Sexism and the US church

Thanks for the outrage about Saddleback. Now what?

A few weeks ago, I was looking for a book on women pastors. I wanted to find something like a history or ethnography of women in ministry. One of my church members is involved is authoring a study that explores the experiences of women in ministry in the Mennonite church and I was curious what had been written already.

The search engines – both bookstore and internet – revealed the current state of affairs. My screen populated with books titled Two View on Women in Ministry, Women in Ministry: Four Views, Why Not Women?, How I Changed My Mind About Women in Ministry. Aside from the fact that it is quite something to have your life’s work reduced to one acceptable “view” among others (the other view being that you are in rebellion against the very nature of God), you’ll notice a theme. To my knowledge, the first record of women’s ordination in the US dates to 1815 when Clarissa Danforth was called into ministry among the Free Will Baptists. Yet the vast majority of conversation and writing about women in ministry 208 years later still concerns whether or not we ought to be in ministry.

And it shows.

The Southern Baptist Convention made national news this week by formally disaffiliating Saddleback church because women at Saddleback teach and preach. This is a break from the denomination’s tradition of congregational autonomy, but certainly no more than an affirmation of their longstanding misogyny following the conservative takeover in the 1980s. Because the SBC, like Mennonites (as I learned from my friend Travis), functions with high congregation autonomy, the motion is symbolic. My understanding is that they won’t lose their pastors or buildings. But they will need to engage in a reshuffle of their affiliation beyond their local church. It’s not clear to me how this will affect the credentialing of their leaders.

People from denominations who ordain women are outraged. Around 20% of ordained pastors in the US are women. My guess is that this number is lower in the Mennonite church (the Unitarians also shift the average upward with a whopping 57% of their pastorate being women, most other denominations hover around 30%). Women are paid less than their men counterparts, experience sexual harassment, are undermined by church members. And while I can’t find the stats (don’t forget – the conversation that takes up the most space is if women should be ordained), I have no doubt that the experiences of Black, Asian, Latina, Indigenous, first-gen, queer, and trans women in ministry is significantly more painful and difficult.

So Saddleback outrage is warranted, but I am also wary. Getting women into pastoral roles is one thing – creating the structures and support to allow women to thrive in ministry is another. And I know that many, many churches are not doing the work they need to do in order for women pastors even to survive their ministries.

A while ago, the church I serve clarified our policies on marriage, ministry, and membership for LGBTQ people. We knew this clarity was the beginning and not the end of our work as a congregation. Where did heteronormativity show up in our hymns, liturgies, and language as a congregation? Had we unpacked our own prejudices and misconceptions? Where did we need to expand our community work to attend to LGBTQ folks who were asking for support and solidarity? How could we continue to learn, grow, and shift our structures to represent queerness not as an orientation but as a political disposition, a way of life that was an invitation, as bell hooks writes, “to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live”?

Racism in the church is no different. Sexism is no different. Capitalism is no different. Worker suppression is no different. Supremacy cultures are interconnected and if we do not bring them all down, they will continue to proliferate. Getting a Black pastor in the door of a majority white church doesn’t flip a switch on racism. Hiring a gay youth leader doesn’t make a church a haven for LGBTQ folks. Liberation is on-going and intentional form of life cultivated through confession, lament, hope, and regeneration.

In ten years of ministry, I have been offered one training on sexism in the church (and that training was thwarted by the pandemic). I have attended Safe Church trainings where I walked away with knowledge of how not to victimize my church members but was offered no guidance on how to keep myself safe from church members. I have been told how to report sexual harassment but I don’t know how to report sexism – or if I should.

A few years ago, a man who was in authority over me in my denomination was placed on leave and eventually resigned from his role for misuse of power, violation of truth telling, breaking and misusing confidentiality, intentional deception and dishonesty, and harming the leadership of another pastor. I remember when I received the phone call from the committee investigating these charges. I listened, my eyes wide.

As I told my story, I realized I would never have reported this behavior. I knew there was a strong current of sexism and homophobia running below the surface of this man’s leadership, but I had assumed it was my role to endure it. And how would I would prove sexism was at work? This is how men in power act, and this man decided whether or not I would be ordained! I had been mistaken for a pastor’s wife on two occasions at conference meetings. I was not asked to serve on a committee, to preach, or to lead worship in the four years I was licensed for special ministry. My ordination (typically a two-year discernment) dragged on for five years. Eventually my church left the conference. That this leader was being held accountable was one of the most shocking moments in my career as a pastor.

In my experience, the difficulty with sexism is that it’s hard for women to pinpoint. In clergywomen groups I’m a part of, I’ve heard this processed over and over again. Is this person making my life miserable because I’m a woman or because they’re a cantankerous person? Am I exaggerating the role gender plays in this dispute? Would this situation be the same if I was an older white guy pastor? Am I being too sensitive? To what extent is a woman who has conflict with me internalizing her own self-hatred? Does she feel discomfort because she’s being led by a woman? What do I do with the self-declared feminism of a man in my church who consistently undermines me, his actual pastor? How do generational differences and cultural differences impact what I’m experiencing? Is this all in my head?

So far no one has declared “I am sexist and that is why I am making you miserable.” We sip our coffee around the table and shrug. We don’t know the answers.

I also have discomfort about blazing forth with anti-sexism campaigns because I know the violent history of white women’s movements that utilized racial hierarchies to get ahead of women who were racialized into oppression by white supremacy. In U.S. history, women’s solidarity movements are typically white women’s solidarity movements. Wealthy white women made a deal with wealthy white men to get a seat at the table. In exchange white women would abandon robust multi-racial, worker-centered movements and keep the engine of racial capitalism running.

I’m grateful that more women are moving into ministry. I’m also grateful for the people who support and encourage these women every day. I have people like this in every congregation I have served, and their care and support has kept me going for a decade. I am so grateful.

And the church needs to move beyond the debate over women in ministry. Churches with women pastors need to take seriously that sexism still affects them, to continue to dig deep into their structures and cultures. They need hold each other accountable when the suspect that gendered bias is at work. I want us to undo the interconnected supremacy cultures that bind all of us, even those who believe themselves to be the winners of these contests.  

The work of liberation for women – for all of us – doesn’t end with ordination. This is where the work begins.