REPUBLIC, Mo. (RNS) Although attitudes have improved in recent years, it’s still common for women clergy to field doubts about their legitimacy.
The first time a church hires a women as pastor can be uncomfortable for both the woman and the congregation, said The Rev. Melissa St. Clair, senior pastor at Republic First Christian Church in the small southwestern Missouri town of Republic. She was the first woman to lead the church in this town of about 15,000 people.
But St. Clair, who graduated from seminary in 2008, said her first challenge was even before she was hired, with denial from those within her Disciples of Christ (Christian Church) denomination. A male seminary classmate with identical qualifications could not believe that religious glass ceiling exists. Although her classmate received more job offers, “He didn’t really understand it,” St. Clair said.
Hannah Fisher, who this fall will study pastoral care and pastoral chaplaincy at Brite Divinity School in Ft. Worth, began noticing contrary comments about women clergy once she started telling people her seminary plans.
Fisher, 22, never expected the negative perceptions of women clergy because she grew up with a woman associate pastor at her own church. But after Fisher told a friend about her plans for seminary, the friend asked, “Well, why don’t you just teach Sunday School?”
For The Rev. Dee Wells, 53, the first female pastor of First Christian Church in Livingston, Tenn., and her associate pastor Sunny Ridings, 35, the church required some time to accept a two-woman leading the services.
“We’ve had to earn their trust. We’ve had to earn their respect. We’ve had to earn a lot,” said Wells.
Ridings recounts how while visiting sick church members she sometimes gets reprimands from the public for parking in the pastor’s reserved spot at the hospital. She finally taped her business card in her front window so people would know she was in fact clergy and eligible to park in the spot.
Ridings said when she first graduated from seminary she thought she would start off as an associate pastor and move up through the years. But her perspective has changed.
“I don’t envision myself as a senior pastor or the only pastor of a church,” Ridings said. She recalls one church member who asked her if she dreamed of being a senior or only pastor of a church. “It seemed to me that he was asking, ‘Don’t you want to be a real minister?’ I had to change his thinking on that.”
Some women clergy aren’t looking to climb a ladder from very small congregation to successively larger ones. Rather, they say it’s a matter of melding vocation and seasons of life, opportunities and talents. No matter what, they just want to be working in meaningful service to the church.
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