News and resources for women leaders in the church.
A recent Washington Post article: 'Fixing the economy? It's women's work.'And in
Marie Claire in July, the 'Big Question' was 'Could women rescue the world?' 'Worldwide recession, global warming, war...would the planet be in such a mess if women were in charge?'
Part of me wants to say, Yes, women would make a better job of running the world and fixing the economy. But two things stop me. One, to say women would make a better job of these things is too essentialist for my liking. I've just written an article which basically maintains what most research argues: that women and men don't lead that differently.
And two, there is a God dimension to running the world and fixing the economy! No matter whether it's men or women in charge, without regard to God's ways I'm not sure either sex is going to make that good a job of it.
Marie Claire - it was a bit of a feminist rant, but I liked one sentence a lot. 'Our world would be more Garden of Eden, less Soho at closing time on the last night on earth.' Sadly, though, given the level of binge drinking by some young women, I'm not sure women's world
would be so 'Garden of Eden'. When it came to the way the writer pointed out how female politicans are treated by the media, though (only interested in their clothes, not whether they can do the job), I was with her all the way.
The
Washington Post article is somewhat more serious writing. You can read it by clicking
here. The gist is that companies with more women in senior management roles make more money. In Fortune 500 companies, having three or women women in senior management positions made it more likely the company would outperform the competition. Reading between the lines, the research is not actually saying that women are better managers, but that gender diversity is important.
They also cite research which sees a connection between hormonal differences and leadership styles - men are more prone to competition and risk-taking, and women to collaboration and long-term results.
I do find this a little confusing, because another piece of serious research on women leaders suggests they are
better than men at taking risks (of the right sort). And as men and women we are much more than the sum of our hormones!
The article also mentions something called the 'diversity prediction theorem', which says that a diverse group will solve a complicated business problem better than a homogeneous group. I suspect most people would think that was obvious!
But while not everyone has got the message, perhaps it is still worth saying. By this token, the Anglican Church would benefit from having women in the House of Bishops, and male-dominated leadership teams and committees might benefit from considering how the voices of women could contribute.
For Christians, it's not about making more money, it's much more important than that. The Church is about spiritual life and death. We can't afford not to use
all the gifts God gives.
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A woman serving in a tough parish has returned from holiday to more broken windows in her church. Not long ago her car was broken into. Frustrations she could do without, on top of all the demands of leading a church.
I've been reflecting on her situation, and the fact that in some tough areas most of the vicars are women. It's one of the emerging patterns that the Dean of Leicester, Viv Faull, noted in a lecture in 2006. But why should this be?
Recently, I found someone else who was asking the same questions. Juliet Kilpin, a Baptist minister, asks: 'Why are there proportionately more female ministers in the inner city than male ministers?' Click
here to read the article, on the Baptist 'Mainstream' site. So this is clearly an issue for Baptists as well as for Anglicans.
Kilpin gives 4 options:
- women have more guts than men
- women are less worried about money than men
- inner city churches are more liberal
- inner city churches are more desperate
I wonder which one you would go for? Kilpin's paper is definitely worth reading, though from my own experience I would want to add 'outer estate' to 'inner city': many of the challenges are similar.
Ministry is about service, but it does sometimes seem puzzling to me that some tough parishes can be hard to fill, whereas clergy flock to apply to those in leafy suburbia.
In fact I guess this is the flip side of that other big question, why there are so few women larger churches? One answer might be that numbers of them, whether out of choice or necessity, are following a diffent path.
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A friend recently sent me a link to a fascinating article about former US President, Jimmy Carter. Click
here to read it.
The gist of the article is that Carter, a Baptist deacon and Bible teacher, has severed his connection with the Southern Baptist Convention.
Who cares? one might ask.
But what Carter goes on to say is that it's not just about what women can or can't do in church that has made him question his allegiance. It's the fact that once one has said that women are 'somehow inferior to men', all kinds of other things follow.
He moves on to explore briefly the implications of holding women inferior to men in both Islamic and Christian traditions, and draws attention to a statement issued by the Elders, a global group of eminent leaders, that 'the justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.'
He goes on: 'we are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world's major faiths share. '
I look forward to seeing what happens. I've not noticed much media attention - have you?
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I've noticed lots of commemorations of women in the Church calendar at this time of year!
25th July was the festival in the Greek Orthdox Church of Olympias. She lived from c 360-408, and was both a patron (of St John of Chrysostom) and was also ordained deacon, after being widowed. Why have I not heard of her before? After her death she was venerated as a saint, and she is commemorated in both the Greek and Roman church - on different days! Yet another woman who exercised a ministry similar to that of male deacons in the third century - before the office was phased out.
Then a couple of days ago (28th) it was the festival of Irene Chrysobalantou (pictured left), another deacon and abbess, who lived in the late 9th to early 10th century. She was born in Cappadocia to an aristocratic family, and having turned down some marriage proposals, she gave her inherited wealth to the monastery of Chrysovaluantou and entered the community. After some years of study, service and leading many others to Christ, she became abbess, having previously been ordained deacon by Patriarch Methodius.
And yesterday was the Church of England lesser festival of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, 'companions of our Lord'. Two significant women in the New Testament: one who sat at Jesus' feet, the place of a trainee rabbi - and how frustrating that we have no idea of the end of her story - and Martha, whose affirmation that Jesus is 'the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world' is one of the high points of John's Gospel.
Watch out for festivals of more recent women in August: Mary Sumner (9th), Florence Nightingale and Octavia Hill (13th), Catherine and William Booth (20th), and Phoebe, deacon of Cenchreae and patron of Paul (Romans 16:1) on 3rd September.
Let's make the most of celebrating those women who have gone before us!
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Tomorrow (18th July) the Church of England commemorates a pioneering deaconess, Elizabeth Ferard.
I've just been reading Derek Tidball's comprehensive study of New Testament ministry, Ministry by the Book, and among other things he notes that the reference to 'women' in 1 Timothy 3:11 is probably to women who are deacons and not to deacons' wives (as the TNIV also notes - what does your Bible say?).
But it took until 1862 for a woman, Elizabeth Ferard, to be admitted to the office of deaconess. She was one of the first woman to train at Kaiserworth in Germany, and after a spell with the Anglican nuns at Ditchingham she went on to found and lead the North London Deaconess Institution, the first and only establishment of its kind. Deaconesses were appointed in Liverpool and Bedford in 1869 - and the rest, as they say, is history.
But apparently that history could have been very different. Reading a review of a book on female clergy in the Medieval West (were there any, you may ask?), I find that in the early Middle Ages ordination was for someone who would be head of a community. But in the late 12th and 13th centuries ordination became centred on the eucharist, and women who were formerly ordained, including queens, abbesses and deaconesses, were no longer ranked as ordained, although abbots and deacons were considered to be so.
While I'm aware of controversy around women's ministry in the early years of the Church, I had no idea that ordination for some women was also current around 1000 years ago. But there were various changes in thinking in the 12th century. And according to the author of this study, published by OUP in 2008, Gary Macy: 'Within a fifty-year period, the centuries-old tradition of the ordination of women had been reversed and denied.'
Another well-hidden secret. How recent it is (I remember it happening in 1987) that women who had been deaconesses could be ordained and be 'deacons'! But there were women deacons in the early church! And women deacons 1000 years ago!
Such are the vagaries of history - or should I say the persistence of patriarchy?
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