MUJERES METODISTAS EN LEÓN, GUANAJUATO - MÉXICO: LIDERAZGOS EN MOVIMIENTO

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to reflect on the Methodist feminine leadership in the city of León, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, identifying the mechanisms that women construct in order to manage and harness greater room for action and recognition within their church. Guanajuato is a state situated in the center west of Mexico, characterized by a strong catholic conservatism, in which protestant groups have had to adapt their evangelizing ways. Such is the case of Methodist women, who carry out a “leadership in movement”, since, regardless of the place they occupy in the ecclesiastic hierarchy, they transcend the norms and the religious discourse on what the feminine “should be”, establishing evangelization strategies linked to the management of their emotions, through which they show the inequalities that they experience, both inside and outside their church. Spatial mobility was important in order to understand their participation, so it was necessary to resort to a methodology that would allow me to account for the scope of the female Methodist activity, such as multisited ethnography. This enabled different dimensions of observation, adding to the analysis a macro and micro vision of the Methodist women's leadership in León, Guanajuato, Mexico.