Rogue Reverend

The Church and Women

It has been such a long time since I’ve faced discrimination by the church, that when it smacked me up-side the head, twice in one week, it sent me reeling a bit.

In the first instance, I was at a retreat for pastors about Missional church. I was the only woman in a group of pastors, most of whom were Southern Baptist. One was pastor of a UCC church, so I thought there was hope, until he explained that his church left the UCC when they voted, as a denomination, in favor of gay marriage. I knew, by the time the introductions were over, that I was in the wrong place.

But I stayed, thinking that perhaps I was jumping to conclusions. I was not wrong. I had signed up for a three day retreat, but left that evening, after enduring masculine visual aids (all the people in the slides were men), having the leader call the group, “Men,” constantly, and being ignored, and even worse, argued with during the discussion time. I found myself getting really upset.

And the thing is, all these pastors were expressing their concern over their churches dying. Duh! Of course they’re dying! You don’t even offer to women the freedom they enjoy in the rest of our culture.

The second time was upon looking at a conference about missional community called Verge being held in 2010 in Austin, Texas. A person I follow on twitter was excitedly tweeting about it. So I looked at the website. Not one single woman on the roster for this conference. The conference leaders seem to mostly be SBC, and we know that they won’t respond to my request to add at least one woman to their roster.

Those of you who knew me in seminary know how painful the experience was. Hardly a day passed when a male student didn’t say to me, “You can’t be a minister! You’re a girl!”

Even worse than all that, one of my friends tweeted me, “we’ve gotta love those who interpret scripture differently though.” Really? Really? Love them, sure, but accept where they are wrong in interpreting Scripture? If this was any other scripture verse (like perhaps the ones on slavery?) would we think we should respect their points of view?

No.

I have been insulated from the issues of exclusion of women in ministry. Living in the progressive/liberal world shelters me from the sexism so rampant in the evangelical church.

I am so sorry that the little girls sitting in those churches don’t have the opportunity to see women in leadership. I’m sad that they’ll grow up like me, doubting God’s call on their life, because there are no clear role models. It’s tragic that these little girls will grow up thinking they are not as valuable as boys, simply because their churches interpreted Scripture so wrong.

I’m torn about putting myself in more places where women are unwelcome in leadership. I’ve enjoyed my protected place. But I don’t think I can leave my sisters to suffer.

When was the last time a woman filled the pulpit at your church? Time to ask the pulpit supply team for some new faces.

The Good Part of That Sermon

Carol Flinders writes in At the Root of This Longing: Reconciling a Spiritual Hunger and a Feminist Thirst that there are certain precepts that seem to be constants in religious practice: 1) Be silent. 2) Put yourself last. 3) Resist and rechannel your desires, especially your sexual desires, and 4) Enclose yourself. Cut yourself off from the external world.

Flinders maintains that feminism, and I would add that post-modernity, tells us the opposite: 1) Find your voice, tell your story, 2) Know who you are, establish your identity, 3) Reclaim your body and your desires, and 4) Move about freely and fearlessly. Take back the streets.

We have to reconcile the two stances.

I’ve been considering two definitions of reconciliation during this time of Lent. The first, most used in an accounting or auditing context, is what we talk about when we reconcile our checkbooks. We compare two numbers to demonstrate the basis for the difference between them, or we balance debits, credits, and totals between two systems. The second definition, used mostly in a theological or relational sense is the reestablishing of friendly relations, either between two individuals or between God and humanity.

We mostly understand reconciliation to mean, “reestablishing friendly relations.”

What if, instead, we think about reconciliation the way that is more like reconciling our checkbooks, looking at two very different totals, demonstrating the basis for the difference between them, and being okay with it?

If we consider Flinders’ options, whether we will be silent or tell our story, whether we will put ourselves last or establish our identity, whether we will rechannel or reclaim our desires and sexuality, or whether we will enclose ourselves or move about freely, we see the hinge here, right? We must reconcile between the two of them, and it hinges on choice.

We cannot and should not be made to be silent or forced to be loud.
We cannot and should not be made to serve or forced to be served.
We cannot and should not be made to be chaste or forced to be sexual.
We cannot and should not be made to cloister or forced to roam.

You see, agency, or the ability to exert personal power in our lives, is a continuum. This continuum is dynamic, changing every hour, every day, every week. It is influenced by many factors: race, age, gender, education level, class, privilege, beauty or lack of it, addictions. Wow. There are so many that I can’t name them all, and each one of these factors has layers to it. And there’s one more, that sometimes I think is the most important one of all: how much agency do you believe that you have?

Each of us live in this continuum of agency. And the most important factor is how much we believe we have agency. Shall I say that again? We must know that we have the power to make our own decisions, to lead our own lives, to control our futures.