Episcopal News Service Thursday, October 5, 2006
State of Episcopal clergy growing more complex, researchers tell ordained women
'New ecclesial landscape' requires new mapping techniques
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS, KANUGA] Two researchers told the "Imagine: Claiming & Empowering Ordained Women's Leadership" conference October 3 that more needs to be done to document the stories of women clergy.
The conference is the first church-wide gathering of ordained women in the 32 years since women were admitted to the orders of priest and bishop. The conference, which also includes some lay presenters, runs until October 6 at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
Matthew Price, a Church Pension Group (CPG) researcher, and Paula Nesbitt, an Episcopal priest who teaches at the University of California in Berkeley, said much is known now, but noted that current ways of gathering information about clergy can exclude some people.
Price presented CPG's annual State of the Clergy report for 2006.
Among the report's 12 key findings are:
* roughly equal numbers of male and female ordinands have become active in the Church Pension Fund, but, with many more men than women retiring from active service, the gender balance of the active clergy will change;
* age is a more important variable than gender in determining the probability that an ordinand will be employed in the Church;
* newly ordained males and females receive roughly the same compensation in their first jobs;
* for all active clergy "there is a persistent gap in compensation between men and women even when adjusting for position within the parish and years of credited service";
* there are "significant differences" among the provinces of the Episcopal Church in the percentages of men and women who are being ordained; and
* the "career paths of clergy women appear to differ significantly from those of clergy men."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_78387_ENG_HTM.htm
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