Posted on 03/26/2007 9:13:29 AM PDT by fgoodwin
Leadership: Amen To Women
http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/20/katharine-schori-episcopalian-lead_cz_ch_0321pink.html
http://tinyurl.com/ynvrms
Cecile S. Holmes, PINK 03.21.07, 6:00 AM ET
Katharine Jefferts Schori -- oceanographer, instrument-rated pilot and Episcopal bishop -- remembers the evening in 2000 when it seemed she might be reaching the zenith of her short ecclesiastical career.
After spending the day in a diocesan committee meeting along Oregon's southern coast, she had returned to her home in Corvallis, Ore. Her daughter was away at college, her husband out for the evening with friends. She was sitting at home alone when the call came, she recalls. "They said, 'You have been elected bishop. Will you accept?' "
She said yes, but was amazed that the Diocese of Nevada had chosen her as its next bishop. At the time, Jefferts Schori had been an ordained priest for just six years. What's more, she had served only as assistant rector at a small church in Corvallis and had yet to lead "a big fancy congregation," she says. But Jefferts Schori, a woman who decided to go to seminary in her 40s, assented to the call to be a bishop.
She never dreamed that a few years later, on June 18, 2006, she would be elected presiding bishop of the entire Episcopal Church -- the first woman ever to lead a church province in Anglicanism's nearly 520-year history.
"I've been elected, and I'm so glad you're an adventurer," she told her husband, a former mountain climber, after hearing the news. This pioneering woman now has some mountains of her own to climb. As presiding bishop, Jefferts Schori will develop policy and strategy for the church and its 2.4 million members in an era marked by polarization and uncertainty.
One of 38 provinces in the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church is at odds with many Anglicans at home and abroad over the ordination of gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions -- both of which Jefferts Schori has supported. That fact alone troubles many church members. And then there's her gender. Even 30 years after Episcopalians first ordained women as priests, there are still U.S. dioceses that don't recognize a woman's right to be a priest -- and still oppose Jefferts Schori's investiture as presiding bishop.
Her response? People should get to know her before they make up their minds.
"My experience has been that face to face, human beings build relationships, and that gender is much less of an issue than it is in the abstract," she told a press conference following her election as presiding bishop. She recalled a time 30 years ago when she was chief scientist on an oceanographic research voyage. "The captain wouldn't talk to me because I was a woman," she said. "That lasted about 15 minutes. We got over it."
In personal conversation, Jefferts Schori is concise but forthcoming. Quietly friendly, she doesn't stand on ceremony, answering the telephone with a simple "Hello, this is Katharine." That kind of down-to-earth, honest approach -- an inclusive woman's touch -- may go a long way toward restoring peace throughout Anglicanism. Described as thoughtful, insightful and "a reconciler" by friends and associates, Jefferts Schori knows she must confront as many critics as supporters. Her message of reconciliation gets a wider audience this month with the publication of her book, A Wing and a Prayer: A Message of Faith and Hope (Morehouse Publishing, February 2007).
"I think part of my vocation is ministry in the midst of conflict," she says. "I have a passion for ministry with people on the margins, people of different languages, different ethnic groups, different cultures and different ways of being 'church,' all within the Episcopal umbrella."
Is that a woman's advantage?
"I don't think my election is so much about my gender as it is about gifts that my brother and sister bishops saw in me," says Jefferts Schori, who formally took her seat as presiding bishop last November. "I think it says gender is not a necessary barrier." Still, she knows her being chosen presiding bishop represents a true victory for women in the Episcopal Church -- and in the church universal.
Cracking The Glass
Many women clergy hope that the 21st century will be the century of women like Jefferts Schori -- pioneers, visionaries, wielders of true (not token) power to change. But as Jefferts Schori moves fully into one of the country's most prestigious ecclesiastical posts, most of her sister clergy still fight an uphill battle. At a time when women occupy only a small percentage of chief executive posts in American business, women in religion face the same sparsely populated landscape.
But while one can find examples of women in the senior ranks in virtually every field of business, women remain barred from clergy posts across huge subsets of religion -- including the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, Orthodox Judaism and Islam. Those who oppose women in leadership roles point to thousands of years of tradition and infallible scripture as justification.
Consider how you would feel about a law that said you couldn't be president of your company because you're a woman, and you begin to have an idea of the plight of many women who might otherwise follow a divine calling. Jefferts Schori herself started her journey as a Roman Catholic until her family moved to the Episcopal Church when she was 9.
"I give thanks for my Roman Catholic roots," she told the press after her election last summer, "but that's not where I am. As might be obvious." Standing before the crowd in her priestly collar, she had made her point. And the crowd laughed with her.
As Jefferts Schori knows, there are areas where women have made slow progress over the last half-century. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America marks 37 years of women's ordination this year, for example, while the United Methodist Church celebrates 50 years of women's ordination. The first-ever conference on Women in Religion in the 21st Century, held last October in New York, attracted 250 female rabbis; Christian pastors; and Jewish, Muslim and Christian laywomen.
It's within these more inclusive faiths that women face a more subtle, but perhaps just as frustrating, form of inequity. It is, in effect, a "stained glass ceiling," says scholar Adair Lummis, Ph.D., of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research in Connecticut, who has studied the ministry of ordained women for more than three decades.
Lummis notes, for example, that an estimated 85% of all mainline church senior pastors or solo pastors earn less than $60,000 a year. "However, this study did not include all levels of clergy, and associate pastors earn considerably less than senior pastors," Lummis says. "More women are in associate positions. Furthermore, you can 'make book' on the fact that the senior or solo pastors paid $90,000 or more are almost all men."
Across denominations, clergywomen usually serve smaller churches and may find themselves consigned to support ministries such as music or education. Men still make up 70% of all seminary enrollees, Lummis says.
Answering The Call
But high-profile successes like Jefferts Schori's and even the pop culture phenomenon of The Da Vinci Code have millions, whether they attend church or not, rethinking the power of women in religion -- past and present. That kind of ongoing public dialogue could be the first step toward breaking religion wide open for women like the Rev. Earla S. Lockhart, staff minister at First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, Ala.
Lockhart, a former public affairs specialist for the U.S. Army, entered the ministry as a second career, a common pattern among women clergy. But she first felt God's call in her late teens. An African-American, she says she feels widely accepted today, even though there are black missionary Baptists who do not ordain women. "Women are going to have to be so confident in their calling that they don't feel they have to defend themselves," Lockhart says.
The call to ministry also came slowly to Deborah Halter, who is attending seminary in Chicago and will graduate in May. En route to seminary, she struggled with her beliefs, with God and the church. A longtime single parent, Halter worked in public relations and fund raising while raising her three children. She finished college by going to night school and went on to religious studies and pastoral studies in graduate school.
After completing her studies, she taught for several years while writing a book, The Papal 'No': A Comprehensive Guide to the Vatican's Rejection of Women's Ordination (Crossroad, 2004). "During this time, I continued to discern the little voice that had been trying to get my attention for so many years," she says. "I also discovered that after spending 25 years working for women's ordination, I was tired of talking about it. I wanted to do it."
Halter finally decided to enter seminary at age 52. She left Catholicism to become a Protestant. "Deciding to enter seminary at age 52 is a bit unorthodox," she says. "I'm a bit unorthodox. But, you know, the older I get, the more I discover the grace in an eraser. It's OK to edit our own script."
And in 2007, more women of faith everywhere may look to such women as a "model" for that script. "The hope is that bringing [Jefferts Schori] on board will create a paradigmatic shift," says the Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord, ecumenical and interreligious officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and a consultant to the national church. "Things are changing."
Guibord says she encounters women in her travels who rejoice to see a woman priest. "I always have women come up to me who want to touch me, who cry and say, 'You mean women can be priests?' When I travel and I wear my collar, I know that it gives women hope."
Huber, please add to your Anglican ping list.
Thanx,
Fred Goodwin
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Well, since Forbes magazine was published for years by a homosexual, it's no surprise that they are supporting the TEC leadership.
I added post 4 in case someone missed the pun.
Cecile Holmes gives women a bad name. She ought to go home and do her nails or something, leave the serious analysis to the adults. The squid-mistress is cuurently one of the major sources of division and exclusion in Anglicanism, and is a destroyer of peace. She is bent on driving out a large contingent of traditional members.
Not to mention is a full blown apostate, akin to her friend Bishop Spong. Those she doesn't drive out--she will unknowingly lead to hell.
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