Role strain among South African seminarians in the Anglican Church: toward a typology of congregational support

ABSTRACT

This phenomenological study explored student value perceptions of religious participation among nontraditional South African distance learners who persisted in theological distance education. Four basic types of churches emerged including the Equipping Church, the Empowering Church, the Engaging Church, and the Endangering Church. However, in examining religious coping strategies among South African distance learners, it was discovered that the four women interviewed experienced a deep sense of loneliness in their calling and had to rely almost exclusively on resources outside their local church. These Black South African women’s sense of being called alone is both inconsistent with the theoretical framework of role theory and the theological framework of the Anglican Church as expressed by the official Prayer Book.

KEYWORDS:

• Role strain
• pastoral care
• systems approach
• congregational support
• distance learning
• Parker's Ecumenical Typology of Ecclesiological Resources for Theological and Interfaith Distance Education (PETERTIDE)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Abraham David Parker http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0540-4392