Gracious encounters: listening to women who listen for God
This research explores how older women have been empowered by their religious faith to survive losses and crises in their lives. Using triangulated methodology, a feminist perspective and a theoretical orientation based on symbolic interactionism, the researcher conducted focus groups and in-depth i...
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| Format: | Others |
| Language: | en |
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Virginia Tech
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10919/40282 http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-11082006-133623/ |
| Summary: | This research explores how older women have been empowered by their religious faith to survive losses and crises in their lives. Using triangulated methodology, a feminist perspective and a theoretical orientation based on symbolic interactionism, the researcher conducted focus groups and in-depth interviews with Lutheran women over 65 in the United States and Germany. She also kept a personal journal to record her reactions to the research experience.
Differences in the perception of how external factors influence resiliency as persons age have not always been taken into account in past studies of successful aging. This study confirmed that the way in which an older woman interprets her situation may be just as important as external factors. Her interpretation raises questions of meaning that are also questions of faith.
The study is specific to gender because often the voices of older women have been neither respected nor heard. It is specific to denomination because lack of denominational clarity in religion and aging research has, at times, prevented clear understanding of themes and images of spirituality. It is cross-cultural because variations in how women survive crises and reconstitute their sense of self after losses can be greatly influenced by the particular historic events and symbols of their culture.
Themes of community, affect, and relationality occurred repeatedly in the narratives of these older women. For them, a strong sense of community was integral to their spiritual strength, and provided worlds of meaning (Berger, 1967) not just avenues for social activity. The women had integrated affective aspects of their religious experiences with their daily lives, and were able both to feel and to express a wide range of human emotion. As expected, human relationships were important to the women's faith, but these relational interests were maturely integrated with traditional beliefs and with the capacity for on-going theological reflection. === Ph. D. |
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