Partnering with “The Other”: The Church, Women and Leadership – by Cynthia Holder Rich

Read Carola Tron Urban’s Essay, “My Spiritual Journey in Pastoral Ministry”

Some years ago I was visiting a seminary professor friend at her institution and we were to have lunch after chapel.  As I settled in before worship, my friend came up with a big smile on her face.  Dr. Letty Russell, eminent theologian, was visiting the seminary, and the women faculty were invited to have lunch with her – and I could come too if I wanted.

If I wanted?  Yes, of course I wanted!  Russell was a hero of mine; her ecclesiology (explored in Household of Freedom and Church in the Round) had informed my own and my doctoral research; her understanding of what it is to be feminist and do theology helped form the bedrock of my own understanding and my confidence in my own call.

Russell was also a Presbyterian Minister of Word and Sacrament, one of the first women ordained to this office in my church, and a graduate of Yale Divinity School who graduated with honors.  Russell had to fight her way into Yale Div, questioning the school’s policy of only allowing men to study, and the faculty spent a full week during her last year discussing whether they would offer “honors” to graduates that year, as one of the honored grads would be female (in the form of Ms. Russell) for the first time.  I was eager to meet this pioneer and model for women in ministry.

After lunch, discussion centered around Dr. Russell’s commitment to the church, and ongoing issues around women in church leadership.  The group of women gathered all taught at seminaries, all held PhD’s, and all, it turned out, had experienced significant challenges on the road to leadership in the church.  The struggle included, for many and various, the need to prove one’s worthiness and ability to be “as good as a man”, living with lower pay than male peers for the same work, foregoing marriage and family for some, and for a disturbing number, sexual harassment and assault as part of service in institutions of the church.  It was a profound and affecting conversation.

At this point, it would be great if we could turn to the “that was then, and this is now” good news section of this essay…but the situation is not that simple.  Letty Russell spoke out against injustice and for hospitality, the subject of her last book, to the end.  (Russell died in 2007; her last book was published posthumously.)  Russell’s understanding of hospitality, which is inextricably linked with her understanding of the church and its purpose in the world, goes beyond common understandings of welcome.  Russell called the church to partner with “the other”, no matter the defining characteristics therein, in order to provide hospitality with justice – a just hospitality.

It is my sense that just hospitality, hospitality with justice, is still needed for women called to positions of leadership in and for the church.  Progress has, of course, been made; women seminary graduates deserving of honor do not provide the impetus for week-long faculty discussions anymore.  And yet, women in church leadership as an idea, and a reality, are still on the road toward receiving true hospitality.

Part of the issue is that women in church leadership retain status in our time, in many contexts, as “the other”.  Many church leadership positions have yet to have a woman incumbent; most women in church leadership are the first woman in the position.  Congregations continue to feel a sense of pride, in many areas, when they call a woman pastor – an act commonly understood as virtuous risk-taking. Women clergy continue to fall victim to the “gender wage gap”, shown to receive 27% less than male colleagues for like service in a 2008 PCUSA report.  While it is no longer unusual to see women serving congregations in pastoral positions, challenges persist when a clergywoman is perceived to have “messed up” in some way.  Congregations that experience problems with the leadership of women clergy have often been known to attribute the problem to having a woman in the role, in ways that do not seem to parallel perceptions of clergymen whose leadership leads to problems.  Simply put, if a woman is perceived to cause a problem, it will be difficult for women to be considered for future leadership there.  For men, this correlation does not seem to apply.

Progress is seen, surely, in the number of women serving congregations, teaching in seminaries, and serving in denominational leadership.  The road before us shows the path that still has to be broken by today’s and tomorrow’s pioneers, and the “stained glass ceilings” that persist.  Head of staff positions, leadership in some key denominational offices, and appointed, tenure-track and top administrative (president and dean) positions in seminaries continue to be “rarified territory” for women.  Departments of women and of women and/or gender studies are traditional places of service for women leaders, and are, in a perverse way, often discounted and marginalized in decision-making processes, budgetary agreements, and power-sharing arrangements and understandings.  Women’s styles of leadership, different in nature and content, continue to have difficulty being understood, received, and perceived as good by institutions – which are built on standard understandings and approaches to leadership developed by men.

We still have a long way to go.

The issue of true, just hospitality Letty Russell discerned is that partnering with “the other” means accepting that “the other” holds knowledge that we do not – knowledge that we need, that the institution needs, that the church needs in order to live and serve fully and faithfully in the world.  As women in leadership in the church continue to hold the status of “other”, the church is called to find ways to function fully and faithfully through comprehensive partnership between men and women in all positions of leadership.  Only then can those who are “other” become fully understood and integrated as members who belong, with full places at the leadership table.

Read Carola Tron Urban’s Essay, “My Spiritual Journey in Pastoral Ministry”