Chicago. New York, Washington D.C. This year, in rapid succession, three women were chosen to lead historic high-steeple churches in these three cities.
In May this year, the Reverend Shannon Johnson Kershner became the first woman senior pastor at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. In June, the Reverend Amy Butler was elected senior pastor at the Riverside Church in New York City. And finally in July, the Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli began leading the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington D.C.
“It is very powerful when women speak from these pulpits and speak boldly – as the voices of the community in these public buildings,” said the Reverend Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary.
It has already been 40 years since the Episcopal Church first began ordaining women, and other denominations too have long been including women in their clergy ranks. But these three women reached their new achievements much earlier than other colleagues of theirs. According to data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, ordained women most often serve in smaller congregations.
Researcher Diana Butler Bass praised these women’s entry into their new posts – each is forty years old and leads a large city congregation housed in a neo-Gothic building – yet at the same time Butler Bass also questioned whether in this case the women might reflect the “General Motors phenomenon”.
Diana Butler Bass, author of the book “Christianity After Religion”, asks: “Do women come into leadership positions only when institutions are already beginning to collapse?”
“Now that they (the churches) have reached a crisis, it seems that men step back and say: oh yes, we leave it to the women. – If a congregation does not do well, then it is the woman’s fault. It is like a double-edged sword,” Butler Bass continues.
The Reverend Gaines-Cirelli (44) sees it differently: “I think these are challenges, and I think we are experiencing them, and that it is a very positive sign that women are counted among those able to face these challenges at the highest level.”
Sociologist of religion Cynthia Woolever said that the advancement of women to the highest posts of these significant sanctuaries is taking place within the isolated space of mainline Protestantism, where 20% of congregations are led by women.
“If you look into conservative Protestant congregations, you will find only a few; in the Catholic Church – zero,” said Woolever, editor of “The Parish Paper”, a newspaper for the regional offices of mainline denominations. “It is wonderful that women are given these kinds of opportunities to serve in the large churches, but it is a very small slice of the pie,” Woolever continues.
All three senior pastors have had to leap over gender-specific barriers.
In June, the Reverend Amy Butler posted the call “nevergetsold” on her Twitter and wrote that a funeral director could not believe she was a church minister.
She also had to ask a security guard at his office to find her former congregation’s website online to show her photograph, so that the pastor could visit a sick congregation member late in the evening.
“Look, I know you’re his girlfriend,” the security guard reacted, before becoming convinced that the woman was a pastor.
The Reverend Shannon Johnson Kershner recounted that at the beginning of her ministry, when she was a hospital chaplain, she was often sent out upon entering the wards, because she supposedly was not a “real church minister”.
But in every place where the Reverend Ginger Gaines-Cirelli served as the first woman pastor, she had to hear the same theme in various variations: “I was worried that we would get a woman, but I thought it would probably be fine.”
Equal pay was yet another obstacle.
Both the Reverend Butler and the chairman of the Riverside Church board, Len Leach, confirmed that the pastor’s base salary is $250,000 a year, equivalent to the salary of the previous pastor, Brad Braxton.
“It is a big post for me, but it is also a great, wonderful opportunity and a great risk; and I think the Riverside Church has truly stepped forward to set a great example for the rest of the Christian world,” said the Reverend Butler, who was born in Hawaii and whose congregation is majority African American.
The Reverend Butler described her salary and benefits as “fair enough”. The chairman of the church board, Len Leach, announced that the pastor had decided to invest $35,000 each year in the congregation’s interdenominational general fund and, in addition, to give $26,000 as a scholarship to a congregation student to cover a year’s tuition at the congregation’s school.
Kershner and Gaines-Cirelli also confirmed that they are paid fairly.
All three women not only stand at the head of their congregations but also lead the congregation staff under them, including other women pastors. Among the Riverside staff are four women pastors, the Fourth Church has three associate women pastors, and the Foundry Church has one associate woman pastor as well as a woman executive pastor.
“The truth is that for years all of this was up to men; in some places it still is, but no one bats an eye,” said Gaines-Cirelli, “so the fact that we are actually showing the world a different vision is quite powerful.”
Foundry congregation member Leo Loless agrees. “It is a question of time, isn’t it?” he said, recalling that at a recent congregation worship service the Reverend Gaines-Cirelli served alongside two other pastors and two more women assistants, as well as with laywomen who read the Scriptures.
Each senior woman pastor says she looks forward to the day when she will be regarded as an ordinary pastor of her congregation, rather than as a woman pastor.
The Reverend Kershner: “My hope is that little boys and little girls, upon seeing me and other ministers, would think – if this is their witness [about themselves] and others regard it as the calling entrusted by God, then they can do it.”
Photo: Ieva Puriņa
Article in English: http://www.religionnews.com (2014/08/28)
Translated from English by Aļesja Lavrinoviča
Proofreader Mag. Theol. Milda Klampe