Blessings...
I originally put together this resource manual when I was a student at Duke Divinity School because I realized that you could enter the school, attend all the core classes, and never read any textbooks by women, study any historical figures that were women, and basically avoid any knowledge of the history, impact, and presence of women in the Church and ministry.
Prior to my arrival at Duke, I had attended a women's college where I had taken classes such as “Women and the Bible” and “Women and Christianity” which were taught by Gayle Felton. I had developed a rather extensive set of references and resource lists that incorporated both the historical female figures in the Church and the current scholarship authored by women.
Women's academic scholarship exploded in the 1980s. Female theologians, church historians, and biblical scholars were writing and being published at a unprecedented rate. However, while the number of books and articles written by women had increased exponentially on the academic scene, those titles had yet to “trickle down” into the classrooms and onto the syllabi of core curricula. In my first semester at Duke, I found myself sharing authors and resources with other students. Before I knew it I was being swamped with requests, particularly from other women students, for any information about the presence of women in the material we were covering in class. After a few semesters of handing out lists and bibliographies, I began to think that I should put this information in a more organized and unified form. The opportunity to do that arose when Mary McClintock Fulkerson and I decided to partner together during my senior year for an independent study that would provide, in one resource, exactly what I had been doing piecemeal for the past two years. Blessings was the result of my independent study.
Supplementing the academic experience of Duke Divinity School was not the only reason I embarked on the project. I worked at the University's Women's Center (while it was located in the Bryan Center and then through its move to Few Fed) during my years at Duke. Through that venue I discovered information related to both the campus and larger community that was not addressed in the orientation or atmosphere of the Divinity School . I added sections to the book that dealt with issues like violence against women and resources for living in the Triangle area of NC.
In the dozen or so years since I compiled the first edition of Blessings , I have been working in and around the Church, most specifically within the denominations of the United Methodist Church and the Uniting Church in Australia . I have listened to and observed women in a variety of ministry settings. I have been a pastor, a denominational consultant, a freelance missionary, and the director of several nonprofit organizations. I am currently serving my second two-year-term as Convenor of the women in ministry organization within my annual conference. I have had many opportunities to talk to and work with women in ministry over the past dozen years. And I believe that though women have come a long way in some areas, there is plenty of territory left to cover.
Within my own denomination (UMC) we have seen the number of women elected to the episcopacy increase dramatically, as has the number of women serving as District Superintendents. What we have not seen is women pastoring large churches. Granted there are a few doing it, but most women remain pastors of very small (less than 200 members) congregations, leaving women earning less and reaching fewer people than their male peers.
This year, 2006, marks the 50th anniversary of women receiving full clergy rights in the United Methodist Church . My annual conference experienced the leadership of a female bishop for 8 years and has had many women serving on the Cabinet. That means there are congregations in our conference that have had, simultaneously, a female pastor, DS, and bishop: a remarkable circumstance unheard of even two dozen years ago in the Southeastern United States.
Despite the increased presence of women in the ministry, I still observe that women pastors are more likely to be depressed (both economically and psychologically) than our male colleagues. It is not enough for us to have a sisterhood of support in our districts, dioceses, and other mid-level judicatories. We have not achieved parity by any means within ministry as a profession.
It is no secret that congregations are hard on their clergy. The constant state of being “on-call” coupled with the assumption that you and your family will live your life “in a fishbowl” makes for long hours, privacy and other boundary violations, and a general sense of needing to be always available for any number of stressful and complicated situations. It is often a recipe for self-destruction and loss of one's own identity. Within every major denomination there are accountability protocols and procedures. Clergy are bound by ethical guidelines and disciplined accordingly, although the enforcement of those guidelines varies widely among denominations and judicatories. Congregations have no such accountability. Even within denominations with an episcopal form of government, congregations are able to get away with insidious acts of intolerance toward their pastoral leadership that go beyond disrespect and border on downright cruelty. Additionally, their clergy are dependent upon non-local management that is typically unable to offer any negative consequences to the congregation. Women are more vulnerable to those situations because they often serve less healthy congregations, who are more adept at scapegoating or isolating the pastor in times of conflict or disagreement.
As I see the gains women in ministry have made in numbers, I see the toll it has taken on women as individuals. Of the handful of women first ordained by my annual conference, only one is still serving in the local church. Year after year I see women, beaten down by “the system,” struggling with where they are sent or called, yearning to serve the Lord yet aware that in serving God they are sacrificing too much of themselves.
After over twenty years of involvement with the domestic violence movement and with survivors of interpersonal violence, I have come to think of the Church and specifically ordained ministry as an abusive husband. You love him and believe him when he says he will change. But then he goes and beats you up again. I have helped countless women recognize that leaving an abusive marriage is the only way to stop the violence. As much as I spend my time now helping women make “safety plans” (coping strategies, resources, support, etc.) in order to stay in ordained ministry, I wonder now if my time would be better spent helping women leave the ministry in order to save themselves. As Matthew Fox says when asked if we shouldn't stay in the Church and fight (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), “Let those who feel called to stay on the bus and fight carry on the fight. But this should not constitute more than 10 percent....let us all support those generous warriors who can be said to represent our collective tithe to the church. But let the other 90 percent, the rest of us, get on with the task of tomorrow. ... We must get on with living.”
Blessings,