Renegotiating submission: gendered authority in African diasporic Pentecostal churches in the United Kingdom

Introduction This paper examines how African diasporic believers negotiate doctrines of wifely obedience and male headship in Pentecostal and related Christian contexts in the United Kingdom. Methods Drawing on an interpretive literature synthesis informed by Critical Interpretive Synthesis, the paper brings empirical studies, African women’s theologies, African masculinities scholarship, and diaspora theory into dialogue, focusing primarily on West African (Ghanaian and Nigerian) cohorts in Britain. Results The paper develops three ideal-typical analytical constructs: strategic compliance (exercising informal authority within structures), subversive reinterpretation (re-reading submission through mutuality and Christological responsibility), and structural refusal (challenging, leaving, or reconstructing institutions). Discussion These constructs provide a framework for analysing how gendered religious authority is negotiated under conditions of migration, racialisation, and institutional precarity.