ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Malawian and Scottish Presbyterian missionary approaches to dance and to the spiritual authority of Malawian women within the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, which uncovers wide-ranging attitudes among both Scottish missionaries and Malawians towards the body, gender, and religion as expressed through dance. For Malawians and Scottish missionaries, dance and gender were contested sites within the Presbyterian churches in southern Malawi right from the late nineteenth through to the mid-twentieth centuries, and some people would contend that various manifestations of the controversies have continued on into the twenty-first century. Apart from dance, another equally disconcerting notion for these early Scottish missionaries was the idea of spiritual authority embodied in an African woman. As long as the body arouses emotional responses, religion incites debate, and women struggle for equality, gender and dance within religious contexts will continue to provide sites of contestation around the globe.
