Florence Egbeyale

Florence Egbeyale’s dissertation examines how Indigenous Yoruba Christian midwives in Christ Apostolic Church of southwest Nigeria use medical expertise alongside the Bible in maternal healthcare to exercise religious authority within the church’s Faith Home maternity centers. She argues that the midwives claim authority through caregiving practices structured by Scripture, and their experiences as mothers themselves in ways resonant with those of the women they serve. In doing so, they challenge the rhetoric of women’s ecclesiastical passivity in ways hitherto overlooked in African feminist discourse. Rather than functioning merely as a religious artifact, Scripture in this respect operates as a social force instrumental in claims to authority both within and beyond the church. Egbeyale’s research complicates conventional assumptions about feminism, healthcare, and Indigeneity in African religions by foregrounding questions of authority, embodiment, health, and knowledge production in ways that bring religious studies, feminist discourse and the medical humanities into dialogue.