More women are graduating from seminaries, but in most faiths few are senior or solo clergy.<\/p>\n
“If you have a senior rabbi who is a man, and the congregation is looking for an associate rabbi, they will look for a man or a woman,” Shanks said. “But if the senior rabbi is a woman, they will say ‘We already have a Advertisement woman.’ So that’s another piece we’re looking at.”<\/p>\n
The June 28 “State of Women in Baptist Life” survey shows Baptist congregations led by women are increasing — but slowly.<\/p>\n
“Women are inching up, but we still have a long, long way to go,” said Karen Massey, religion professor at Mercer University in Atlanta and a member of the group that commissioned the study. “The more mainline churches are years ahead of us.”<\/p>\n
Nationwide, about 600 women ordained in moderate and liberal Baptist denominations serve as senior or solo pastors. In California, of a total of 10 female pastors, three women head congregations.<\/p>\n
What clergywomen in other faiths call “the stained-glass ceiling” is more like a skylight in Miller’s Unitarian Universalist faith. Women hold forth each Sunday on more than half of the denomination’s pulpits.<\/p>\n
She was the first female minister to bear a child during her tenure. Now, fertile leaders have formed a support group: They are the “Reverend Mothers.”<\/p>\n
“If the senior ministers of large churches tend to be male, (that is) because they are toward the end of their careers,” said Unitarian Universalist Association spokeswoman Janet Hayes.<\/p>\n
In the mainstream Presbyterian faith, women make up close to half the clergy.<\/p>\n
But in most faiths, female clergy — especially senior clergy — are in the minority.<\/p>\n