The Future of Faith—in Review

I just finished reading The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox. Clearly this is essential reading for a blogger who writes about growing in faith, but I would highly recommend this to you all. While I can't resist saying that this is vintage Harvey Cox, given that the book is published this year as he celebrates his 80th birthday, this book is a really broad brush of the history of Christian faith. His definition of faith ends chapter 2 as follows:

The three ways we encounter the great mystery—the universe, the self, the other—all leave us with a sense of uneasiness, incompleteness, and dissatisfaction. … Faith, although it is evoked by the mystery that surrounds us, is not the mystery itself. It is a basic posture toward the mystery, and it comes in an infinite variety of forms. (p. 35)

Cox calls the era from the time of Jesus to the time of Constantine the Age of Faith, where people believed and acted upon Jesus' teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand, or what Cox teaches as the "Reigning," rather than the Kingdom, of God.

Clearly the object of Jesus' own hope and confidence—his faith—was the Kingdom of God. (p. 45)

By the third and fourth centuries CE things were much different in the Christian churches than the work toward the "Reigning of God" that Jesus had lived and taught. Central in the book are several strong chapters summarizing "the devolution from faith to belief," (the subtitle to chapter five) as followers of Jesus lost their way as People of the Way: 1) by developing creeds, 2) by agreeing to or allowing apostolic succession, and 3) by merging with empire under Constantine. [I recognize and readily admit my own, and perhaps Harvey Cox's, Baptist biases in decrying this devolution, being non-creedal, non-hierarchical, and an advocate of the separation of church and state, and as a matter of full disclosure, I note that Harvey Cox and I are members of the same Baptist church.] The next era is the Age of Belief, where

Along with the "imperialization" of the church and the glorification of the bishops, now "faith" came to mean obeying the bishop and assenting to what he taught. Faith had been coarsened into belief, and this distortion has hobbled Christianity ever since. (p. 98)

These chapters are insightful summaries of the politics, theology and history that shaped Christianity over the next fifteen hundred years.

The primary thesis of this book, however, is that the Age of Belief is drawing to a close, and a new age is dawning—the Age of the Spirit. As a part of that new age, Cox asserts "fundamentalism, the bane of the twentieth century, is dying." (p. 1) It is an assertion not yet proven. In his final chapter, Cox compares the changes in the "nature of religiousness" in Christianity to similar changes in Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism.

The change assumes different shapes, but some of them overlap. With globalization, religions are becoming less regional. Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus now live on every continent. Religions are also becoming less hierarchical. Lay leadership and initiative flourish in all of them… In addition many are becoming less dogmatic and more practical. Religious people today are more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrines. They are also becoming less patriarchal, as women assume leadership positions in religions that have barred them for centuries, sometimes for millennia. … [But] as these changes gain momentum, they evoke an almost point-for-point fundamentalist reaction. (p. 223)

Optimistically, and perhaps prophetically, Cox then concludes his summary of the fundamentalist reactions across the world's religions by saying,

All these, however, are in the true sense of the word "reactionary" efforts. They are attempting to stem an inexorable movement of the human spirit whose hour has come. (p. 223)

I can hope that the Age of the Spirit is dawning. If it is, and we embrace some of the harbingers of that age: local congregations acting as followers of the Way—acting on the teachings of Jesus; reaching out to the poor and needy, theologically summarized in liberation theology as a preferential option for the poor; and applications of two core beliefs of Spirit-filled Pentecostalism, that promote change and act against materialism:

conversion ("you must be born again") and holiness ("be not conformed to this world"). In political and cultural terms conversion means that people can change and that therefore fatalism—either personal or societal—is not acceptable. Holiness means that you need not buy into the latest mind-numbing fads of the commodity lifestyle. You can be "in but not of this world." (p. 211-2)

In these movements that are part of the Age of the Spirit, there is great joy and vitality. The church, at least as a global whole, is not dying, but is being born anew. People are engaging with one another, with the mystery, and with the stories that hold the tradition.

As a side note, making a connection to the power of story telling that I recently recounted, and as an ah-ha moment about my own and other fellow Baptists' secret love of ritual (a Baptist friend recently ascribed her love of the communion ritual to being a "closet Episcopalian"), Cox writes:

Most people describe the Baptist denomination, in which I grew up, as not having any rituals. Even Baptists often make this claim. But it is not true. Rituals are enactments—in song, story, visual representation, and gesture—of the narratives that inform a people's identity. (p. 39)

Certainly Baptist sermons, hymns, and Sunday school posters were and are full of song, story and visual representations.

By the time we were ready to leave Sunday school, these sagas had become permanent features in the topography of our imaginations. They did exactly what rituals are supposed to do. (p. 40)

Read The Future of Faith. Harvey Cox tells the story of Christianity and of some of his own encounters with the key movers and shapers of faith of the last fifty years, Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, among others, and engages our imaginations in the possibilities for the Age of the Spirit to come.

Telling the Truth

I made these notes several weeks ago, but am feeling prompted to reflect further on how and when we tell the truth in a church. Rather than just hit and run preaching, how do we tell or live the truth, or open the door for the truth? When Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, the life," what does that truth look like lived out in a community of believers? When I was an adolescent, one of the philosophical questions I wrestled with was whether it was better to tell the truth or to be kind—the assumption being that one precludes the other.

In Back Talk! Women Leaders Changing the Church, Susan Willhauck reports on five areas for change in churches that she uncovered in a qualitative study, really a long series of conversations along with some surveys, with people involved in churches. Those five areas are:

• Honest ways of talking to ourselves and to the world: truth telling
• Affirm women's leadership, especially of women of color
• New organization/open structure: alternative ways of being and doing church
• New lay leadership
• Biblical and theological reflection

So this is what she says about Truth Telling:

"The lack of honesty sometimes takes the form of backstabbing or competition or out-and-out lying."
"Dishonesty can be a means of protecting the hierarchy." (p. 36)
"Sometimes the dishonesty takes the form of not telling someone the truth they need to hear simply because it is easer and more politically advantageous to keep quiet."
"The church often postures itself as being unconditionally accepting, but it is not."
"Being honest means that sometimes we express anger. Yet anger has been forbidden to women, who are supposed to be nice and suppress it." (p. 37)
"Many of those I have talked with say we must uphold honesty and in so doing find more ways to heal conflict."
"We have to call people to be Christ-like. We have a moral obligation as Christians to tell the truth, to love one another and to tell the truth." (p. 38)

I had a conversation yesterday with the denominational representative for placement and when he asked what I'm looking for, one of the things I mentioned was a healthy church. Now, exactly how I will define or know that is a question for further discussion, but the capacity and propensity for truth telling is certainly a part of being a healthy church. Willhauck has noted some of the things that get in the way of telling the truth. What else would you add?

In Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Frederick Buechner writes this about Truth:

When Jesus says that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, "What is truth?" (John 18: 38) Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat. Instead of Truth, Pilate has only expedience. His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient. Pilate views man as alone in the universe with nothing but his own courage and ingenuity to see him through. It is enough to choke up anybody.
Pilate asks What is truth? And for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him. The sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the cellar stairs.
Jesus doesn't answer Pilate's question. He just stands there. Stands, and stands there.

How do we stand for truth? This past weekend we decided to play a board game on Sunday evening and I rummaged in the bin and pulled out Scruples—which surely must date from the eighties, if not seventies. The questions are various ethical dilemmas: someone gives you the wrong change, do you tell them or return the change; you hit a car in the parking lot, do you leave your name. You read the question and try to direct it toward the person whose answer will match the Yes, No or Depends card that you hold.

One of the difficulties in playing this game with a group of people with good ethical values was matching the question with the answer—I knew which way they would answer, but that wasn't the answer card in my hand. I remember playing this game with a group of people when I first got the game, and it was not as clear that people would answer truthfully or ethically. Frankly, as a parent, I was delighted at my daughter's answers, and at the resulting conversation we had about some of the gray areas in making decisions and the pressures that people might feel.

Having worked in situations where not telling the truth might be "easier," I think that I have finally come to realize that most often the truth told with compassion is also kinder than not telling the truth, certainly in the long run. Not confronting the issues only comes back to bite me later. What is truth? I think that Buechner's example is apt. It is not so much in what we say, but as where and perhaps how we stand. It is walking the talk, and walking the walk too.

May we each be open to the truths of the day, with compassionate hearts. May we be able to hear and tell the truths that we see and know with kindness and courage.

Welcome? by the numbers

Where are LGBT people welcomed in Massachusetts churches?

While the following numbers don't tell the whole story, and none of our stories are represented fully by the numbers, the following sets of numbers are indications of where LGBT folks are welcomed as congregants, and perhaps as clergy. There seem to be some correlations between denominations that have ordained women and those that welcome LGBT people. Is there in fact a cause/effect relationship between congregations that hire women pastors and who are welcoming and affirming/open and affirming or vice versa, and if so, what does that mean for women or LGBT clergy?

But first a poem about welcome by George Herbert that I read quoted in Gifted by Otherness by L. William Countryman and M.R. Ritley. This poem has also been famously set to music by Ralph Vaughn Williams in Five Mystical Songs. (I'm listening to the setting as I write. Also included in this set of five pieces is The Call—I included that one in my iTunes playlist about calling.) This is the kind of welcome I want the numbers to represent. Love calls us to welcome—are we/can we be the kind of host that Love is?

"Love" from The Temple
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

A Massachusetts LGBT-friendly congregational cameo

The UUA, Quakers and UCC have been leaders in welcoming LGBT people into their churches. In Massachusetts, there are more UCC churches that are open and affirming than there are UUA churches, but there are three times as many UCC churches in total in Massachusetts. Even among these historically progressive or liberal denominations this has not been without turmoil.

At the denominational level, the Unitarian Universalist Association is open and affirming to LGBT people and to the ordination of LGBT clergy. I was actually somewhat startled, given the denominational stance and publicity, to see that the percentage of officially welcoming churches in the UUA in Massachusetts is only 55%, just over half. Congregational polity means that the local church does not necessarily pay attention to or act on what the denomination thinks is important.

The leadership of the 1.3 million-member United Church of Christ has been foremost among denominations seeking the full inclusion of homosexuals. In the 1970s the UCC allowed the ordination of the first openly gay man and the first openly lesbian woman, and in 2005 the UCC endorsed civil unions for same-sex couples. Ordination of practicing homosexuals was officially accepted in 1980, and the blessing of same-sex couples is allowed. But the issue still roils the UCC. Because the UCC believes in local autonomy, some regions and congregations bar gay clergy and gay couples. Some congregations are threatening to leave over the denomination's official tolerance of homosexuality, while some liberal members want the UCC to be more active in promoting gay rights as a denomination-wide standard.

The American Baptist Churches-USA has a national denomination resolution, "We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching," The ABC-USA "resolutions are adopted by a 2/3 majority vote of the General Board of American Baptist Churches, a resolution represents the position of the ABC on a specific issue and calls for some type implementing action. All resolutions must be based on a policy statement. General Board policy documents are binding on national staff only and not on regions or local churches."

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), not a big presence in Massachusetts, has not taken a national stance on ordination of LGBT people, leaving that to regional committees on ministry. There are regions with openly gay or lesbian clergy, as well as welcoming and affirming churches nationally.

With the exception of the American Baptist Churches, denominations with congregational polity, rather than institution-centered denominations have higher percentages of welcoming/open and affirming congregations. As a barometer of liberal theology, this seems to be the reverse of the finding in Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling on the ordination of women where institution-centered denominations, once committed, do a better job supporting women, but it could also reflect that the institution-centered denominations clearly have not made the commitment to being open or welcoming and affirming, so it then is impressive that 7-11% of Episcopal, Presbyterian USA, United Methodist, and Lutherans-ELCA congregations in Massachusetts have made the commitment in the face of national stances that are negative toward LGBT people or clergy.

Institution-centered churches with episcopal or presbytery polities have similar percentages of open and affirming/gay friendly churches, but it is not clear how many gay or lesbian clergy they have. I personally know openly gay and lesbian Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian clergy, or at least LGBT clergy with really, really big closets. But of course, a quick internet search will reveal national news stories about lesbian and gay clergy being defrocked in the United Methodist Church and in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The Presbyterians seem to be getting more mixed press on the subject today, and have a resolution being voted on by their presbyteries to change the denominational rules on LGBT clergy.

Openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson in New Hampshire is not recognized as a bishop by the worldwide Anglican communion. And despite the publicity surrounding him, Episcopal churches don't list themselves as so gay friendly. Only one Episcopal Church in Massachusetts was listed as a partner member of Integrity, the gay Episcopal group, so the eighteen churches noted above were found on the listings at gaychurch.org. Gaychurch.org lists 5,301 churches worldwide, mostly in the USA and Canada, that have identified as gay friendly, welcoming and affirming, open and affirming, reconciling in Christ, etc.

I found no historically black church denominations that had welcoming or open and affirming churches listed in Massachusetts from any of the national gay church lists. None of the denominations' Massachusetts websites or national websites for African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, National Baptist Convention, or Progressive National Baptist Convention had any mention of gays (pro or con). The gay or lesbian Afro-American Christians I know have found their way into more diverse, but primarily white, welcoming and affirming congregations, or lead divided lives about their sexuality and their Christianity.

Here is where this info comes from:
Mass. UCC
ONA UCC congregations

Mass. UMC congregations
UMC reconciling congregations in MA

Christian Church/Disciples of Christ in MA
Disciples of Christ open and affirming congregations in MA
MA Presbyterian churches
More Light Presbyterian churches in MA

ELCA Lutheran congregations in MA
Reconciled in Christ ELCA Lutheran congregations in MA

ABC congregations in Massachusetts
Welcoming and Affirming Baptist churches in MA (all of which are ABC-USA)

Quaker meetings in MA

gay friendly/welcoming Quaker meetings and Episcopal churches in MA

Episcopal churches in MA
Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts

UUA congregations and welcoming UUA congregations

So there are some of the numbers. I have spent much of this week turning the musings of this blog into a final paper, and yesterday in a timely fashion, my friend PB sent a morning devotional reflection based on Acts 5:34-35, 38-39:

One in the council stood up, a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in respect by all the people, and commanded them to put the apostles outside for a little while. And he said to them: “Men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what you intend to do regarding these men. Keep away from these men and let them alone; for if this plan or this work is of men, it will come to nothing; but if it is of God, you cannot overthrow it—lest you even be found to fight against God.

PB wrote:

Lord, your truth will be with the world, even when we are not. It is our choice to be a part of it or apart from it. In the end, you will not be overthrown.

I think we can see in vibrant and faith-filled people and churches what is the work of God, and today I pray that those who do the work of God will be sustained by the truth and power of God's word, and those who do not hear the voice of the Spirit will be gently led to hearing. If God is calling women and LGBT clergy to ministry and leadership, this is the work of God, and God will not be overthrown.

Discovering Our Insides

First, this poem from Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times, edited by Neil Astley, (Hyperion, New York, 2003).

From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

I've been reading in two books about congregations this week. Journalist Gary Dorsey explores of the dynamics of a church in New England in Congregation: The Journey Back to Church (New York: Viking Penguin, 1995). Dorsey attempts to figure out the relationships between ministers and a congregation and answer questions such as: what is church, why go to church, what makes a church work; by spending a year as an observer, then as a participant/observer. This is a good read if only because it makes clear how complex the relationships are, and how a church cannot be all things to all people, and how when church is working it draws people in. Being an intense description of the life and work of one congregation and Dorsey's own journey back to church, it offers a basis for comparison for our own congregations and journeys.

The other book I'm reading is Israel Galindo's The Hidden lives of Congregations: Discerning Church Dynamics (Herndon, VA: The Alban Institute, 2004). Galindo, like Dorsey but with a broader sweep, explores congregations as organisms, in relationships, as communities, not as just "organizations." Looking at churches through the lenses of Bowen family systems work, Galindo provides a good summary of a number of models of understanding church dynamics. In the chapter I just finished reading he writes: "The five organic relational dynamics that are at play during the lifespan of a congregation are: Systemic Anxiety, Energy, Organizing, Controlling, and Relational." (p. 52) Every congregational organism has some of each of these at play, and depending on whether there is too much high anxiety, too little good energy, not enough organizing, too much controlling, or not enough relational activity, one congregation will die and another with different dynamics will thrive. Recognizing those dynamics will make it possible to understand them and perhaps to change them toward a healthier way of being in relationship.

The usefulness of this book for my study is in and of itself, but also as background to understanding what might be the dynamics in making decisions about pastoral leadership. What dynamics would need to be in place for a congregation to handle or welcome a woman as minister, or to thrive with a pastor who is not like the perceived norm for a clergy person? In the line from the poem above, how do we risk a new love, something outside the box, how do we "take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard, to eat not only the skin, but the shade, not only the sugar, but the days, to hold the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into the round jubilance of peach?"

The intersection of pastor, congregation and God is a complex relational dynamic. Where might congregations learn about managing the steps of the dance of engaging/having a new pastor, and where do clergy learn that about congregations? I'm thinking that the third player in the triangle is perhaps not consulted enough in this work: where is God in all this? Tony Pappas, Executive Minister for The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts wrote a response to the Pulpit and Pew study, What Do Lay People Want In Pastors, (referenced in March 1 blog posting) that starts to get at this question, "Where does the Spirit come into play? Or, to phrase it differently, without passion what good are all our procedures and practices? … What if we were to focus on matters of the Spirit? What if judicatory staff were to deliberately attempt spiritual interventions? What if incoming pastors were to concentrate on matters of the Spirit before launching off into the busy-ness of programs? What if local congregations were to seek God’s face with even half the energy they have heretofore invested in preserving the status quo?" (p. 42)

My prayer is for the Spirit to be with congregations who are seeking leadership, and with pastors who are seeking congregations, as well as those already engaged in working together, that we all work toward relationships that might carry not only the jubilant juice of the peach but the entire orchard inside us.

Historical Perspective

In 1977, I graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious New England women's college convinced of my ability to be a leader. I had been a student leader of a number of organizations on campus, in addition to working and doing well academically. That fall I enrolled at an equally prestigious graduate school of business in the Midwest to pursue a master's degree to give me the credentials and education toward a career in which I saw myself as a leader. (Playing in the background as I write—Ray Charles and Willie Nelson singing It was a Good Year from Genius Loves Company, "When I was 21, it was a very good year…) My business school entering class had 25% women, who were bright, articulate and energetic.

One of the first experiences I had, literally as I was moving into the townhouse where I would rent a room for the two years of graduate school from a divorced Jewish woman who was a legal secretary, was an encounter with two young evangelists who were canvassing the neighborhood. Imagine their surprise when they asked if I was saved, and I said yes. What followed was an invitation to their house church/bible study group, and my disclosure that I was enrolled in an MBA program. Somehow out of that came some discussion about women's roles in church, where we had some disagreement. The next week they came by and left a pamphlet arguing their case: women should submit, keep quiet in church, etc., authored by some man I had never heard of with a copyright in 1929. That was probably the final confirmation I needed at the time that church had no room for a woman who was and wanted to be a leader. I did not regularly or even occasionally attend church for another fifteen years.

Also in 1977, the Ministers Council of the American Baptist Churches USA commissioned sociologist Edward C. Lehman to study the receptivity of congregations and denominational and lay leaders to women in ministry, looking at the barriers both individual, cultural, denominational, and organizational to women in ministry and factors for placement of women as pastors. The study surveyed and/or interviewed all of the ABC women seminary graduates for 1977 (31 in total) and all of the ABC women seminary graduates from 1972-76 (70 in total). The study included a sampling of male seminary graduates in similar numbers, all of the 117 executive and area ministers, 500 laity, 100 pulpit committee representatives and 2160 members of American Baptist Women. [Project SWIM: A Study of Women in Ministry by Edward C. Lehman, Jr. and the Task Force on Women in Ministry of the Ministers Council, American Baptist Churches, 1979]

Of course, my immediate reaction to this study was to wonder if things have changed at all in the past thirty years. Key points:
• There were few fence sitters—people either were receptive to the idea of woman in ministry or they are not. This was across denominational leaders and laity, although proportions varied within the groups surveyed. (p. 30)
• Higher education and income were the highest demographic factors that would correlate with receptivity to a woman pastor, not gender, age or occupation. (p. 41)
• The East was more receptive than the Midwest, which was more receptive than the West (not a significant sample size in the south where American, formerly Northern, Baptist churches have little presence). (p. 42)
• Church members who emphasized the importance of the "conversion" function of the church were least receptive to women in ministry, while church members who emphasized "social reform" functions were most receptive. (p. 45)
• Similarly, those who advocate Biblical literalism were much less receptive to women in ministry than those who interpret Biblical literature in more complicated ways. (p. 45)
• Respondents who were not receptive were least likely to think that women should perform "church-specific" roles, roles that symbolize church: senior pastor, deacon, leading worship, preach, conduct funerals and weddings, or administer baptism or communion, while they had less issue with women who took on the elements of a pastor's job that were more traditionally female and not as symbolic of church: religious education, youth, teaching. (p. 36)
• Churches with declining membership were more receptive to women in ministry than churches that were holding their own or growing. (p. 40)
• Cultural stereotypes around women in professions carry over to women in ministry. Perceiving women as incapable of providing strong leadership to make churches flourish was strongly and consistently associated with lack of receptivity to women in ministry. (p. 50)

I'd be happy to hear other's perceptions around this list, but I don't think these elements have changed as the factors around receptivity of women in ministry—the proportions of people becoming receptive may have shifted somewhat as cultural acceptance of women's equal rights has gained ground, but these are the dividing factors still.

Those are individual and cultural issues. There are also social and cultural organizational issues about church and American Baptist churches that also contribute to receptivity.
• American Baptists prize local church autonomy, so denominational national leaders and state executive/area ministers have much less influence when making suggestions for change than local leaders. (p. 54)
• People who were receptive to women in ministry perceived that their local leaders were as well, and opposition to that was just being caught up in tradition or being "old and set in their ways." (p. 59)
• People who were not receptive perceived that their local leaders were not receptive too, and their opposition was based on theological reasons or that "women were not qualified." (p. 59)
• Churches are voluntary organizations where people are free to leave, and take their support with them. This makes churches less willing to risk controversy because it will damage the stability of the organization. Women in ministry were perceived as controversial at the time of this study. (p. 60) Is that still the case?

The study also included some interesting information about the factors that influenced success for women seminarians in placement. I'll have to come back to those, because one of the key success factors is participation in the American Baptist Placement System and I have to go and work on that profile document now. :-)

We are creations of the times in which we live, as well as being creators of the times in which we live. My own recollections of 1977 confirm what this study, now an historical document, reveals. How has that changed?

My prayer for this week, as I begin to write an essay for the placement profile that describes who I am as one called to ministry, is for clarity and for freedom from thinking only inside the box, whether it's a box that others put me into, a box that I create for my own safety and comfort, or the boxes that I use for others without recognizing their complexities too.

Confessions of a Data Geek

Other people have pastimes that absorb them during odd moments—knitting, puzzles, talking on the phone, reading, watching TV—add your favorite. One of mine is data analysis and pattern analysis. I can spend hours manipulating a block of data looking for the information in it. This past week I thought I would see what the church directories could tell me about women in ministry. I downloaded the most recent published online directories from the websites of The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts (TABCOM) and from the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ (MAUCC). It's a lot of data to organize. I made it about a quarter of the way through a first pass on each of these data sets, so any conclusions are subject to change as the data set becomes more complete.

Out of the 77 ABC churches in this first data set which comprise three of the eight associations, with settled pastors, 25 out of 65 of the male pastors had been their church more than 10 years, and 3 out of the 12 female pastors had been in their church more than 10 years. In this incomplete set of data, 15.5% of the settled pastors were women, with an average tenure of 6.5 years, while the men had an average tenure of 10.9 years. There are only eight churches, or less than 10 percent, who have more than one minister—an indication of size. None of the five interim pastors in this sample were women. I leap to no conclusions from this data because the sample is incomplete. I'll keep you posted.

In the first set of UCC data comprising two regions of the state, I've looked at 107 churches. There are more UCC churches in Massachusetts and at first glance they have larger memberships. About one-third of the settled senior pastors are women in this set, but when you include associates and interims the number goes up to fifty percent. There are 144 ministers for 107 churches, so a significant number of women are associate pastors, and interim pastors, and many more churches have more than one pastor. I think that the tenure dates might not be so different for this list, relatively, although I did spot one women who had been in her church since 1980. One question to explore is whether women do have more of the smaller membership churches in the UCC, although one of the largest UCC churches has a woman as senior pastor.

But I have lots more data to organize for mining. What I hope to gather from this data are directions for questions to ask lay people and clergy. What prompted churches or rather congregations to hire women? Was it a conscious choice or simply the best available candidate at the time? What keeps them from hiring women as pastors? The ABC has a lot more ethnic churches—is it obvious what role culture plays in this vs. theology? What is it like to be the first woman minister in a church, or the second or third? How long did the search process take for women vs. men?

Along side this data mining, I just started reading the results of a 1993 national survey and study among Protestant denominations on women in ministry, published in Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling by Barbara Brown Zikmund, Adair T. Lummis, and Patricia M. Y. Chang. This brings some historical perspective to my data mining. They divide their results "into three denominational clusters that reflect the differences in how authority is perceived and located within these denominations: congregation-centered, institution-centered and Spirit-centered." (p. 7) Allowing for the fact that all of these typologies are arbitrary, I will be focusing my study on congregation-centered denominations where " the essence of the church is found in the gathered people, the congregation. In these denominations, authority centers on local congregations." (p. 8) They include American Baptists, United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists, and Christian Church/Disciples of Christ among these denominations in their study, and also look at Southern Baptists and Brethren.

What they found true among institution-centered denominations (Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Methodist Church) is that if the hierarchy/tradition, where authority is more centered, although slow and thoughtful and orderly in wrestling with the idea, embraces the idea of women in ministry then "as a consequence, once institution centered denominations make the decision to affirm the ordination of women, they live out the new order with remarkable vigor." (p. 12)

Where the authority rests in the congregation, rather than in the institution/hierarchy, as my initial data mining confirms, affirmation and acceptance of women in ministry is much more varied. I will say that my perception is that the hierarchy in the UCC is much more supportive of women in ministry and has more influence on congregations than the denominational relationships with congregations in American Baptist Churches, and might that go some way toward explaining the higher number of women ministers in UCC churches? Where is influence being used to support women in ministry?

Today, the Executive Minister of TABCOM visited my church on his rounds and was expressing a vision for local association reorganization and of affiliation of ethnic churches and mission focus. One of our members, who attends ordination councils as our church's representative, said that many of the ethnic church leaders opt not to participate in the association of local churches because the association is allowing ordination of women. Now what do we do with that?

My prayer this week is for clarity and insight as I look not only at patterns and data, but also at the human hearts, dreams and fears behind those patterns. How can I remain both centered in my faith and hopes, and visionary in thinking about church in the 21st century?