Women always have been a major force in most American churches, but only in recent years are their voices being heard from the pulpit in significant numbers.
The same call to equality of position and power that women are heeding in other professions is resounding within church denominations across the country. The result is that the number of women in seminaries has mushroomed in recent years.
At Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville, the number of women working toward degrees and planning to become members of the clergy increased from 9 in 1973 to 55 in 1991. Women represented less than six percent of those enrolled in the program in 1973; by 1991, nearly 50 percent of those enrolled were women.
At the Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., women now make up 60 percent of the student body. Women make up nearly 75 percent of the students at the nearby Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, attracted by its unique Feminist Liberation Theology program, which looks at religion from a feminist perspective.
While women no longer are strangers to the pulpit-their numbers in most denominations seldom rise above 12 percent-their movement into positions of power in the hierarchy, as ministers, priests and occasionally bishops continues to arouse controversy.
In May, when the Episcopal Church elected its second woman bishop, the Rev. Jane Dixon, 55, of Laurel, Md., suffragan bishop for the diocese of Washington, D.C., she noted in her acceptance speech the debate that swirls around the ordination of women in that denomination.
Dixon`s election makes two female and 118 male Episcopal bishops in the two and one-half-million-member denomination. Dixon`s colleague and the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion`s 2,000-year tradition is Rev. Barbara Harris of Boston, 62, whose election as suffragan, or assistant, bishop in the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1988 drew fury from traditionalists.
Harris` election was the catalyst for the formation of the Episcopal Synod of America (a church subgroup with at least 15,000 members according to the national office of the Episcopal church in New York), which is dedicated to conservative causes, including the repeal of the right of women to be ordained. Despite the controversy, the overall numbers of ordained women continue to grow. Today the Episcopal Church, which approved the ordination of women in 1976, has 1,162 women priests, and one after another of the various churches in the international Anglican Communion, which encompasses the U.S. Episcopals, are approving women`s ordination.
The Church of England, another member of the Anglican Communion, will vote on the issue again this fall, and many predict that it will approve women`s ordination as priests.
If so, the vote for women`s ordination may be costly. Diana Hayes, 45, professor of theology at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., says ”a large group (of members) is threatening to secede if London accepts women as priests.”
Most other denominations opened the doors to women earlier. The United Methodist Church ordained to its first woman minister in 1880, but it was not until 1956 that the UMC began to ordain women in significant numbers. By 1991, 4,536 of its 38,359 pastors were women. Eight have been elected bishops.
Margaret Towner became the first woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA in 1956. By 1990, 2,257 women accounted for 11 percent of 20,338 Presbyterian clergy.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, still lags far behind-1 percent of its 32,000-plus ordained ministers in 1988 (latest figures available) were women. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America began ordaining women in 1971, but it wasn`t until June 1992 that it elected its first woman bishop.
A few denominations stand in contrast. The Unitarian (now Unitarian Universalist) Church ordained Olympia Brown in 1863, and women now make up more than 30 percent of its clergy (367 out of 1,220).
Women are making inroads in positions of authority in the Jewish faith as well. In 1972, Sally J. Priesand was ordained the first woman rabbi in the history of Judaism. Now about 10 percent of Reform branch rabbis are women.
Even though the Roman Catholic Church is faced with a serious shortage of priests, according to John Walsh, spokesman for the archdiocese of Boston, the Vatican remains opposed to the ordination of women based on what he terms
”profound theological reasons,” including the unbroken tradition of ordaining only men.
Outside the Catholic Church, the numbers of women at the pulpit and altar may be growing, but a gap exists between the sexes when it comes to clerical career paths. In churches large enough to have assistant or associate clergy, the woman minister or priest is more often hired for that role and less often as the minister in charge, say some who know.
The Rev. Katherine DeGrow, 55, a United Methodist clergywoman in the North Texas Conference, says ”the larger, wealthier churches are simply not open to having women as their senior pastors, at least, not at this time.”
The Rev. Mona Bailey is pastor of Corinth Presbyterian Church in Parker, Texas, with a membership of 50. She works half-time at the church and half-time as chaplain at Plano General Hospital in Plano, Texas. ”Women often have to take on a second job in order to make it possible to follow the call to the first job,” she says.
Recently Bishop Barbara Harris addressed an ecumenical gathering in Boston of several hundred clergywomen from around the nation.
Referring to the church, she said, ”There`s a lot that`s broken that we can`t fix. Don`t buy into the morally bankrupt old boy network. You`ll never be a part of it, and why would you want to?”
