After decades of no growth in the ranks of female senior pastors serving in Protestant churches, a new Barna study that has tracked the ratio of male-to-female pastors indicates that women have made substantial gains in the past ten years.
From the early 1990s through 1999 just 5% of the Senior Pastors of Protestant churches were female. Since that time the proportion has slowly but steadily risen, doubling to 10% in 2009.
Not surprisingly, a large share of the woman in the pastorate ”“ 58% ”“ are affiliated with a “mainline” church ”“ i.e., a congregation that is aligned with denominations such as American Baptist Churches (ABCUSA), United Church of Christ, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), United Methodist or Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA). Among male pastors, less than half that percentage (23%) is affiliated with a mainline ministry.
I do feel rather said when this kind of article is posted. I don’t know about here, but on SFIF it means that we get a while slew of posts about how wrong WO is and how the decline of mainline churches is attributable primarily to WO. As an ordained clergywoman, I just don’t have the heart for that kind of dicusssion so I’ll skip the rest except to say that yes, clergywomen are generally paid less than their male counterparts.
Of course it would be unfair to attribute the decline solely to WO as it is only part of a continuum—contraception, divorce, WO, gays . . .
Isn’t the truth that it’s not the gender of the clergy, but what he or she preaches and teaches about and how she or he models a life of following and loving Jesus as God’s Anointed One?
My unfortunate experienceS (several) with female clergy has proven that along with them has come the support if not the push for radical feminist interpretations of Scripture, abortion rights, etc., etc., etc. If WO isn’t supposed to be all about being female then why do we keep seeing female-centric priests?
The ACNA has, to the great unhappiness of some, compromised on the issue, allowing its jurisdictions which approve of WO to continue the practice, allowing jurisdictions which cannot accept WO to maintain all-male holy orders, and providing, for the sake of unity, for male-only bishops. This is a compromise which accepts that both sides hold sincerely to their views on the issue. This respect for the traditional clerical orders was promised to TEC dissenters, but the promise was not met. What other denominations with different polities and difference ecclesiologies and perhaps different views of the ministry (most mainline Protestant groups don’t have “priests” at all) really is not directly related to what Anglicans are doing.