In South Africa, female ministers have a message: It’s time for equality

Growing up, Purity Malinga’s faith taught her that God was perfect.

But the people who believed in Him, she soon realized, were not. 

This, after all, was apartheid South Africa, and no matter how equally God saw her, she was still a Black woman in a world where both her race and her gender were strikes against her.

So when she took the pulpit last September as the first woman elected to lead the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, she addressed members bluntly.

“The humanity of women is diminished every day in our society and in churches,” the presiding bishop-elect said. “If indeed we believe as church we are called to proclaim the gospel that heals and transforms, it is time to act.”