Voices of Women of the Cloth

By Claire Cole Curcio

Although the number of women serving as religious leaders in the United States has long been small, in recent decades that number has increased significantly in some denominations. Even so, their stories often go untold, and their perspectives are regularly left out of broader examinations of clergy.

In Voices of Women of the Cloth, nineteen clergywomen representing eleven different denominations and some nondenominational churches share their stories through interviews. The women range in age from their twenties to their nineties and hold or have held positions including senior or assistant pastor and minister, priest, hospice chaplain, military chaplain, teacher, Roman Catholic sister, and wedding minister. These women display dedication, wisdom, and perseverance in their chosen careers; they offer new and valuable ways of looking at spiritual matters and a unique perspective on an important but often underrepresented segment of the clergy.

This collection of interviews presents the personal narratives of nineteen clergywomen in the United States, sharing how they became members of the cloth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781480838093

Claire Cole Curcio

Dr. Claire Cole Curcio is professor emerita at Virginia Tech, a former English and math teacher and school counselor, and a licensed professional counselor in Virginia. She and her partner, Selby McCash, a fellow writer, live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and Outer Banks, North Carolina, and are active at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg.

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Copyright © 2017 Claire Cole Curcio.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-3808-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3810-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-3809-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919076

Archway Publishing rev. date: 12/6/2016

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER 1    Clergywomen in America

CHAPTER 2    Pam

CHAPTER 3    Melva

CHAPTER 4    Michele and Monique

CHAPTER 5    Cathie

CHAPTER 6    Sarah

CHAPTER 7    Brenda

CHAPTER 8    Torrence

CHAPTER 9    Tanya

CHAPTER 10    Gaye

CHAPTER 11    Jann

CHAPTER 12    Margaret

CHAPTER 13    Kate

CHAPTER 14    Donna

CHAPTER 15    Mary

CHAPTER 16    Betsy

CHAPTER 17    Sister Miriam Elizabeth

CHAPTER 18    Christine

CHAPTER 19    Amy

CHAPTER 20    Amazing Women!

APPENDIX A    Denominational Ordination of Women

APPENDIX B    Denominational Ordination History

Sources Cited or Consulted

DEDICATION

Once again, thanks to my family for their belief in me

and

to all the amazing women who agreed to be interviewed

and most of all,

to my partner Selby, who listened, critiqued, read, edited and encouraged every word in this book.

I was inspired to write Voices of Women of the Cloth by being friends with some of the women in this book before I undertook the writing. They were such an interesting group that I became curious to know more about how women decided to dedicate themselves to a religious life as a career.

Acknowledgements and Thanks

Several people were very helpful as I conceived the idea of this book and set about interviewing women. The Rev. Pam Webb helped develop the interview guide that loosely shaped the conversations that produced the data. Dr. Karen Scanlon recommended Roman Catholic sisters and then helped interpret information after the interviews. Penny Perry assisted me in finding a young woman to interview to give a broader view of experience by age. The Rev. Kent Rahm and Jim Carlock of Trinity Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, VA, recommended women who would be interesting to interview.

A group of friends and family spent significant time reading the manuscript and making helpful suggestions, including. Lt. Col. Scott Cole (Ret.), Dr. June Hall McCash, Steve Cole, Rosemary Powley Cole, and Ronda Worcester. Members of my writing group, the Water Street Writers of Fredericksburg, VA, made excellent suggestions, especially helping me get the professorial wording out of the manuscript. My women’s book group at Trinity Episcopal Church encouraged me all the way and voted to discuss the book even before it was published, a true act of faith!

My wonderful editor, Emily Carmain of Noteworthy Editing Services, provided invaluable technical advice and encouraging comments.

Each woman interviewed in the book has read and approved the content of her own chapter.

Introduction

My own theological history is either ecumenical or scattered, depending on your perspective. My mother attended a small fundamental church and my father was a lapsed Roman Catholic, really an anti-Catholic by the time I entered the world. I began my church life sitting on my maternal grandmother’s lap in a small church building in rural Missouri, being fed peppermints by my Nanny to bribe me to sit still during the service. My Grampy sat with the other men in another part of the church building.

Women had no part in leading the church service, nor was there any instrumental music or mention of the Old Testament that I can recall. Some Sundays it took a lot of peppermints to get me through the interminable services. The last time I attended that church in the same little town a few years ago, things didn’t appear to have changed much.

The journey from that small fundamental New Testament church to serving on the vestry at Trinity Episcopal Church in Fredericksburg, VA, has included growing up in the Presbyterian Church in Manassas, VA, and many good years of membership in Blacksburg Presbyterian and Northside Presbyterian where I was an ordained elder in Blacksburg, VA. I spent a short stint in the Vaught family pew of the Rural Retreat (VA) United Methodist Church, my husband Jim Vaught’s family church, and in the Luther Memorial Lutheran Church in Blacksburg.

I’m not quite sure how we ended up Lutheran, but I remember Jim saying, You’ll like it here, they sing a lot, as he swung into the parking lot one Sunday morning when I’d thought we were on our way to the Presbyterian Church. And he was right. It was a church filled with joy and warmth. When my devastatingly short marriage to Jim ended with his sudden death, the wonderful church we attended together was too lonely to attend by myself, despite their best efforts to befriend me.

I married Charlie Curcio, a Roman Catholic, a few years later and we found our way to Episcopal churches in Blacksburg, in Ormond Beach, FL, and finally to Trinity in Fredericksburg. Trinity is the most service-oriented church I have ever attended and when I was again a widow, I felt very much at home there. My partner, Selby McCash—I call him an agnostic Quaker—and I are now very active in that church.

I decided to write this book because I have several strong, wonderful clergywomen friends and I remain in awe of their dedication, wisdom, and perseverance in their chosen career. I wanted to know more about their stories. A major interest in my own work life was career counseling and it intrigued me to know how these women had made their decisions and attained their career credentials.

The older I get, as with many other people, the more I become interested in spiritual matters. If I were younger, I might have gone to seminary myself, not to become a clergywoman but to learn all I could about theology. Lacking the stamina and internal drive to do that these days, and likely lacking a seminary that would admit a septuagenarian, I decided to do these interviews as a way of learning for myself.

For the first fifty or so years of my life, I knew no clergywomen. I did not attend a church myself that had female clergy until the 1990s. The Lutheran church in Blacksburg had (and still has) a very fine female associate pastor. The Reverend Clare Fischer-Davies, a wonderful Episcopal priest at Christ Church in Blacksburg, married Charlie and me in 2001. There have been two assistant female rectors in the twelve years I’ve attended Trinity in Fredericksburg. Of the twenty-five or so pastors whose churches I’ve belonged to, all major denominations, only four were women, and only one of those was senior pastor.

And learn I have from writing this book. I discovered that it’s pretty difficult to locate up-to-date data on female clergy. For example, one recent study on stress in the clergy included only men. The last chapter will summarize some of the things I’ve learned about clergywomen from these interviews.

Along the way writing this book I have met some amazing women and made some new friends. I enjoy time with one as we meet for an occasional weekend of conversation, exchange frequent emails with some of the women in the book, and have a cup of coffee now and then with some others.

My eyes and mind have opened to new ways of looking at spiritual matters. Almost every woman I interviewed either handed me a book to read or pointed me toward one, so my theological reading has taken many new directions.

Wanting to do the interviews in person, I found interesting women to talk to in Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia. All of them were designated chaplains, ministers or sisters, but right away that became an unclear issue. What is a clergywoman, anyway? I first decided that meant someone ordained as a minister. However, I later expanded the definition to include those who led a church or were called minister, pastor, or chaplain, or who belonged to a Roman Catholic order of sisters. Not everyone interviewed has been ordained in the traditional sense and not all have attended seminary. Their roles define who they are.

I also decided not to limit the number of women I interviewed to any one denomination, keeping the focus on the woman and not the denomination. The stories are of clergywomen from the Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran, Nazarene, Unitarian Universalist, and United Church of Christ denominations, as well as Roman Catholic sisters, a nondenominational clergywoman and a wedding minister.

The interviews were conducted during 2015 and 2016 and reflect the women’s lives at that time. The information contained in each interview came from the women themselves, with no attempt at corroboration from other sources.

In some narratives, the women’s ages are listed as context for their stories. Three of the women are young (under forty) because many women enter the clergy as a second career, as do many men.

I found many similarities between the lives of these professional women and my own. Several of the women have mental health credentials comparable to mine. Most were working mothers and more than half have have been married more than once, as have I. So, not surprisingly, I saw myself in some of their experiences.

My heartfelt thanks to all those who agreed to be interviewed, including those I didn’t get to in this book, which could have been many chapters longer. And my thanks to those who helped me find such interesting women to interview.

CHAPTER 1

Clergywomen in America

WOMEN HAVE BEEN NOTICEABLY absent from pulpits in America.

They teach Sunday school, prepare communion tables, serve on committees and boards, sing in the choir, play hand bells and organ, wash the windows, iron the altar cloths, tend the flower beds, make coffee and bake cookies for after-service fellowship, water the plants, staff the nursery, and sweep out the building after everyone else has left.

As paid lay workers or volunteers, women have traditionally served as choir director, church secretary, administrative or financial assistant, leader of Christian education, minister of music, and mistress of the manse. In congregations and parishes women deliver meals to the sick, make hospital visits, hand out groceries at food pantries, organize funeral food and receptions, and serve meals to the homeless. They meet in book, Bible study, sisterhood, altar guild, young mothers’, and caregivers’ groups. When called, they show up, feed, comfort, assist, and support each other.

Women are important in churches and hold many leadership positions. Virtually every major denomination has one or more dedicated women’s organization. These include Presbyterian Women, Episcopal Church Women, Women of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Women, Woman’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Church, United Church of Christ women’s website, Hadassah, Catholic Daughters of the Americas, and a host of other church-related women’s organizations.

Carol Kuruvilla wrote that women as a group tend to be more religious than men, yet are very underrepresented as pastors. While women are a valued and recognized force in churches in America, ordination of women to the pulpit has been slow. Probably the first significant female religious leader recorded in America was Anne Hutchinson, who encountered serious trouble for her leadership. She was ultimately banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and, with her husband, was an early settler of Rhode Island.

Until the last few decades, most congregations rarely saw a woman in the pulpit leading worship on a Sunday morning. Kuruvilla asserts in The Huffington Post, The stained glass ceiling is proving hard to crack—but women are refusing to give up. The 2014 article lists which denominations generally ordain women to the pulpit and which do not (Appendix A).

Some denominations ordain women but then assign them roles as assistant or associate pastor, worship leader or minister of music, director of Christian education, part-time minister, or pastor of small, rural or struggling churches, often in places or circumstances where clergymen do not want to serve. Sometimes women—as do some clergymen—serve more than one church to have a full-time job.

In 1998, Barbara Brown Zikmond and others found that women were more likely than men to finish seminary and then not be ordained. More women than men chose to leave or not enter parish ministry, instead serving in specialized areas such as chaplain in a hospital, hospice, school or prison. At the end of the 20th century, it was still relatively rare to find a woman as a senior pastor in a large church in a mainstream denomination.

However, the number of women clergy had increased significantly in some denominations by the 1990s. Several churches have elected women to the highest office of the denomination in the United States. For example, the Most Reverend Doctor Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in 2006. Rev. Elizabeth Eaton became the first presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2013. Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins is general minister and president of the Disciples of Christ, first elected in 2005 and reelected to a second six-year term in 2011. The Presbyterian Church USA has elected nine women to the office of moderator of the General Assembly since 1984.

In 2002, Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher became the first woman to serve as president of the Council of Bishops in the United Methodist Church. Maj. Gen. Lorraine Potter became chief of chaplains for the Air Force in 2001, and Rear Adm. Margaret Grun Kibblen became chief of Navy chaplains in 2014, after being the first chief of Marine Corps chaplains.

It is difficult to determine just how many clergywomen there are in America. Zikmund and fellow researchers found that in fifteen predominantly white Protestant denominations in 1998, twenty-five percent of clergy were women. However, a few denominations had a decreasing number of women ministers, such as the Church of God and the Nazarene Church. A later survey by Christine Smith showed fifteen percent of mainline Protestant denomination ministers were women, compared to seven percent of evangelical/fundamental churches.

According to the Religion News Service in a 2012 National Congregations Study, about eleven percent of individuals surveyed said their head clergyperson was a woman, about the same percentage as 1998. The National Congregations Study in 2012 showed just under three percent female clergy in white conservative, evangelical or fundamentalist congregations; almost sixteen percent women clergy in black Protestant congregations; and almost twenty percent female clergy in white liberal or moderate churches. In 2007, thirty-six percent of seminary students in the U.S. and Canada were women, according to Michael Paulson, citing the Association of Theological Schools in the U.S. and Canada.

Ordination of women in the major denominations is briefly reviewed in Appendix B, along with the notation of which clergywomen in the following chapters represent that denomination. Christine Smith in her 2013 book The Stained Glass Ceiling looked at churches employing a female pastor and found the churches were passionate about social justice and had sometimes been founded by a woman. The churches were usually urban or suburban and their current female pastor often was their first clergywoman. The churches sometimes had declining or dying membership and and usually would have preferred hiring a male. She also noted that interim or temporary ministers were often female.

Reasons given across denominations for not selecting a female minister include the assertion that women can’t minister to men. Deb Richardson-Moore recounts her strong emotions when a man attending her church, which ministers to the homeless, yelled drunkenly that a woman shouldn’t preach and stormed out of the service.

As reasons for not ordaining women, Smith listed Biblical references endorsing the male role in leadership, the time demands of family, traditional values, ageism (often clergywomen are older, having entered the ministry as mid-career changers), and lower expectations of women. A study of American Baptists in 2002 noted that women were more likely to be associate pastors or directors of Christian education, to have lower career mobility, and to begin at a lower starting place than clergymen in their denomination.

In the 1990s, Zikmund and others revealed interesting information about female clergy. However, one must be cautious applying these findings to present-day female clergy.

• Female ministers were more likely to be single than male clergy (thirty-eight percent women versus eight percent men).

• Clergywomen were more likely to have an ordained spouse (forty-two percent women versus eight percent men).

• Fewer female clergy had children under eighteen than male clergy.

• Women were more often in smaller, more isolated parishes and more willing to take lower salaries. This may mean socialization issues outside of the pastorate.

• Among those who were married, fifty percent of women clergy and seventy-five percent of men were in their first