Mother knows best: How listening to Dutch Christian mothers can change the way we look at religion, calling, and self-sacrifice.

Abstract

This thesis aims to provide an account of the lived experiences of Dutch Christian women. It examines their intersections of gender, age, class, and ethnicity within the specific contexts of motherhood and religion. The research draws upon work of Saba Mahmood, Sarah Bracke and Dawn Llewellyn, as well as other feminist theorists. It provides an overview of the Dutch religious context, after which it illustrates how the current research has come to existence as an intervention to the separation between feminist theory and religion studies. The daily experiences of motherhood and faith are analyzed through the concepts of agency, calling, and self-sacrifice. This thesis considers how the accounts of Dutch Christian women can inform the definitions of agency, calling, and self-sacrifice.