Words Make Worlds: sexuality, discourse, and the production of knowledge in the Anglican Church of Rwanda

This dissertation examines the role played by language and discourse in generating new concepts of homosexuality in the Anglican Church of Rwanda (ACR). By means of identifying and analysing Rwandan Anglican sexuality discourse, this dissertation locates as the source of such language a particular conservative discursive world within the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA) and proceeds to analyse how this discourse has evolved and developed since its introduction into Rwanda in the mid-2000s. At the heart of this study is therefore the contention that words themselves have played a vital role in creating new conceptions of homosexuality, and that by paying attention to language itself, and in particular to the rules of formation which generate and regulate Rwandan Anglican sexuality discourse itself, a more nuanced and detailed picture of cross-cultural exchange emerges. After discussing the importance of language in philosophical terms in the introduction, and detailing the history of language-use in the Rwandan Church in the second chapter, the main body of this dissertation turns its attention to the analysis of Rwandan Anglican sexuality discourse itself. It does this by means of identifying three key discursive regularities within Rwandan Anglican sexuality discourse: novelty, foreignness, and sin, and the three chapters at the heart of this dissertation analyse each of these regularities respectively. The dissertation finds that, by means of a relationship established between the ACR and American evangelicals in the early years of the 21st Century, a particular American anti-homosexual discourse arrived into the ACR and that once there, this emerging discourse was profoundly influenced by the politics of the genocide’s aftermath, and by the theological inheritance of the East African Revival. By means of focusing on language, this dissertation provides a fresh contribution to ongoing debates regarding global Anglican sexuality controversies by revealing the actual processes by which new ideas and concepts are exchanged across the Anglican Communion. The dissertation therefore concludes by discussing the relevance of my research to contemporary academic debates before offering some thoughts on the implications of my research for intra-Anglican sexuality debates themselves. If, as this dissertation argues, words themselves are part of the problem, then so too might they be part of the solution.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Bagnall, David

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Maxwell, David

• Anglicanism
• Discourse
• East African Revival
• Episcopal Church
• Evangelicalism
• Genocide
• Hermeneutics
• Reconciliation
• Revival
• Rwanda
• Sexuality

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/6e678f0b-0306-4a8e-be72-85ab9d634403/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.104354

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/361586