Date
4-29-2026
Department
Rawlings School of Divinity
Degree
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (EdD)
Chair
Mary Lowe
Keywords
calling, leadership, women, ministry
Disciplines
Christianity | Educational Leadership
Recommended Citation
Hamer, Genevieve M., "A Phenomenological Study of Cultural Tightness Impacting Lived Experiences of Female Leaders in United Methodist Churches" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 8260.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/8260
Abstract
Gender equality captures the news highlights. Women push to assume roles similar in pay, power, and significance in all types of organizations as their male peers. It is hard to ignore this when it comes to the matter of biblical calling and the roles of women in church leadership. Researchers have devoted hours to the topic of calling. This study examined calling as it relates to the biblical call towards a vocation. While there are different theological positions regarding the roles of women in the church, scholars agree there is such a thing as a biblical calling. Even in egalitarian churches where women are afforded the opportunity to assume the same roles as their male peers, senior leadership consists of only a small percentage of women. While some literature speculates on the reasons behind this inequity, it appears that there is a gap in the research when it comes to the Theory of Cultural Tightness and its correlation to this issue. Cultural tightness is connected to a society’s inability to deviate from the norm. Qualitative research focuses on (a) focus on a phenomenon that is occurring or has occurred in a natural setting, and (b) involve capturing and studying the same (Leedy & Ormrod, 2019). Within the realm of qualitative research, phenomenology delves into individual perception of the meanings of events opposed the external event itself (Leedy & Ormrod, 2019) This qualitative phenomenological study addressed the lived experiences of women called into leadership in the United Methodist Church in central North Carolina and analyzed the correlation of their perceptions of how cultural tightness impacted that calling. The implications and findings indicated that cultural tightness does still exist in central North Carolina, and most of the participants in this study have been impacted by its adverse effects.
