No Room for Complacency

By Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows

The statistics still astound me. According to Louie Crew's online Anglican Pages , the Episcopal Church counts some 7,500 parishes as of this writing. Yet fewer than 30 of them can claim a black female priest as their clerical leader as vicar, rector, or priest-in-charge. The number of women, of any color, leading congregations looks a bit more encouraging – some 560 female-led parishes – that is, until one looks deeply behind the numbers.

Up until my recent return to parish ministry I had spent the last two years traveling around the country visiting churches as the Director of Alumni/ae and Church Relations for the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif. It has been an enlightening two years. As we celebrate 30 years of women being ordained to the priesthood, it is clear that the stories behind the statistics tell us that we haven't come as far as even these numbers would like us to believe.  

I am a “Gen Xer” who was in elementary school during the height of the women's liberation and women's ordination movements. By the time I arrived at college in the mid-1980's, the image held high was that of the superwoman who could enjoy a high-powered career, children, marriage – if she so chose – and a dynamic social life that included time to devote to personal and community interests. Like we've all heard before, there was no reason why women could not have it all.

Twenty years later, women and men have realized that it is not possible to have it all – at the same time anyway – and that women continue to bear a larger burden and pay a higher price for trying to hold to the superwoman ideal than anyone would have thought. It should come as no surprise that the church has been slower to recognize this.

In many ways the church exists in a time warp. . . The unspoken expectation is that [female priests] will still be those 1980's superwomen – balancing vocation, family, and personal wellness without the support (that of a “wife”) enjoyed by their male counterparts.

In many ways the church exists in a time warp. It is as if we are in the 1970's at the height of the women's liberation movement, where female priests face issues of inequalities of pay and position and childcare concerns. The unspoken expectation is that they will still be those 1980's superwomen – balancing vocation, family, and personal wellness without the support (that of a “wife”) enjoyed by their male counterparts.

I believe that there is still a struggle for women's ordination to be won. It is true that, with the exception of a handful of dioceses, women are ordained to the priesthood or accepted as priests throughout the church. But some of the justice issues related to women in the priesthood – deployment, parental leave and childcare and compensation – are concerns that the church is, belatedly, just beginning to address.

In my travels, I have been to some dioceses that can claim female leadership for 30 percent of their parishes, but the stories behind the numbers show that the women are overwhelmingly serving at the smallest churches. Clergywomen still find that balancing vocation and family is more of a challenge in the church than in the secular world. Many still fight for diocesan parental leave policies – despite the parental leave resolution passed at the 2000 General Convention of the Episcopal Church that recommended such a policy.

The Church Pension Group's latest research on clergy compensation shows that in every category – age, experience, seniority, geographic location, etc. – women continue to earn less than men. These gross inequities exist in spite of the fact that there is no gender differential in work load or expectation for clergy AND the reality that many clergywomen – especially those who are Gen X or who are closer to retirement – are the primary or only wage-earner in the family. There are stories yearning to be told of female priests who work to support their families earning comparatively lower incomes than their male peers, while their spouse or partner looks for work, pursues educational goals, or is retired.

[A] conflicting message is being sent. If you are a young priest who is male with a family and a spouse/partner who works, great. If you are a young priest who is a woman with a family and a spouse/partner who works the message is, “Great, see you when the kids are school age.”

Then there are the stories yet to be fully told of Gen X women who struggle to balance their vocation with childrearing. The Episcopal Church has finally seen the wisdom in raising up younger vocations. It has forgotten, however, that in this new day, when women are being raised up too, someone has to take care of the children. With most dioceses preferring their clergy to be active in the greater life of the church but without providing some of the assistance that might make participation more feasible for clergy with young families – such as childcare provision at clergy conferences or diocesan conventions – a conflicting message is being sent. If you are a young priest who is male with a family and a spouse/partner who works, great. If you are a young priest who is a woman with a family and a spouse/partner who works the message is, “Great, see you when the kids are school age.” At diocesan conventions the college of clergy often looks overwhelmingly older – not because it is an entirely aged clericus, but because many of the young women clergy are home taking care of the children.

These concerns would be enough to keep us busy. But I've discovered something I fear more: complacency. Complacency has been described as the feeling of contentment to a fault. I often sense that women who are leading congregations and have adequate support systems, role models, and satisfying ministries feel that the struggle around women's ordination to the priesthood has been won and we can move on with real justice issues. I have often felt that myself. When I first began attending the Episcopal Church 20 years ago, I would have never guessed that women could not be priests. There has been a female priest in nearly every congregation I've been affiliated with – but that's New York and New England for you. Problem – what problem? Complacency will thrive in such environments.

Meanwhile, for the women serving in smaller, less urban, or less receptive dioceses, “the problem” is all too evident and sympathizers can be few and far between. Much of the time the church seems to behave as if it is content with the way things are for women clergy. If we were all content and happy about the ways things are for women that would be wonderful. But I suspect that we settle for an uneasy contentment for several reasons. One, we already have too much to do, and what about the real justice issues? Two, for some women it is all they can do to make it through another day, so who has any energy to engage an uphill struggle that seems too large to tackle. Three, this is just the way the church is, so let's get on with the gospel and missionary work. Four, we don't really know about the issues. We just want those women to stop whining.

Justice is a big house but it has no room for complacency. Thirty years of women's ordination to the priesthood has not earned us a victory party. With so much more work to be done to make the vocation to the priesthood a fair, viable and satisfying possibility for women, the church cannot afford to let the inequities continue. Please understand, I don't expect the priesthood to be without struggle, pains, or conflict for anyone. But it must be viable and satisfying. The church loses out when its leadership doesn't reflect the diversity of the entire body. We are all poorer when the particular gifts that women have to share are turned away or hidden.

I'll end with the dynamic with which this essay began – the situation of black female priests, more specifically young black female priests of which there are few. At most, there are a handful of black female priests under the age of forty. The issues complicating female priesthood seem all the more acute when race is added to the mix. At a conference last year, six of us young, black priests discussed our ministries. All of the men were serving as rectors; all of the women were in non-parochial ministry. All I could do was sigh. And wonder about the odds.

The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows is rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, N.Y., and   Episcopal chaplain at Syracuse University. She may be reached by email at jlbburrows@yahoo.com.