Those Women

Without stating the obvious too carefully, I've never not been a woman in ministry.  In other words, I've always been aware of my gender and the fact that it's not, for most people, the preferred or even acceptable version for their clergy.  Either on my own or through family members, I've heard that women aren't supposed to be pastors.  Nonetheless, while I have had moments of concern about this, it's never been a large problem for me.  I cannot recall a day in my life where I did not know that women could be pastors.  I have not faced a significantly burdensome hurdle to my studies, ordination, or ministry because of my gender.  I am not in any way minimizing the discrimination that women face in their vocations around the world, much less as pastors; I am only saying that for my personal life and work, it's rarely been a real obstacle.

On the other side of the equation, I realize that I am a woman of a generation that understands the word feminism, but in a perhaps different way that generations before it heard of the word and its meaning.  We live in an almost post-feminist age where, on the surface, equality and opportunity for women and men is expected.  We're not facing, say, an inability to vote or own property.  Feminism today is a bit more theoretical.  It is more about exposing inherent assumptions, challenging archetypes, and rethinking authority.  With that, I can say that I've always considered myself a feminist by virtue of my gender, my ambitions, my perceptions of humanity, and my understanding of my worth (and the worth of all people, really) as a fully created and embodied child of God.  I am, however, in sort of a post-feminist stage of my life.  Here I am, a former pageant girl, married, and in a stereotypically male-dominated field.  I'm not sure how I'm supposed to see myself as a feminist in this day and age, and I'm not always sure that I'm the best advocate for the feminist worldview.

I guess what I'm really saying is: I'm not sure I'd call myself a feminist, even though I'm probably well-poised to be a really good one.  I assume equality, and expect the same of others even when they demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to comply.  And usually, that worldview works.  I'm not stupid enough to think I face no discrimination by virtue of my gender, but I'm also not suspicious enough to see misogyny at every turn.

My abject anger as response to my recent story in ministry therefore comes to me as quite a surprise.

Two weeks ago, the senior pastor was not around for church on Sunday since he was on his annual family deer hunting trip.  It's a well-known part of life in this congregation, as he's been doing it since he first arrived here almost 25 years ago.  This left me and the intern to carry church on Sunday, which is in no way difficult or even unusual.  (You should know, for purposes of this story, that our intern is female, incredibly intelligent, almost ridiculously gracious, much beloved by this congregation, and has more feminism in her right thumb than I've possibly expressed in my lifetime.)  The intern preached, and I presided over all three services.  We typically have full communion at all three services on the first Sunday of the month, but we bumped it back a week to give more time and attention to All Saints Sunday, so we celebrated communion while the senior pastor was gone.  Not a deal at all; I regularly preside over communion, and I especially love doing it on a full communion Sunday because I get to sing the full liturgy instead of just doing the bare-bones service we do on other Sundays.

Church went well that Sunday, if a little long because of communion.  But when the senior pastor got back, he heard lots of great things - sure, church was long, but the sermon was great, the music was great, and people loved gathering around the table.  As he's always known, things work perfectly well in his absence.

This last Sunday, the week after he was gone, he received a comment from a parishioner, who we will call S for the purposes of this conversation.  It was just before worship was about to start, so my colleague could barely process it, and had to relate the exchange to me much later.  S was furious.  S is already furious, mostly because we're doing a different set of lectionary readings this year that start in Genesis and go to the New Testament instead of the whole threeish readings a week culminating with a reading from one of the gospels.  S is ticked that we're not talking about Jesus for, like, four months - which is already deeply flawed theologically and liturgically, since we talk about Jesus every week and God is very much revealed fully throughout the entirety of the scriptures.  S was also already furious because S spends most of his life furious at something.  He's just one of those guys.  He's usually harmless, but it is a bit exhausting.

At any rate, S pulled my colleague aside to inform him that he was so glad he was back from deer hunting after the way things went last week.  When asked what happened last week, S said (and here I am quoting from my colleague's exact recounting of the exchange): "Those women led us in a high Catholic liturgy."  S could not believe that, without the senior pastor keeping things honest, things suddenly turned into another denomination entirely.  Never mind that our liturgy is actually remarkably similar to that of our Catholic sisters and brothers as it is; he saw such a thing as inherently pejorative and worthy of outrage. 

As the senior pastor related this to me, I could only shake my head.  S was probably referring to the fact that we did the full sung liturgy before communion, something we only do about once a month.  He's already upset about what's happening in worship, and that blinded him to the fact that we sing the full liturgy once a month every month, as we have for years and years.  He, as a faithful same-pew-every-Sunday worshiper should know that.  It was amazing to me to realize that someone's initial dissatisfaction with an whole other thing can spill out into another topic entirely.

The senior pastor agreed, and said he would be actually photocopying the past 12 months worth of communion bulletins to prove to S that we didn't do anything on Sunday that we don't typically do.  But then I thought about the comment again.  Those women.  Those women led us in something that they shouldn't have, that we're not supposed to be doing.  Those women.  And then it dawned on me: he wasn't mad because he was just misplacing his anger about not reading the gospel on Sunday, he was mad because women can't be trusted to lead worship without a man keeping them in line.

Like I've made clear, I rarely fly my feminist flag.  And yet, in spite of more than three years of me preaching, presiding, and providing pastoral care in this congregation, S was stating rather clearly that he did not think a woman could be trusted to lead worship.

Just today, I finally had the chance to relay this story to the intern.  She literally shook with frustration (and not just her head), which is remarkable considering how stoic she typically is.  She saw his statement immediately for what it was: prejudicial.  She didn't give S the benefit of the doubt; she intuited immediately that he believed that we could not properly preside.  Those women misled and betrayed the congregation, just as women do.

I do realize that I am perhaps being unduly harsh on S.  When we are angry, frustrated, or marginalized, we do tend to say and do things that we know we shouldn't.  But I think being angry is a lot like being drunk.  You can pretend that you didn't mean to say what you said, and that you can't be held accountable for what spewed out of your mouth, but in your altered state you weren't saying anything you don't actually think.  You just lost the filter to keep you from saying it.  So, while it's possible that S was really just upset and not thinking, I'm more inclined to believe that his anger was not only a product of his misogyny, but also revealing of his misogyny.

Maybe it doesn't matter how post-feminist I think I am, or how this world knows it should expect equality, or how I've never felt terribly held back my gender.  Just because I don't want to see something doesn't mean it's not there.  Sorry S, but those women aren't going anywhere any time soon.  Next time, pay better attention in church.