Saturday, February 21, 1998

Women pastors struggle to break through the stained-glass ceiling

By Mark I. Pinsky / The Orlando Sentinel

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Rev. Barbara Williams Riddle knows all about the stained-glass ceiling -- the psychological barrier that keeps women from the pulpit of large, upscale congregations.

After climbing her denomination's ladder for nearly three decades, this 49-year-old pioneer has joined an elite group of women leading suburban and downtown flocks. Of 1,200 United Methodist congregations with more than 1,000 members, 2 percent are headed by female senior pastors, according to the denomination. Despite her own success, Riddle said, "I know there is a ceiling."

Over the past 20 years, thousands of women have been ordained in a spectrum of mainline faiths and denominations. In some Protestant seminaries, half of those enrolled are women, including many who are embarking on second careers. Graduates serve as chaplains, missionaries, music and education ministers, assistants and associates. But few reach the level of senior pastor.

There are no definitive figures on the number of women leading Protestant congregations of more than 1,000 members -- the threshold where many experts think the stained-glass ceiling comes into play. But there is general agreement the numbers are very small.

When women succeed in taking over a church, the congregation usually is small or struggling, or located in a rural area or the inner city -- churches that cannot afford competitive salaries for male clergy.

As pastor of the 2,000-member First United Methodist Church of Winter Park, Fla., Riddle has been able to crack this last religious bastion, using patience and persistence.

But as United Methodist district superintendent, the job she held before taking the Winter Park pulpit in 1996, Riddle was also in the position of assigning pastors to congregations.

"The reality is that there are just some folks who won't accept leadership from a woman," she said. "We had folks sit around the table and say Ôno' to the appointment of a woman as pastor."

Riddle, who led two other large churches before coming to Winter Park, said a key factor in determining whether a woman is accepted in the pulpit is how congregation members understand the concept of "the call."

"If the leadership has a respect for the call -- acknowledging that God has called you to ministry," she said, the relationship can work. "You have the gifts and graces, but if people aren't willing to accept you, you can't have ministry."

A religion career survey scheduled to be released next month supports this view.

"Most clergywomen have a strong sense of call," according to the study. At the same time, one female clergy member quoted in the study conducted by the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut observed that "it seems that God calls and the church stalls."

Unlike other Protestant denominations, United Methodist bishops assign pastors to congregations, at the recommendation of the district superintendent. That means the problems female ministers face do not necessarily end when they clear the stained-glass ceiling.

"Just because you are sent doesn't mean you are accepted," said Riddle, based on her experience assigning pastors to congregations.

Some faiths do not even ordain women as ministers: Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Mormons do not ordain women.

Others permit women to serve as ministers, but that's no guarantee they will take over a church.

Charismatic Christians, like the Assemblies of God, have ordained women for nearly 100 years. United Methodists began in the 1950s, joined in the late 1960s and early 1970s by other mainline Protestants denominations.

The issue of women as pastors is still being fought out by Southern Baptists, who ordain women but oppose them in the pulpit. Last November, for example, the California Baptist Convention, a Southern Baptist affiliate, refused to recognize representatives of the 19th Avenue Baptist Church because the San Francisco congregation is headed by a woman, Julie Pennington-Russell.

Southern Baptists, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, have 1,200 ordained women, most serving as chaplains.

While some New Testament passages are used to disparage the leadership of women in Protestant churches, the stained-glass ceiling in mainline denominations appears to be more psychological than theological.

"Resistance comes in 2000 years of patriarchy, the fact that there is on a very deep level ... an ambivalence about authority and power and women," said the Rev. Joanna Adams senior pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, a 2,000-member congregation.

Adams, 53, said her church is composed of "people who like to think about new things God might be doing in the world, who are not at all self-conscious about having a woman as a pastor. ... Fear of the unknown is the greatest source of resistance. Congregations with spunk and courage -- you don't have any problems."

Regardless of the attitude of members of large churches toward female pastors, observers say the congregation leaders who do the hiring tend to be older and less amenable to change.

By contrast, leaders at the national level of most denominations are more open to promoting women to top ministerial positions. Thus, even in denominations considered more "progressive," women are more likely to be elected bishop than to be called to lead a large urban or suburban church.

Some experts predict that in the next decade and beyond, as the baby boom generation assumes leadership of these congregations, the situation may change.

"There is an emerging generation of leadership that has experienced women leaders in other areas of life, and for them it's no big deal," said Adams, who is the subject of a book, "Beyond the Stained Glass Ceiling."

When this shift occurs, Adams said, a generation of female pastors now in their 30s, some of whom already head smaller to medium-sized churches or serve on the staffs of larger churches, will be ready.

The Rev. Jim Armstrong of the First Congregational Church of Winter Park, with about 1,000 members, said that his successor could well be a woman.

Two women have served on the church's staff, Armstrong said, and members' experience with them has been positive.

"They have seen that women clergy can function as decision-makers, that they can command the respect of community leaders and that they can be effective communicators and faithful theologians," said Armstrong, whose congregation is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

Armstrong's attitude may not reflect the prospects for other churches in Central Florida, as experts point out the resistance to women in the pulpit of large churches is strongest in the South and the Midwest.

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Like the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church has voiced support for women in the pulpit.

"People will say that they have no difficulty with women pastors," said the Rev. Margaret Ingalls of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Fruitland Park. "But when it comes to the large congregations I think it becomes an issue."

Ingalls is the only senior pastor in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, leading a church with nearly 400 members.

But the denomination has recently announced a plan to offer early retirement to its priests, a decision that could make room for more women at the top. Ingalls predicted that in the next five years women in the Episcopal Church will move into more pulpits.

Smaller denominations, further from the Protestant mainstream, are more open to women in the pulpit. The Rev. Marni Harmony, for example, heads the First Unitarian Church in Orlando, and the Rev. Cath DePalma leads the Orlando Church of Religious Science.

In the African-American community, female pastors are most likely to head ministries they have founded. The Rev. Barbara King leads the 5,000-member, nondenominational Hillside Chapel and Truth Center in Atlanta.

"I founded it from my living room -- that's the difference," she said.

King said the stigma that still attaches to women in ministry in the black community is "more from the ministers than the worshipers. The worshipers are not as bad about it as the pastors. That's part of the challenge."

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.