... 352

8.3.3 Questions for Further Research ... 355

8.4 Theological Response: Speaking of God ... 356

8.5 Closing Words ... 362

Appendices ... 366

Data Production Round 1 ... 366

Appendix 1: Consent Form ... 366

Appendix 2: Written Questions ... 367

Appendix 3: Interview Questions ... 368

Appendix 4: Excerpt from Transcript ... 371

Data Production Round 2 ... 373

Appendix 5: Example Interview Questions ... 373

Appendix 6: Questions for Group Discussion ... 376

Appendix 7: Excerpt from Group Discussion Transcript ... 379

Appendix 8: Survey Questions and Example Response ... 381

Appendix 9: Table of Second Round Participants ... 386

Analysis ... 387

Appendix 10: Coding Example – NVivo Diagram ... 387

Summary ... 391

Bibliography ... 402

Figures and Tables Figure 2.1 Marcia’s Four Identity Statuses……… 35

Table 2.1 Fowler’s Stages of Faith………. 40

Table 3.1 Churches and Student Societies by Denomination/Tradition………. 86

Figure 8.1 A Model for Women’s Home-ing………. 341

1

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Introduction

There’s no place like home.

Those who have entered deeply into their hearts and found the intimate home where they encounter their [God] … come to the awareness that the intimacy of God’s house excludes no one and includes everyone.

Experiences and expectations of emerging adults are changing in a post-modern, post-feminist and largely post-religious Western society, not least including the substantial growth in attendance in higher education.

Thus, understanding the key characteristics of emerging women’s faith in the midst of such change is imperative:

for the academy, for the churches, and for emerging women themselves. This thesis is an investigation into contemporary Christian women in higher education in

England, and the multiple transitions they experience in identity and faith at

university having moved away from home.

It understands transitions as fragmented movements involving the whole of women’s lives and identities. Such movements

1 Dorothy in V Fleming, The Wizard of Oz, 1939.

2 H Nouwen, Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective (Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, 1986), p. 43.

3 Nearly 50 per cent of school-leavers in the UK attended university in 2018, in comparison with 14 per cent at the end of the 1970s and only four per cent at the start of the 1960s. In 2016, the number of students aged 18–24 was 1.87 million; approximately 1 in 3 18–24 year olds were in full-time education. This is almost double the 984,000 in 1992. See Office for National Statistics, ‘How Has the Student Population Changed?’, 2016

<https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/arti cles/howhasthestudentpopulationchanged/2016-09-20> [accessed 7 July 2020].

4 In the UK, the most common route for students aged 18–21 is to leave home to attend university, living in ‘halls of residence’ (either university or privately run) for the first year, before moving into shared housing for the remaining years. Although the percentage of students leaving home has declined since tuition fees rose in 2012, this is still the most popular pattern. See Higher Education Statistics Agency, ‘Full-Time and Sandwich Students by Term-Time Accommodation 2014/15 to 2018/19’, 2020 <https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/chart-4> [accessed 7 July 2020].

2 are often spontaneous, emergent and fluid, rather than linear or progressional; they involve pauses, gaps and back-and-forth steps. Transitions are multiple and

dynamic, akin to transitionings at rather than an individual transition to.

In this thesis, I examine women’s patterns and processes of crafting a new ‘home’ amidst their transitionings at university, and the intersection of faith and gender in the

‘identity work’

involved.

In this chapter, I set out the beginnings of this thesis with my initial motivations for the study. I then present the primary research questions that I address, and the key aims of the work. Next, the chapter offers a rationale for the significance of this enquiry within the contexts of emerging adult faith at university, post-feminist culture, and feminist practical theology. Following this, I introduce the central organizing metaphor of home-ing – the throughline of this thesis – including its theological basis and relevance, before finally providing an overview of the rest of the thesis.

1.1.1 Beginnings

The impact of my own time as an undergraduate away from home, encountering new ways of living and thinking, is central to my narrative of faith and identity growth. Moving from working-class, semi-rural Wales to attend university in a large multi-cultural English city, I first encountered a diversity of human experience that enabled me to understand the particularities of my own. My study in history and theology became integrated with my life of faith, despite occasional attempts to render them distinct. My feminist awareness grew with my faith commitment, inseparable processes woven together by excellent teaching in feminist theology and

5 See for example C A Taylor and J Harris-Evans, ‘Reconceptualising Transition to Higher Education with Deleuze and Guattari’, Studies in Higher Education, 43.7 (2018), 1254–67; T Gale and S Parker,

‘Navigating Change: A Typology of Student Transition in Higher Education’, Studies in Higher Education, 39.5 (2014), 734–53; H Colley, ‘Understanding Time in Learning Transitions Through the Lifecourse’, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 17.4 (2007), 427–43.

6 Term coined by Johnson, see R Johnson et al, The Practice of Cultural Studies (London: Sage, 2004), p. 265.

3 time spent with friends both with and without faith. I became able to recognize incidences that undervalued my worth because of my gender that had previously gone unspoken or even unnoticed. I could not then help but locate such experiences within the social and cultural structures that governed my life. Whatever I heard in lectures, I found myself later seeking out a feminist interpretation in the library. In my undergraduate – and later postgraduate – dissertation, I grew in the conviction that I needed to investigate the faith lives of women in one context or another.

Involvement in a national liberal Christian organization, the Student Christian

Movement (SCM), introduced me to social justice as an essential Christian principle.

It challenged me to explore the inclusive love of neighbour, God, and the world, drawing my attention to those marginalized by societal and church structures. Being at university thus expanded my knowledge of God and challenged my understanding of discipleship. My interest in the student experience increased in the following years, first as I became a postgraduate in Scotland and felt somewhat on the edge of the student community. I then held several roles simultaneously in another city in the north of England: working for a university’s chaplaincy and Students’ Union; as a church’s student minister; as well as chairing the Trustees of SCM. Now, in ordained ministry, at home in yet another city and another university as a higher education chaplain, I continue to be surprised by the resilience and determination of students in the face of significant challenges.

Approaching doctoral research resulted in a desire to further understand the

interaction between my commitments to Christianity, to women and to students. In academia, it is often quipped that all PhD theses are to an extent autobiographical.

While this is true to some degree for this thesis, of course it is more than this due to

its intentional grounding in the narratives of contemporary emerging women whose

stories diverge from my own as well as from one another. Moreover, I am convinced

that there is further work to be done in discovering the influence of faith on the

transitionings at university for women than in the ground covered here. The rise of

neoliberalism and post-feminism in the current higher education context, alongside

4 the fall in church attendance amongst emerging adults,

make clear to me that understanding Christian women’s experiences is a necessary academic task and a vital pursuit in advocacy.

1.2 Research Questions and Aims

This thesis investigates the university experience of 21 contemporary Christian cis women.

The primary research question that this thesis answers is: What patterns and processes can be identified in emerging Christian women’s gender and faith identity and praxis amidst the multiple transitions of crafting ‘home’ at university;

and to what extent are these women able to reflect upon and be intentional about their transitions? I understand ‘intentional’ to denote beliefs or praxis that are deliberate, reflexive, or considered; that suggest or require awareness of self, others or the world; and that are articulated coherently, at least to some extent.

Five broader lines of enquiry sharpen my focus, with the following sub-questions:

1. What are the significant factors that facilitate and hinder women’s crafting of home? How do women understand and negotiate these factors?

2. How do women describe and experience their faith identity and praxis at university?

3. How do women describe and experience their gender identity and praxis at university?

4. To what extent do women understand and experience their gender and faith identities as distinct or interrelated?

5. In what ways are women’s gender and faith shaped by their transitions? And how do gender and faith influence these transitions?

7 Neoliberalism, post-feminism and emerging adulthood are all defined in section 1.3.

8 More is said about the aims of women’s advocacy and empowerment in Chapter Three.

9 Cisgender is a term for people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth. A cis woman is someone who identifies as a woman and was assigned female at birth. The term cisgender is the opposite of the word transgender. I did not deliberately exclude transgender women from this research, however none came forward as participants.

5 This thesis evolved from a desire to understand the nature of Christian students’

transitionings for women leaving the familial home for the first time. The influential process of leaving home to study at university involves abrupt transitions whereby emerging adults reassess their identities, including their gender and faith identities.

At university, students encounter new opportunities and diverse experiences, and they make decisions that shape their emerging selves.

Patterns of mature faith are established or resisted, often setting the course for the rest of their adult lives.

Yet very little research has been conducted with emerging Christian women at

university. Little is known about how women students navigate decisions, how they understand their challenges and, in particular, the role of gender and faith in these transitions. This thesis addresses such gaps in knowledge, contributing to theories of transition, faith and identity development, the student experience, and gender performance for emerging adults. These gaps need bridging if women are to be nurtured and supported in their experiences, and able to flourish within the church.

Therefore, further aims of this thesis are to offer academic relevance in these fields, to present practical implications for those who minister with Christian women, as well as to prompt further research into the lives of emerging women.

1.3 Rationale and Context for the Study

What good … when women are sent out into a world in which they cannot possibly win!

This study is situated within feminist practical theology. Woodward and Pattison describe the starting point of practical theology as any practical concern located

10 See A Dinham, Faith and the Social Capital after the Debt Crisis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 9; L Woodhead, ‘Foreword: Chaplaincy and the Future of Religion’, in A Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies: Understanding Spiritual Care in Public Places, ed. by M Cobb, C Swift, and A Todd (Farnham:

Ashgate, 2015), pp. xvii–xxii.

11 S Parks, The Critical Years: The Young Adult Search for a Faith to Live By (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).

12 N Morton, The Journey Is Home (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985), p. xx.

6 within everyday lives that demands increased attention.

Practical theology is not an applied area of enquiry, involving application of an argument or supposition to Christianity order to measure its validity. Rather, practical theology is practical and theological through and through, beginning with a problem or question about the lives of ‘ordinary Christians’

and pursued with the aim of facilitating discipleship.

Practical theology ‘should be a public undertaking in pursuit of the common good’,

both emerging from and directly relevant to the faith lives of believers. As Browning observes, it is easy to take faith practices ‘for granted, and … never take time to abstract the theory from the practice and look at something in itself’.

Yet Bass and Dykstra write that, as living human documents, the actions and beliefs of people of faith require attention since they hold ‘the knowledge of God’s grace that is at the heart of Christian existence’. ‘This life-giving knowledge’, they continue, ‘… is gained through forms of active and receptive participations’ through which Christians respond to God’s grace, and is enacted in specific practices ‘that cannot be reduced to words’.

This chapter now gives two contexts for practical theological consideration:

emerging Christian women in higher education; and the post-feminist culture. It will then briefly present feminist practical theology as the rationale for this study.

1.3.1 Higher Education and Emerging Christian Women

In this thesis, I take the Christian faith lives of emerging women at university as the primary area of concern. Until recently, university students in England were middle

13 J Woodward and S Pattison, The Blackwell Reader in Pastoral and Practical Theology (Oxford:

Blackwell, 2000), pp. 202–4.

14 J Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).

15 Z Bennett et al, Invitation to Research in Practical Theology (London: Routledge, 2018), p. 23.

16 D Browning, Practical Theology: The Emerging Field in Theology, Church and World (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 6; see also J Hull, What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning?

(London: SCM Press, 1985).

17 D C Bass and C Dykstra, ‘In Anticipation’, in For Life Abundant: Practical Theology, Theological Education, and Christian Ministry, ed. by D C Bass and C Dykstra (Grand Rapids, MN: W. B. Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 355–60 (p. 358).

7 or upper-class young white men studying some geographical distance away from the familial home. Moving away to study was seen as a significant marker en route to elite male adulthood; shortly followed by marriage, buying a home and beginning a career. However, the nature of both university and adulthood have changed significantly in the last three decades in particular, and now university students are diverse in age, background and living arrangements. Moreover, young adults who do leave the familial home to attend university are unlikely to understand the move as a prerequisite for adulthood, but rather, as Arnett writes, may delay ‘maturity’

into their thirties, and never choose a marital partner, permanent home or singular career.

Arnett coins the term ‘emerging adulthood’ to portray the distinct period of individuation and identity exploration for those aged 18–30 in Western

countries.

Emerging identities – including the intersectional relationships between religious, gender, racial, classed and sexual identities

– come to the fore to be tested, reinvented and perhaps dismissed. I use the term ‘emerging Christian women’ to describe young female students in my research, demonstrating the students’ emerging both as Christians and as women, and the ways in which these were often intersectional processes.

For many emerging adults, university is a significant route for such identity consideration; however, the nature of universities is shifting within a neoliberal framework. Neoliberalism has been defined as:

18 J J Arnett, ‘Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens Through the Twenties’, American Psychologist, 55.5 (2000), 469–80; J J Arnett, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

19 There is debate about the extent to which the term ‘emerging adulthood’ is universal, and more work is needed to understand the lives of young adults around the world, as well as non-privileged young adults in the West. See for example R Perrin, Changing Shape: The Faith Lives of Millennials (London: SCM Press, 2020), pp. 5–6.

20 See for example E S Abes, ‘Constructivist and Intersectional Interpretations of a Lesbian College Student’s Multiple Social Identities’, The Journal of Higher Education, 83.2 (2012), 186–216.

8 a value system in which the economic has replaced the intellectual and political and in which the competitive, rational individual predominates over the collective.

Neoliberalization encourages individualism and emphasizes self-management, influencing policies and structures governing institutions and social-cultural attitudes through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For higher education,

neoliberalism prompted a significant rise in tuition fees in England in 2012,

positioning graduate education in transactional terms with students as customers to satisfy. In this narrative, universities merely provide students with the skills

necessary for societal economic growth.

This is in opposition to Newman’s insistence that universities develop the spiritual, emotional and social as well as academic constituents of human beings,

and must be concerned with ‘true enlargement of mind’.

Unsurprisingly, recent decades have seen a flurry of

theological critique of such a culture in higher education, proposing the necessity of universities in forming Christian wisdom and good, as well as being contexts for human flourishing. Such literature demands transformation of the structures and cultures that govern higher education in the UK and asks what a quintessentially Christian university might look like.

21 A Phipps and I Young, ‘Neoliberalisation and "Lad Cultures” in Higher Education’, Sociology, 49.2 (2015), 305–22 (p. 306).

22 See for example H A Giroux, ‘Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere’, Harvard Educational Review, 72.4 (2002), 425–63.

23 J H Newman, The Idea of a University (London: Baronius Press, 2006).

24 J H Newman quoted in A MacIntyre, ‘The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman and Us’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 57.4 (2009), 347–62 (p. 353). See also G Loughlin, ‘The

University Without Questions: John Henry Newman and Jacques Derrida on Faith in the University’, in The Idea of a Christian University, ed. by J Astley et al (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2004), pp. 113–31.

25 A selection of such literature includes M Higton, A Theology of Higher Education (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); S Heap, What Are Universities Good For? (Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd, 2012);

G D’Costa, ‘The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God’, Pro Ecclesia, 20.3 (2011), 312–16; D Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); R Williams, ‘Faith in the University’, in Values in Higher Education, ed. by S Robinson and C Katulushi (St Brides Major: Aureus University of Leeds, 2005), pp. 24–35.

9 The area of faith belief and praxis provides a further locale for the identity

development of emerging adults. Studies show that emerging adults are increasingly turning away from church, with merely two to three per cent of 18–30 year olds regularly attending.

Large evangelical congregations, often heavily focused on and invested in student ministry, are an exception to this rule.

Nonetheless, for

religious students, higher education is a significant context in which faith and religion are enacted. Christianity at university has recently been brought to academic

attention particularly by Guest and colleagues in Christianity and the University Experience. The authors identify 51 per cent of all students in England as belonging at least nominally to the Christian tradition, a figure likely to be only slightly inflated when considered alongside other large-scale national surveys.

They label

Christians who attend church regularly both at university and at home as ‘active affirmers’, and my thesis is concerned largely with this category of students. Mayrl and Uecker argue that students join a multiplicity of ‘moral communities’ in

sustaining their religious beliefs, including churches and Christian student societies.

Rather than students leaving behind their faith, scholars demonstrate that university environments are conducive to religious belief and practice.

For example, students are more likely to join a Christian congregation

or engage in evangelistic activities

than their non-student peers. However, faith communities are often ‘othered’ in academic discourses that emphasize objectivity, placing students’ faith in dichotomy with their studies.

The Religious Literacy project suggests that institutions must

26 Perrin, Changing Shape, p. x.

27 See P Brierley, Pulling Out of the Nose Dive (London: Christian Research, 2006).

28 From a survey of 4,341 students, 2,248 affiliated themselves with Christianity. With 1,594 students (34 per cent), the next biggest affiliation was with ‘no religion’. Of those Christians that responded, 40 per cent saw themselves as ‘religious’, 31 per cent as ‘spiritual not religious’, 15 per cent as

‘neither religious nor spiritual’, while 13 per cent were not sure. M Guest et al, Christianity and the University Experience: Understanding Student Faith (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. 33, 213–17.

29 D Mayrl and J Uecker, ‘Higher Education and Religious Liberalisation Among Young Adults’, Social Forces, 90.1 (2011), 181–208. See also C Smith and P Snell, Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 248–51; and Guest et al, p. 107.

30 J P Hill, ‘Faith and Understanding: Specifying the Impact of Higher Education on Religious Belief’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 50.3 (2011), 533–51.

31 Mayrl and Uecker.

32 I Fairweather, ‘Faith and the Student Experience’, in Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives, ed. by M Guest and E Arweck (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 39–55.

10 recognize and appreciate the influence and importance of religious activity in public spaces, including universities.

Chaplaincies have undertaken the role of enacting and co-ordinating religion on university campuses in the UK,

and there has been renewed interest in both the theology and practice of chaplaincy in the last decade.

While higher education chaplaincy only typically engages a small percentage of a student population,

it can be profoundly transformative for those students who do encounter their

chaplaincy.

In addition to offering pastoral care and community building activities on the ground, chaplaincies have a responsibility to the institutions they serve to encourage reflection on ‘the purpose of human existence, the wider good of society and the transformation of unjust structures’.

It is these very questions that often preoccupy emerging adults in their attempts to make meaning of themselves and the world.

33 A Dinham and S H Jones, Religious Literacy in Higher Education: An Analysis of Challenges of Religious Faith, and Resources for Meeting Them, For University Leaders, Religious Literacy Leadership in Higher Education Programme (York: York St John University, 2010).

34 However, it is important to remember that chaplaincies are not the only place that religion is expressed on campus. J Clines, ‘Education Chaplaincy’, in A Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies:

Understanding Spiritual Care in Public Places, ed. by C Swift, M Cobb, and A Todd (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 283–300 (p. 295).

35 See for example K Aune, M Guest, and J Law, ‘Chaplains on Campus: Understanding Chaplaincy in UK Universities’ (Coventry University, Durham University, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2019);

R C Williams, A Theology for Chaplaincy: Singing Songs in a Strange Land (Cambridge: Grove Books Ltd, 2018); A Christian Theology of Chaplaincy, ed. by J Caperon, A Todd, and J Walters (London:

Jessica Kingsley, 2018); A Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies: Understanding Spiritual Care in Public Places, ed. by C Swift, M Cobb, and A Todd (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015); B Ryan, ‘A Very Modern Ministry: Chaplaincy in the UK’ (Theos Think Tank, 2015).

36 See for example P McGrail and J Sullivan, Dancing on the Edge: Chaplaincy, Church and Higher Education (Chelmsford, Essex: Matthew James Publishing, 2007); S Robinson, Ministry Among Students: A Pastoral Theology and Handbook for Practice (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2004); M J Cartledge and D Colley, ‘University Chaplaincy: A Question of Identity and Relevance’, Contact, 1.35 (2001), 29–37; S Robinson and M Benwell, ‘Christian Chaplaincy in the Post-Modern University’, Modern Believing, 41.1 (1999), 31–43.

37 C Moody, ‘Spirituality and Sector Ministry’, in Chaplaincy: The Church’s Sector Ministries, ed. by G Legood (London: Cassell, 1999), pp. 15–24.

38 R C Williams, p. 14.

11 1.3.2 Post-feminism

Gendered experiences have largely been ignored in research with students in their transitions,

including research with Christian students.

Yet the emerging women in my research lived, studied and practiced their faith in a culture saturated with post-feminist narratives and assumptions,

and so I take this as a further context requiring practical theological attention. Perrin outlines three main understandings of post-feminism: a backlash against feminism as outdated and irrelevant; a

historical shift in third wave feminism, focused on individual experience and empowerment rather than political change and solidarity; and an ambiguous neoliberal view of gender equality where ‘[f]eminist values are both endorsed and rejected simultaneously’.

Post-feminist culture emphasizes youthfulness and

‘common sense’ egalitarianism, while feminism is considered outdated and irrelevant.

Lewis and her colleagues differentiate between post-feminism as a theoretical perspective and post-feminism as a cultural discursive strategy. They argue that post-feminism is sometimes regarded as a ‘moderate feminism’ as opposed to an ‘excessive feminism’ that unnecessarily focuses on ‘mutual struggle, communal relations … [and] collective solutions’.

Critics of post-feminism

convincingly point out that women’s equality is far from achieved. Instead, they critique what they call choice equality, which for McRobbie and Levy involves pole

39 See Chapter Two for a further discussion of gender ignorance in studies of student identity development.

40 For example, Guest and colleagues include questions about attitudes to gender equality, and consider gender as a differentiating factor amongst Christian students. However, they do not include discussion about gendered experiences within Christian or university subcultures. See Guest et al, pp.

178–86. Most studies offer little discussion of gender at all.

41 The influence of post-feminist culture on the lives of the students in this study is given particular consideration in Chapter Six.

42 R Perrin, The Bible Reading of Young Evangelicals: An Exploration of the Ordinary Hermeneutics and Faith of Generation Y (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), pp. 178–79; see also S Genz, ‘Third Way/ve: The Politics of Postfeminism’, Feminist Theory, 7.3 (2006), 333–53.

43 Y Tasker and D Negra, ‘Introduction’, in Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, ed. by Y Tasker and D Negra (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 1–26 (p.

11); C Scharff, Repudiating Feminism (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 9–10. For an example of post- feminist thought, see R Denfeld, The New Victorians: A Young Woman’s Challenge to the Old Feminist Order (New York: Warner Books, 1995).

44 P Lewis, Y Benschop, and R Simpson, ‘Postfeminism, Gender and Organisation’, Gender, Work and Organisation, 24.3 (2017), 213–25 (p. 217).

12 dancing, reading Playboy and being ‘empowered enough to get Brazilian bikini

waxes’.

Two of the most entrenched principles of post-feminism are gender essentialism and consumerist bodily femininity. Feminist research from the 1970s onwards argues that gender roles are a social construction rather than a biological inevitability, created by the structural injustice of sexism.

However, this knowledge is not demonstrated in popular culture. Redfern and Aune argue that while

chromosomally, women and men are approximately five per cent different, media and popular culture ‘encourage viewers to see these differences as “real” and essential in nature’.

In reclaiming language of the ‘feminine’ and its place within so-called ‘feminism’, post-feminism portrays ‘gender differences [as] hard-wired into us as a product of evolution’.

While all four waves of feminism have fought to equalize the roles, rights and experiences of women with men, popular culture has succeeded in increasing polarity between genders, prescribing women a heightened, specifically bodily, femininity.

Gill argues that the emergence of femininity as a bodily property involved a shift in the male gaze, from women’s presentation in past media as ‘passive, mute objects’

to their current portrayal as ‘active, desiring sexual subjects who choose to present themselves in a seemingly objectified manner because it suits their liberated interests to do so’.

While previously defined by motherhood or caring, femininity is recast by post-feminism as ‘a bodily property’, such that a ‘sexy body’ is a woman’s primary source of identity.

Gill and Scharff identify ‘neoliberal feminism’,

embodied by a self-managing individualism and the requirement on women to

45 A McRobbie, ‘Post-Feminism and Popular Culture’, Feminist Media Studies, 4.3 (2004), 255–64; A Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (New York: Free Press, 2005), p.

3 italics author’s own.

46 N Slee, Faith and Feminism: An Introduction to Christian Feminist Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003), p. 3.

47 C Redfern and K Aune, Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today (London: Zed Books, 2013), p. 181.

48 Redfern and Aune, p. 183.

49 R Gill, ‘Postfeminism Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10.2 (2007), 147–66 (p. 151).

50 Gill, ‘Postfeminism Media Culture’, p. 149.

13 choose to transform and reinvent their bodily appearance. Women’s ‘self as

project’

is a mainstream narrative in popular media culture, especially targeting emerging women whose ‘sexual identities are formed through consumption in the service of fashion and beauty focused body products’.

At university, post-feminism plays a determining role in the increase and normalization of ‘lad culture’, and in the lack of serious or urgent response to sexual harassment.

Morton’s challenge quoted at the start of this section is 35 years old, yet universities continue to send women out into a world that offers them a narrow range of options and in which they are routinely discriminated against.

1.3.3 Feminist Practical Theology

In practical theology, faith and praxis operate in a constant dialectical relationship, acting as a catalyst for transformation, most especially the liberation of the

oppressed and marginalized. In this cyclical relationship ‘[t]ruth is encountered and demonstrated in praxis, and it is praxis which validates theology’.

McBride argues that in the historical ‘person and praxis of Jesus are found the grounds of human liberation from all oppression and discrimination’, which enables ‘transforming the human situation’.

In attending to the faith lives of emerging women at university in the context of debilitating post-feminism, feminist practical theology offers a lens that both takes seriously the experiences of the ‘ordinary’ cis women involved in this research, and critiques the androcentric structures that govern their lives. Graham argues that

51 Tasker and Negra, ‘Introduction’, p. 21.

52 A Phipps and G Smith, ‘Violence Against Women Students in the UK: Time to Take Action’, Gender and Education, 24.4 (2012), 357–73 (p. 358).

53 Phipps and Young, ‘Neoliberalisation and "Lad Cultures”’.

54 D Forrester, Forrester on Christian Ethics and Practical Theology: Collected Writings on Theology, India and the Social Order (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 144.

55 M McBride, ‘Praxis’, in An A to Z of Feminist Theology, ed. by L Isherwood and D McEwan (Sheffield:

Sheffield University Press, 1996), pp. 183–85 (p. 184).

14 practical theology, in the pursuit of ‘transforming practice’

and in response to such feminist critique, places women’s often marginal experiences centrally.

This practice is then ‘a key agent in communicating theology to the world but also a potential channel for theological revision in the light of experience’.

Such theology refutes gender essentialism, yet claims the particularities of women as significant in understanding the nature of God and the world, together with their intersectional identities as women of diverse classes, races, ages, sexualities, abilities and faiths. In turn, qualitative research into women’s faith lives has thus increased, especially with the publication of Slee’s foundational reframing of faith development theories.

Study of emerging women remains marginal within this qualitative field, although considerable groundwork includes Phillips’ study with Christian girls, Wasey’s research with young Anglican women and Perrin’s investigations with evangelical emerging adults.

This thesis contributes to the field of feminist practical theology by bringing 21 emerging Christian women’s lives into the spotlight, deepening understanding of women’s lived faith in transitional times.

1.4 Home-ing

Home is a dominant metaphor in this thesis, drawn from the women’s narrative as I will demonstrate. My understanding of home is neither static nor permanent.

Rather, home-ing involves the fluid and dynamic processes of both leaving and

56 E Graham, Transforming Practice: Pastoral Theology in an Age of Uncertainty (London: Mowbray, 1996).

57 E Graham, ‘Feminist Theory’, in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, ed. by B Miller-McLemore (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2012), pp. 193–203 (p. 198).

58 Graham, Transforming Practice, p. 129.

59 N Slee, Women’s Faith Development: Patterns and Processes (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). Also see Porter’s study of women’s faith in Northern Ireland, published in the same year. F Porter, It Will Not Be Taken Away from Her: A Feminist Engagement with Women’s Christian Experience (London:

Darton, Longman and Todd, 2004).

60 A Phillips, The Faith of Girls: Children’s Spirituality and Transition to Adulthood (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); K Wasey, ‘Being in Communion: Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion in Young Lay Women’s Experiences of the Eucharist in the Church of England’, in The Faith Lives of Women and Girls, ed. by N Slee, F Porter, and A Phillips (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 65–76; R Perrin, ‘Searching for Sisters: The Influence of Biblical Role Models on Young Women from Mainstream and Charismatic Evangelical Traditions’, in The Faith Lives of Women and Girls, ed. by N Slee, F Porter, and A Phillips (Farnham:

Ashgate, 2013), pp. 111–19; Perrin, Bible Reading of Young Evangelicals.

15 making home. It includes crafting physical and emotional spaces that are home enough and home-like. Such homes are temporary, and connected to both past and future homes.

Home-ing is the narrative ‘throughline’

woven into this thesis, a single thread to which everything else is connected. It is kinetic rather than static, fluid rather than fixed, evoking a train-track along which this thesis will travel rather than a permanent base on which it is built. The home-ing that is presented in this thesis is not a reinforcing of traditional stereotypes that determine women’s place to be within the domestic sphere, nor is it a mirroring of the quintessential young man’s journey from home to find himself, as seen in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.

In the Christian tradition, there are three different yet connected theologies of God’s relationship with home. The first two are defined by movement or journeying. The first is that God sends God’s people away from home on a journey of discovery, and danger is often involved. Biblical exemplars of this journeying include Hagar, Ruth and Naomi, and Jonah. One could argue that faith is first conceived in the Bible when Sarai and Abram are called to leave behind their home of Harran. Secondly, God is the one who draws Christians towards home. Just as students are

transitioning away from home but awaiting their mature and adult home, so too Christians understand themselves to live in transitional, in-between times, actively waiting for the eternal now-but-not-yet of the Kin-dom, the ultimate Home.

This destination is often understood as an afterlife in heaven. As is sung in the classic hymn, Amazing Grace: ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home’.

In God’s grace, Christians are to make their home safe upon the earth.

61 For more on students experiences of their accommodation at university, see L Kenyon, ‘A Home from Home: Students’ Transitional Experience of Home’, in Ideal Homes? Social Change and the Experience of Home, ed. by T Chapman and J Hockey (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 84–95.

62 The concept of a ‘throughline’ is also used by Goto. See C T Goto, ‘The Ubiquity of Ignorance: A Practical Theological Challenge of Our Time’, Practical Theology, 13.1–2 (2020), 138–49.

63 See Luke 15:11–32 and J Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. by W R Owens, New (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

64 ‘Kin-dom’ is used here as a non-hierarchical, egalitarian variation on the biblical ‘Kingdom of God’.

The term was first coined by Isasi-Díaz. A M Isasi-Díaz, ‘Solidarity: Love of Neighbour in the 1980s’, in Lift Every Voice: Constructing Christian Theologies from the Underside, ed. by S Brooks Thistlethwaite and M Potter Engel (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1990), pp. 31–40.

65 Words by John Newton (1725-1807).

16 Yet they are also invited to a greater homecoming, a place of joy and eternity with the divine. As Nouwen writes about the prodigal son parable, ‘God is not the patriarch who stays home … [God] leaves the house … God is looking into the

distance for me, trying to find me, and longing to bring me home’.

This longing, he continues, ‘is the love that always welcomes home and always wants to celebrate’.

These two journeying motifs however are not only significant for Christians. Stories of unlikely heroes beginning their salvific yet perilous journeys by first leaving home populate wider literature and cinema;

including Dorothy and Toto, Frodo and Sam, Harry Potter, and Disney’s Belle and Jasmine. While all these characters leave home and make new homes elsewhere, all also return home in some form, suggesting the dual sending-and-calling of home.

Thirdly, God is understood as humanity’s home – all dwell in God and God dwells in them in an iterative, constant relationship. As Jesus states in the gospel of John:

‘Make your home in me, as I make mine in you’.

Julian of Norwich describes such intimacy and familiarity between God and humanity, believing that ‘we shall, in love, be homely and near to God’. She describes this as a great mystery, whereby God

‘who is highest and mightiest, noblest and worthiest, is the lowest and

meekest, homeliest’.

Moltmann draws a theological comparison between a child’s nurturing home and the mutual indwelling between God and humanity.

It is this third and final understanding that resonates most with this thesis’ throughline. In God, home-ing involves living in safety, exploring with playfulness, and becoming in joy. However, to refer to God in a homely way is not something that can be applied uncritically. Can all people be safe in one home? If so, what kind of home might God be? If God is home for some, who then are excluded? And if God is home, why have

66 H Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1994), p. 106.

67 Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 109.

68 This observation was first made most clearly in Joseph Campbell’s classic text, J Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 1st edn (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949).

69 John 15:4-5 The Jerusalem Bible.

70 Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love Recorded by Julian, Anchoress at Norwich, trans. by G Warrack (London: Methuen and Company, 1901), pp. 17, 182 italics author’s own.

71 J Moltmann, In The End – The Beginning: The Life of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), p. 16.

17 churches excluded and damaged so many for so long? These questions and more are in the background throughout this thesis and returned to again in its conclusion.

Home has been explored by many different theological and developmental authors.

One etymological branch of the word ‘home’ is hearth, the warmest place in the house, where children take their first steps and inherit their familial stories, where ideally all learn to inhabit the world and their own skin. Parks defines home as

‘where we start from [and] what we aspire to’. She continues,

To be at home is to have a place in the scheme of life – a place where we are comfortable; know that we belong; can be who we are and can honour, protect and create what we truly love.

For hooks, home is ‘the most intimate context’ for learning both ‘coercive

domination’, including sexism, and ‘care and connection’. She argues that the dual urge to promote and inhibit growth ‘provides a practical setting for feminist critique, resistance and transformation’.

Home then is a place where the self can be first understood and tested. It is also the place where initial processes of faith

development occur, in relationship with God and significant others. For Quash, to be home is to abide somewhere with a particular group of someones, in turn enabling a

‘transformative abiding with God and oneself’.

Brueggemann argues that homefulness is the God-given expression of Christian vocation, counteracting homelessness whereby orphans and outsiders are abandoned and excluded.

Homefulness then is an ethic of care beyond one’s immediate family to include all who stray from home. The extent to which women at university are student-orphans far from home, without the support and resources

72 S Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Young Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2000), p. 34.

73 b hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1989), p. 21.

74 B Quash, Abiding: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s 2013 Lent Book (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), p.

14.

75 W Brueggemann, The Practice of Homefulness (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014).

18 to craft a new home, is considered in this thesis. To be unhome is to be unable to craft a safe home; to be vulnerable, overwhelmed and lonely; and to lack the confidence or awareness to understand or interpret one’s own experiences. If someone is unhome in their life or faith, what can a model of Home-ing or a homely God have to offer them?

1.5 Thesis Synopsis

In addition to introductory and concluding chapters, this thesis is divided into three Parts, each with two chapters. Part I outlines my theoretical framework and

methodology, while Parts II and III discuss my analysis of data.

This chapter has set out the beginnings of the research, including my personal and professional experience and my passion for working with both women and Christian students. I have presented the research questions and the aims of the thesis. I then located these questions within the contexts of emerging adulthood and post-

feminism at university and introduced feminist practical theology as the lens through which the research takes place. Lastly, I introduced home-ing as the throughline of my thesis, with homefulness as the aspiration towards which it moves.

Following on from this introduction, Part I presents the theoretical and

methodological scaffold I have created for this work. Chapter Two weaves together my theoretical framework, presenting my engagement with interdisciplinary

literature on emerging adults’ transitions, faith, identity and gender. Chapter Three presents the feminist qualitative methodology that I use in this thesis. I offer the guiding ethical principles that inform the research and set out my feminist approach to methods in its design. I spell out the processes of data production and analysis, and I reflect upon the ‘cyclical way of thinking, movement and writing’

that this thesis has taken.

76 Morton, p. xx.

19 In Parts II and III, I report my key arguments through the intertwining of relevant literature (including that presented in Chapter Two), my own normative analyses, and the women’s words and meanings. The two chapters of Part II concentrate on the transitions from home to home. Firstly, Chapter Four outlines the experiences and priorities of the women as they ‘leave’ the familial home in their first term at university and builds a picture of traumatic transitioning. It clarifies further what I mean by home, and the identity work that takes place amidst the emerging Christian women’s transitionings in their new environment. Chapter Five is structured

according to the three strands of safety, exploration and becoming, each demonstrating strategies that the women created in order to make home at

university. The chapter describes how the women embraced difference, integrated their university study into their ways of knowing, and increased in confidence and awareness.

Part III focuses on the influences of faith and gender within the women’s

transitionings. Chapter Six presents specifically gendered beliefs and experiences. It details the women’s struggles to articulate the impact of gender while describing instances when being a woman at university was a difficult undertaking in their post- feminist context. The focus of this chapter is on the women’s search for safety as it demonstrates the difficulty of making home in their own skin at university.

However, I also present the women’s tentative explorations and becoming through engaging with the intersection of their gender and faith. In Chapter Seven I present the role played by faith in the creation of safety, undertaking of exploration and embrace of becoming. I demonstrate how the women engaged creatively with their faith in their home-ing as emerging Christian women at university.

Finally, my closing chapter returns to the research questions set out in this

introduction, first answering the sub-questions. In answering the main question, I

present a model of Home-ing for emerging Christian women at university, structured

as five connecting rooms in which the women dwell and through which they move. I

then reflect on the academic contribution of my study to its primary contexts of

20

student ministry, feminist practical theology, and theories of transition, going on to

offer pastoral implications and suggest topics for further research. Lastly, I offer a

theological response on the metaphors used for God in the light of the women’s

transitionings and the throughline of home-ing.

21

PART I

Theoretical and Methodological Framework

Introduction to Part I

In Chapter One, I introduced the beginnings of this thesis and set out its aims and rationale. I presented the various contexts in which emerging women transitioning at university find themselves, including emerging adulthood, post-feminism and student Christianity. I introduced ‘home-ing’ as the throughline along which this thesis travels. Part I now moves on to outline the theoretical and methodological framework of the study. First, in Chapter Two, I weave a tapestry-like dialogue between relevant yet disparate theories, hinting gently at my own empirical research and argument. I prioritize studies on transitioning, gender, identity and emerging adults, building upon the contexts already presented. Then, Chapter Three outlines my methodology, including the feminist principles that shape the research.

I present the research design, from locating women students, through data

production, into my analysis. These two chapters together establish a robust

framework within which this thesis sits, and from which Parts II and III will flow.

22

Chapter Two

Theoretical Framework

2.1 Introduction

This chapter creates a theoretical framework for the thesis, introducing the most germane conversation partners for my research. I utilize a wide range of theories, weaving a tapestry-like pattern by which to study young Christian women and their multiple transitions at university. No single theory provides a full rationale for my research, therefore the aim here is to weave a framework that can support and contain the various elements of the thesis.

Weaving is a widely utilized metaphor in feminist theology.

For Daly, weaving constructs ‘Women’s Space’, contexts whereby women create together with autonomy.

Weavers discover other worlds for women, seeing and ‘spelling out’

connections with intuition and integrity.

Weavers ‘convey … essential clues to their sisters’ in the rhythmic movement of ‘weaving around’ a subject.

For Christ,

weaving is a metaphorical connection between women and their foremothers’

creative work and power.

Spinning thread apposite for weaving produces a ‘loosely coiled’ design ‘skein’, involving organic yet purposeful ‘twistings and contortions’.

1 See for example H Collins, ‘Weaving a Web: Developing a Feminist Practical Theology Methodology from a Charismatic Perspective’, in Researching Female Faith: Qualitative Research Methods, ed. by N Slee, F Porter, and A Phillips (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 54–69; P Couture, ‘Weaving the Web: Pastoral Care in an Individualistic Society’, in Through the Eyes of Women: Insights for Pastoral Care, ed. by J Stevenson-Moessner (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 94–106; Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality, ed. by J Plaskow and C Christ (New York: Harper Collins, 1989); C M Smith, Weaving the Sermon: Preaching in a Feminist Perspective (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1989).

2 M Daly, Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1987), p. 101 authors’ own capitalization.

3 Daly, pp. 44, 87, 92.

4 Daly, p. 16.

5 C Christ, ‘Weaving the Fabric of Our Lives’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 13.1 (1997), 131–

36.

6 Daly, pp. xix, 164.