Women have populated our churches for decades, but very few are ever recognized as ministers and did not exist as pastors or reverends. In today’s world, women are successfully navigating these masculine waters but are still met with great bias and resistance.
Women have always been forgotten and silenced in a patriarchal society, so the fight for equality in every space women occupy shouldn’t come as a surprise.We see women breaking glass ceilings in every sector of work but we seldom hear of biases in religion. According to Pew Research Center’s analysis of census, “While many large religious organizations in the United States now allow women to be ordained and to hold leadership positions within the organization, few women have actually served at the very top. Today only 11% of American Organizations are led by Women.”
Reverend Sheree Jones from Massapequa, New York has a similar story to tell. She explained, “When I first acknowledged my calling, I had to justify, why as a woman, God was calling me to preach, whereas a man is never asked that question.” She has been in the ministry for thirteen years and has led various ministries since acknowledging her calling. She remembers her pastor being supportive and encouraging, but realized she would be the first female minister in the history of her church. According to Minister Jones, women who are active in ministry in some form of leadership capacity are becoming a more normalized notion. “I’ve noticed a greater impact on older women,” said Jones. She continued, “They never saw themselves in the pulpit. There may have been a lot of women back then who might have been called to preach, but didn’t have the bravery to say it or doubted it, because it was never affirmed.”
Women are usually a background story -a supporting role to whoever takes the lead- and the only time you would hear of women in the Bible or in relation to a man in leadership is if they’re helping, establishing connections or are married to the person in leadership. Reverend Sheree explained, “So your husband is going to be the pastor and you’ll be the first lady. Never in his mind did he think I came to seminary to acknowledge my call to do ministry in a leadership capacity. Not to be someone’s first lady, but pastor. I had to tell him, I didn’t come here to be a Sunday school teacher.”
While in Seminary, Reverend Sheree noticed the bias mostly amongst students and shockingly not so much amongst the faculty. “There are women who don’t affirm women in ministry” said Reverend Jones. Many would think gender and religious commonality would warrant similar views about leadership, but that isn’t always the case. “A pastor not too long ago told my husband, I don’t allow women in my pulpit,” she stated, proving that even in this time period with modern advancements and thought processes, many still have a male dominated point of view in religion.
Ministry is slowly but surely changing, and has definitely taken giant leaps. Still, the road to complete advancement will only come with growth and complete understanding.