Close Up: Women in ministry celebrate, but challenges remain
Feb. 22, 2006
NOTE: "Close Up" is a UMNS special report on current issues. Photographs, audio and two related reports are available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMNS Close Up Report By Denise Johnson Stovall*
A 50th anniversary is a time for celebration, and United Methodists around the world are doing just that this year as they mark the jubilee of full clergy rights for women.
Such a milestone is also a cause for reflection, and for many women leaders, the analysis is sobering. While women - lay and clergy alike - have moved from marginal support roles in the church to positions of leadership, they still find themselves confronting limited opportunities and problems being accepted.
"Never in my imagination did I expect to experience, in my active ministry, the sheer numbers of ordained women and variety of ways in which they have been able to respond to their call through ministry in our church," said Bishop Susan M. Morrison of the church's Albany (N.Y.) Area.
"However, I am deeply concerned about the opportunities for women of color to serve. Their options have been far more limited. Also, there is still resistance to women serving large pastorates as well as in the episcopacy."
The United Methodist Church has at least 10,000 clergywomen, including elders, deacons, local pastors and retirees, according to statistics.
Of those, 800 to 1,000 are ethnic minority clergywomen. Historically, the largest number has been African American. Other ethnic groups include Korean American, Hispanic, Native American, Japanese American, Chinese American and Pacific Islander.
Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño of the church's Phoenix Area shares Morrison's concern about the opportunities for women of color in ministry.
"My experience as a woman of color in ministry is that unfortunately one faces the discrimination of white racism as well as the sexism of both white persons as well as that of people of color," Carcaño said.
"What I have always found curious is that so often the very persons who have most touched our lives through their faith witness are the very same persons who most oppose and are troubled by our call and desire to be faithful," she said. "There is great irony in this. Racism and sexism are so embedded in the world that even in their present subtle and sophisticated forms they are viewed as the normal state of life.
"Such sins - for racism and sexism are sins in that they counter God's creative work of making us diverse in color and culture and gender - need to be constantly named for what they are and overcome," she said.
The Rev. HiRho Park likens the journey of clergywomen to a race in which success depends on each person's contributions. Park is coordinating the Clergywomen's Consultation, which will bring people from around the church to Chicago in August to celebrate the 50th anniversary.
"Making progress in women's ministry is like running the relay," said Park, a staff executive at the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry. "Each person should receive the baton and run with her best so that when the next one carries it, she will run with the wind of spirit of all women who ran before her."
Year of jubilee
"Women have always been preachers in our churches since the beginning," said the Rev. Marion Jackson, pastor of First United Methodist Church, Monclair, N.J.
Even before the merger of the denominations that became the United Methodist Church in 1968 - the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren churches - "all were ordaining women," Jackson said.
"However, 1956 was the year that women were given full clergy rights" in the Methodist Church, she noted. That milestone was achieved by the Methodist Church's highest legislative assembly, the General Conference.
For that reason, 2006 is "our year of jubilee," Jackson said.
"In fact, a resolution was made by the 2004 General Conference for all annual conferences to observe this anniversary. All clergywomen within the United Methodist Church should celebrate," said. Jackson, also a former staff member of the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry.
"We can celebrate that women have been appointed to the highest positions of the church," Jackson said. "We have district superintendents and women in episcopal leadership as bishops. They also serve as general secretaries of four of our general agencies. (But) unfortunately, women are still a minority among lead pastors of large churches (1,000 or more in worship attendance). The struggles in the future are the struggles of the past."
Active lay ministry
Before they became a presence in the clergy, women were active in lay ministries throughout Methodism's history.
"Women took seriously their call to social justice ministry and stood together in opposition to lynching, segregation, and racism within church and society," said Jan Love, top executive of the Women's Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries in New York.
Love is an example of a laywoman who has served in many roles both in the church and ecumenically. Before becoming chief executive of the Women's Division in 2004, she taught for 22 years at the University of South Carolina. She had served on the Board of Missions, later the Board of Global Ministries, from 1970 to 1976, as well as on the board of directors of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns, Church World Service and the World Council of Churches.
As head of the Women's Division, she is responsible for administering United Methodist Women, a large-membership organization with chapters in churches around the world.
"We know that God can use ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things, and as laywomen in mission, United Methodist Women have been accomplishing great things for God for more than 136 years," Love said.
"It began with women sending out missionaries to India to meet the needs of women and children there," she said. "It continued with laywomen recognizing needs in their communities at home and organizing to meet those needs through home missionary societies, orphanages, community centers, schools, hospitals and immigrant homes.
"Today, women continue the legacy of this work. They educate themselves for mission; they act to change injustices in their local communities, as well as nationally and globally; and they support mission, as it has evolved and changed, which their foremothers began."
Fostering conversation
M. Garlinda Burton, top executive of the United Methodist Commission on the Status and Role of Women, is a living witness to the power of being mentored by strong Methodist women. A native of North Carolina, Burton fondly remembers the dedicated lay service of her mother, Margaret Burton. The daughter said she "was reared in the shadows of the United Methodist Women, who have raised the bar and opened our eyes to a world of multinational, multiracial and multicultural lay voices."
"I want to push those dealing with justice issues to foster conversation among men and women of color about gender inequality in personal and professional relationships in the church," Burton said.
In addition to being chief executive of the commission, based in Chicago, Burton belongs to a Nashville, Tenn., church. She tells the story of how "the tables were turned" when that congregation learned its pastor, a clergywoman, was accepting another United Methodist appointment.
"Our previous pastor was a woman of many gifts," she said. "When it was announced that she was leaving and that our male associate would become senior pastor, one of my 9-year-old male Sunday school students turned to me and said, 'Miss Garlinda, I didn't know men could be preachers!'"
She has seen a lot of progress for women in the church, but challenges remain.
"We lament at what hasn't happened in the church, but I never experienced a woman pastor until I was an adult and working for the denomination," she continued. "We are raising up a new nation of people who recognize and celebrate the gifts of women as critical to our very definition of church.
"At the same time, I still hear people say, 'I don't want a woman pastor or bishop or superintendent or treasurer.' We need to continue to say, in love, that sexist and racist prohibitions are not acceptable."
Resistance to women
In the local church, the people who most resist having female clergy are usually the active members, Park wrote in a research study, "Stratification Among Clergy in The United Methodist Church Due to Gender Difference," for postdoctoral work at Boston School of Theology.
She cited Patricia M.Y. Chang, author of the article, "Female Clergy in the Contemporary Protestant Church: A Current Assessment," in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, published in 1997.
"It is because they are concerned for preserving the church's viability as an organization," Chang wrote. "This concern is from the perception that hiring women clergy will cause tension, decrease of membership and conflict within the church. This leads to the conclusion that if laity have positive experiences with clergywomen, their perception may change."
Park agrees with Chang but said one benefit of the denomination's appointment system is that it "grants congregations opportunities to accept female clergy as their pastors regardless of their opinions."
"This eliminates some of the initial resistance that clergywomen have to face in the local church level in a decentralized denomination. But this does not mean that clergywomen do not have to deal with resistance once they are accepted into the local congregation."
The United Methodist Clergywomen Retention Study, conducted by the Anna Howard Shaw Center at Boston University School of Theology in 2000, resulted from concern about the increasing absence of female clergy in local church ministry.
"According to this study, nearly one-third of United Methodist clergywomen in full connection were not serving local churches at the time the survey was conducted," Park said. Some were in other extended ministries, such as serving as hospital chaplains or campus ministers. Moreover, women "were leaving local church ministry at a 10 percent higher rate than male clergy," she said.
Serving in the episcopacy
Park expects ethnic clergywomen to become more accepted as leaders in the United Methodist Church. "I think it is coming," she said.
While the church has an increasing number of Caucasian and African-American women serving as bishops, other cultural groups are not as well represented, if at all. The church has had three Korean-American bishops so far - all men - and no Native American bishops of either gender.
If the denomination is going to have a Korean-American woman as bishop, it's going to have to work for it, said Park, a native of Seoul, South Korea. "The whole denomination should strategically work on it to make it happen, since the Korean-American community is such a small number. Without working intentionally, it will not happen.
"The Rev. Ha-Kyung Cho Kim, a Korean-American clergywoman, was an episcopal candidate for the Northeastern Jurisdiction" in 2004, Park continued. "This was the first time that a woman (of Korean heritage) ran for the office in the jurisdiction's history. After she made the withdrawal speech, she turned to the Korean-American clergywomen who were there to support her and said, 'I did this for you younger generations ... somebody had to open the door.'"
Added Park: "Maybe in the next quadrennium, somebody may come in through that door."
Bishop Violet Fisher, who leads the New York West Area, affirmed the need for ethnic clergywomen in the episcopacy.
"I feel it is imperative that the United Methodist Church would continue to affirm the gifts and graces embodied in ethnic clergywomen who serve our denomination well," said Fisher, who is African American. "This would mean we would be more intentional about the election of these women to the episcopacy.
"As we celebrate 50 years of women in ordained ministry, let us begin the journey towards this goal in '08. The time is now."
*Stovall is a freelance writer in Dallas.
News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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