“A Weapon of Mass Destruction or Mass Salvation for Women in Africa?” African Pentecostal Women Scholars and the Bible

African scholars studying African Pentecostalism have drawn attention to the key role played by women, as well as the deployment of the Bible to determine the place of women in the movement. Our review of the literature shows that the Bible has been used to both promote the liberation and facilitate the marginalisation of African Pentecostal women. Using this frame, this chapter summarises the ambivalence of the Bible in the literature published by selected African women studying the Bible. The chapter examines the approaches employed by African women who study the Bible, locating them within either paradigm. However, it also problematises the paradigm by showing how sometimes the picture is more complicated as both the positive and the negative aspects of the Bible can be identified in the lives of African Pentecostal women. The chapter discusses the reflections by selected African women scholars and proposes strategies that could be utilised to promote life-giving interpretations of the Bible in the light of both liberative and gender troubling readings found in African Pentecostalism.