Research in the Religious Realm: Intersectional Diversification and Dynamic Variances of Insider/Outsider Perspectives

This article discusses insider/outsider perspectives in qualitative research among religious people. Focus is on the insider researcher. Even if researcher and participants share the same overall religious adherence or are members of the same denomination, various factors can differentiate them substantially, affecting insider/outsider perspectives. The methodological implications of this phenomenon are drawn from research on the perception of gender roles among Mormon women in Belgium. The mutual perception of researcher and participant can influence the data collection phase as value-laden issues are being discussed. To ensure the validity and objectivity of research in this context, positionalities of researcher and participants need to be clearly defined and methodological safeguards put into place. The analysis of the interactions between researcher and participants led to the identification of seven intersecting insider/outsider perspectives: denominational, congregational, social, religious, topical, lingual, and academic. Moreover, as compound insider/outsider positions move on several continua, various factors can change the perspectives during interviews. This article adds to the methodology of qualitative research by uncovering perspectives which researchers can consider or adapt when interviewing religious participants.

The Woman’s Exponent

The Woman’s Exponent, published in Salt Lake City 1872-1914, aimed both to inform and assist Mormon women and to explain and defend them to the outside world. It consistently supported women’s suffrage. This chapter focuses on the Exponent’s strategies to defend both suffrage and the contentious church practice of polygamy through periods when all Utah women voted, when only those not involved in polygamy could vote, and when no Utah woman was allowed to vote. With Emmeline B. Wells, a church women’s leader, as its editor for 37 of its 42 years, the Exponent attempted to cover “every subject interesting and valuable to women,” but suffrage remained a significant goal. The chapter also discusses the Anti-Polygamy Standard, published 1880-83, which opposed suffrage for Mormon women, and Wells’s relationships with national suffrage organizations.