Volume 2, Fall/Winter 1998
Review by the Editors

Mark Chaves. Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Paula D. Nesbitt, The Feminization of the Clergy in America: Occupational and Organizational Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Exactly how important is ordination to the history of Protestant women in the twentieth century? It's an irreverent question, perhaps, but still a good one for historians to consider. No one would deny its potent symbolism as a measure of gender equality and feminine achievement--today about half of all American denominations ordain women, and about 30% of all seminary students(and in some seminaries over half) are female.

But given the relative dearth of investigations into other areas of women’s Protestant experience--their devotional lives, their literary work, and their leadership in social movements, missionary work and religious education--historians might rightly ask whether this should be the main twentieth-century narrative,

or its assumed end-point. Indeed, they might wonder whether a preoccupation with ordination has undercut the significance of women's work in other, less public areas, locking our gaze onto the predominantly white, middle-class mainline Protestant women who pushed for its approval. Historians could, in fact, point to the cautionary example of suffrage and women's rights. What started out in 1848 in Seneca Falls as a broad-based campaign for equality soon became a narrowly focused campaign for the vote, which advocates claimed would cure most of women's social, economic, and political disabilities. Without a doubt, the attainment of suffrage in 1920 was a benchmark, but still only the beginning of the struggle for gender equity, not its fulfillment. Part of the problem in gauging the importance of women's ordination is that we have relatively little sense of its importance and impact upon Protestant churches as a whole across the span of the twentieth century. Up to this point, most studies of women's ordination have focused on the influx of white mainline women into the ministry since the 1970s, or they have tracked women's progress toward ordination in one or only a few white mainline denominations. Scores of excellent books now discuss the experiences of women in the clerical profession, debate whether or not their approach to ministry differs from their male colleagues', or lament the "stained glass ceiling" that still impedes full equality; but few have attempted to explain why ordination took so long to achieve, or why it is still so far off in some more conservative religious circles.

Two new books, both written by sociologists, take a deeper look at these questions, and open up new ones: Paula Nesbitt's Feminization of the Clergy and Mark Chaves' Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations. Both take a long, hard, unsentimental inspection of the social dynamics behind the ordination question, delivering new insights about its importance--and relative insignificance--for women in twentieth-century Protestantism.

Armed with piles of hard data from the Episcopalian and Unitarian-Universalist cases, Nesbitt offers a sobering look at women's advance into the clerical profession. With the decline of membership in white mainline denominations, she argues, opportunities for full-time, adequately remunerated pastorates have diminished, for men and women alike. But Nesbitt argues that women have taken the brunt of the shortages: they consistently earn smaller salaries and fill less stable, short-term positions. Nesbitt also documents the rise of a "women's track" of unpaid or part-time positions among both Episcopalians and Unitarians. Sheargues that these new positions begin to appear when the proportion of female clergy reaches 30%, suggesting that more than just pragmatic denominational restructuring is at work in the changes. Somewhat surprisingly, Nesbitt also shows that the fabled influx of female clergy has, if anything, benefited the dwindling numbers of newly-minted young male seminarians, whose relative "cash value" on the job market has become higher than ever. At the very least, Nesbitt's work should give temper any tendency to valorize ordination as a final benchmark of equality; in fact, Nesbitt cites Allison Cheek's suggestion that ordained women do the cause of women a disservice by taking inferior positions and going along with the ecclesiastical "system."

Of course, Nesbitt's focus on two white mainline denominations makes it difficult to tell whether her real storyline is institutional sexism or mainline decline. (She cites David Riesman's observation likening women's ordination to "riding up the elevator when the building is crumbling.") Would the "stained glass ceiling" open up if money and institutional failure of nerve were not such pressing issues? Without studies of women in more stable denominational settings, it is hard to tell.

Chaves takes a broader view of the landscape, culling data from the 100 largest Christian denominations in the United States over the span of the past 150 years (since the first woman, Antoinette Brown, was ordained in 1853). Those interested in the history of women's ordination can feel fortunate that a scholar involved in organization theory was stimulated by the issue and chose to "do history" in this area.

Noting the puzzling fact that both Presbyterians and Methodists granted full clergy rights to women in 1956—seemingly out of the blue, during the so-called nadir of modern feminism—Chaves looks for patterns of internal institutional pressures and external cultural factors that predict whether in any given year a denomination will ordain women. He argues that throughout most of the twentieth century, there is only a "loose coupling" between pressure from women eager to be ordained and a denomination's decision to grant them full access. The crucial factor seems to come from outside, in the amount of urgency within a denomination to adopt the ethic of gender equality that, Chaves argues, is becoming more normative in the modern secular world. Clearly, some Protestants responded to that pressure more readily than others. In fact, Chaves rightly points out that for conservative Protestants, it is the identification between women's ordination and a liberal, modernist stance--not simply a blind concern for scriptural infallibility--that has blocked ordination overtures. In effect, he argues, the decision to ordain women is not just a private, internal discussion, but also constitutes a denomination's way of signalling its stance toward the outside world.

Taken together, Nesbitt and Chaves suggest some reasons why ordination has been, and continues to be, such a difficult issue for so many Protestants. The conventional wisdom on women's ordination--that the churches have formed a solid wall of male naysayers that only the bravest and most determined women could breach--certainly seems problematic, given the solidly female majorities in all American denominations. Surely, how well women do in the ministry relates, among other things, to the process by which the decision to ordain was arrived at in the first place. It makes a difference whether the ruling came about through grassroots consensus or as the result of agitation from a relatively small body of denominational executives.

Nesbitt's and Chaves' studies also go a long way in helping us gauge the importance of women's ordination, with both suggesting that it is only a partial indicator of women's actual status and power in the churches. We still need to know what the vaster numbers of other, non-ordained women have done in the churches, and how they have thought and felt about ordination, and in fact the entire range of theological and social issues where men's voices have been so dominant. Perhaps a broader, thicker depiction of women's work would help explain even more why Protestant churchwomen did not make a concerted push for ordination much earlier--given their numerical and financial strength at the end of the nineteenth century, they very likely could have won. Undoubtedly, there are entire books waiting to be written explaining why agitation for ordination is so episodic and occurred so late in American religious history. Ordination alone does not even begin to account for everything to be said about women and twentieth-century Protestantism.

A Brief Bibliography on Women's Ordination

Brereton, Virginia and Christa Klein. "American Women in Ministry: A History of Protestant Beginning Points," in Women in American Religion, ed. Janet Wilson James. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980, 171-190.

Carroll, Jackson, Barbara Hargrove and Adair T. Lummis. Women of the Cloth: A New Opportunity for Churches. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1983.

Hogan, Lucy. "The Overthrow of the Monopoly of the Pulpit: A Longitudinal Case Study of the Cultural Conversation Advocating the Preaching and Ordination of Women in American Methodism." Ph.D. diss.: University of Maryland at College Park, 1995.

Lehman, Jr., Edward C. Women Clergy: Breaking Through Gender Barriers. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1985.

Melton, J. Gordon, ed. The Churches Speak On: Women’s Ordination: Offical Statements from Religious Bodies and Organizations (the Churches Speak On). Detroit: Gale Research, 1991.

Purvis, Sally. The Stained Glass Ceiling: Churches and Their Women Pastors. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.

Schmidt, Jr. Frederick. A Still, Small Voice: Women, Ordination, and the Church. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Schneider, Carl J. and Dorothy. In Their Own Right: The History of American Clergywomen. New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1997.

Todd, Mary. "Not In God's Lifetime: The Question of the Ordination of Women in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod." Ph.D. diss: University of Illinois at Chicago, 1996.

Wallace, Ruth. They Call Her Pastor: A New Role for Catholic Women. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1992.

Zikmund, Barbara Brown, Adair T. Lummis and Patricia M.Y -. Chang. An Uphill Calling: Ordained Women in Contemporary Protestantism. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, forthcoming.

New Resources on Women and 20th-Century Protestantism

Allen, C. Leonard. "Silena Moore Holman (1850-1915), voice of the 'New Woman' Among Churches of Christ." Discipliana 56 (Spring 1996): 3-11.

Brasher, Brenda. "My Beloved is All Radiant: Two Case Studies of Congregational-Based Christian Fundamentalist Female Enclaves and the Religious Experience They Cultivate Among Women." Review of Religious Research 38 (March 1997): 231-246.

_____. Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, [forthcoming, 1998].

Conn, Peter. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Copeland, Ruth Gerber. "Making It Through the Great Depression: Reflections of a Woman Author-Minister." Assemblies of God Heritage 16 (Spring 1996): 13-14.

Crocker, Ruth. "From Widow's Mite to Widow's Might: The Philanthropy of Margaret Olivia Sage." American Presbyterians 74 (Winter 1996): 253-264.

Cuthbertson, Greg and Kretzschmar, Louise. "Gender and Mission Christianity: Recent Trends in South African Historiography and Theology." Missionalia 24 (November 1996): 277-301.

Facts on File Encyclopedia of Black Women in America: Religion and Community vol. 8; Darlene C. Hine, ed. New York: Facts on File, 1997.

Garza, Minerva N. "The Influence of Methodism on Hispanic Women Through Women's Societies." Methodist History 34 (January 1996): 78-89.

Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. "The Roles of Church and Community Mothers: Ambivalent American Sexism or Fragmented African Familyhood?" in African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, eds. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Griffith, R. Marie. God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Hobbs, June Hadden. I Sing For I Cannot Be Silent: The Feminization of American Hymnody, 1870-1920. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

Knotts, Alice G. Fellowship of Love: Methodist Women Changing American Racial Attitudes. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997.

Lindley, Susan Hill. 'You Have Stept Out of Your Place’: A History of Women and Religion in America. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.

Robert, Dana. American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996.

Ruether, Rosemary and Rosemary Keller, eds. In Our Own Voices: Four Centuries of American Women's Religious Writing. New York: Harper, 1996.

Schmidt, Jean Miller. Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism, 1760-1968. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997.

Weisenfeld, Judith and Richard Newman, eds. This Far By Faith: Readings in African-American Women's Religious Biography. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Wessinqer, Catherine. Religious Institutions and Women's Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Colombia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

Whiteley, Marilyn F. "Canadian Methodist Women and Missions: The Transformation of 'Pious, Plodding' Females." Methodist History 34 (January 1996): 104-118.

Wimberly, Anne Streaty. "Called to Witness, Called to Serve: African American Methodist Women in Liberian Missions, 1834-1934." Methodist History 34 (January 1996): 67-77.

Yoder, Ann. "A Guide to Mennonite Women's Diaries (1850-1950)." Mennonite Quarterly Review 70 (October 1996): 483-495.

Zaragoza, June. "To Edify or Entertain: The Fiction of Catherine Marshall." Christianity and the Arts 3 (Fall 1996): 11-13.

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