A Doorway to Hope

I will never forget the conversation a dozen years ago in the plush office of my Methodist conference's district superintendent. Having just returned home to Pennsylvania from a stint of volunteer church work in East Harlem, I was brimming with faith and anticipation. I related the "call" I felt to seek ordination for the purpose of doing urban ministry and committing my life to the furthering of God's kingdom and its vision of social justice.

"But this is a largely rural conference," the district superintendent reminded me. Only a "special appointment" would enable me to do urban ministry.

"And how long would it take after ordination to a get a special appointment?" I wanted to know.

The conversation suddenly became very vague and convoluted. Several minutes later the truth emerged: A male pastor could get a special appointment in about five years--I would have to wait 10.

I considered this the end of the conversation. But then the district superintendent's face brightened, and he said, "Wait. There's another option for you. Let's say you really wanted to be a pastor in Wisconsin--go there, marry a dairy farmer, and we'd give you an automatic transfer to the Wisconsin conference. In your case, you just have to find a city you like--fall in love, get married, and it'll all be taken care of."

Within weeks I was an Episcopalian. And the next fall, in September 1976, I arrived at seminary just days before the General Convention of the Episcopal Church approved a resolution to ordain women. The celebration rocked the seminary campus. My joy, however, was tempered--the Methodists had been ordaining women for two decades, and it seemed to me at the time to have made little difference.

My journey eventually took me away from a pursuit of ministry in the institutional church. The obstacles created for women, the closed doors, the loneliness, and the blank stares I received from male church hierarchs whenever I talked about community and justice finally led me to leave one path and head for Sojourners.

THE QUESTIONS AND TENSIONS my female seminary colleagues and I wrestled with continue for women in ministry a decade later. Although an estimated 8,000 women now serve in the ordained ministry in the United States, many still feel like "pioneers. " And despite a major increase since the 1970s, women still make up only five percent of the ordained clergy.

Several denominations still refuse to ordain women, most notably the Catholic Church. The "women's question" has polarized both local congregations and major denominations.

Women themselves are divided on how best to serve the church. Some in denominations that do not ordain women have committed themselves to struggle for the right to ordination as a matter of justice. Others view ordination itself as a hierarchical practice that undercuts understandings of servanthood, equality, and mutuality.

Many women, facing closed doors, discrimination in positions and pay, and language that excludes them, have chosen to leave the institutional church and serve faithfully in alternative ministries. Others have stayed and, by their presence, begun the work of transforming the structures and opening the way for others.

This issue of Sojourners looks at those who have struggled to make a new way for women in the institutional church. Barbara Hargrove and Joan Chittister offer a view of what's happening with women in the Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church respectively. And 11 women from a broad spectrum of denominations, geographical locations, and life situations offer the view "from the trenches."

As I read through these women's stories, I was struck most deeply by the humility that pervades each one. And with the courage it takes to persevere in a church that is often ambivalent about, and sometimes hostile to, their presence.

Against the odds, they are offering new models of leadership based on servanthood, creative family patterns based on mutuality, new understandings of authority, and a place for all women in the church. And as they serve, they are changing the minds of many people in the pews who believed that women just weren't up to the job.

This issue of Sojourners is a tribute to these women and the thousands they represent. By their faithfulness, we begin to see glimpses of a transformed church that respects all persons and humbly offers its life for the sake of the world. In the face of many closed doors, these women have themselves become a doorway to hope.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.