Chapter Eight

The Move toward Full Participation

Chapter Summary

The chapter focuses chronologically on the years between 1920 and 1970. The content of the chapter charts the breakdown of legal barriers in a wide variety of churches that had excluded women from administrative, preaching, and sacramental ministries. Previous chapters have already introduced you to some ways in which women were active in the public sphere of Christianity; the chapter after this one explores a shift in goals beyond simply numerical presence to the full inclusion of women in shaping Christian theology.

The 1920s and 1930s represent a complex and mixed picture when the status of Christian women is studied. After the First World War a number of factors provoked an intense discussion of "the woman question." Be sure to note these. Out of these discussions came some expansion of women's roles in major Protestant denominations, although their professional work was largely restricted to that of missionary and deaconess. Women did begin to take a wider official role in denominational governance, and the barriers keeping them out of some ordained offices began to disappear. The Methodist denial of full membership in annual conferences to women reflects the ambivalence of many denominations as they engaged in this process. Very few women took advantage of the ordination and governance opportunities opened to them; denominational historians now claim that even liberal men voted for such changes because they believed few women would respond.

The 1920s and especially the 1930s also brought a resurgence of traditional attitudes. You should become familiar with the widespread nature of this retrenchment. Canon law mandated new restrictions and uniformity for nuns; women's missionary boards were merged with denominational boards and even Quaker women lost their separate meetings. Recent scholarship has examined in detail the growth of Fundamentalism in the 1920s with its emphasis on strict biblical subordination along with the condemnation of lay women preachers, so much a part of early evangelicalism. The retrenchment, however, did not occur without protest, as the report from Presbyterians Katharine Bennett and Margaret Hodge shows (8.1).

The discussion of ordination and the status of women subsided during the Depression and the Second World War, but resurfaced in the late 1940s. Her Story will help you to understand some of the reasons for this renewed discussion, including the World Council of Churches report documenting how few women participated in church governance (8.2).

As in the 1920s, more legal barriers began to vanish. More seminaries opened their full curricula to women and, as church programs became more sophisticated, women accepted positions as Christian educators and directors of music programs. Full ordination also opened in several denominations including the Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. which ordained Margaret Towner in 1956. New scholarship is providing us with a detailed analysis of how different African American institutions handled these issues.

As the changes in this chapter reveal, Christian communities were often influenced by trends in secular American society. This was especially true when a strong organized feminist movement emerged in the 1960s. A new feminist consciousness also developed within Christianity by the end of the decade. There was a shift, however, in the character of this new consciousness which the text describes as a move from "social" to "radical" feminism. To the concern for getting more women into official positions within the Christian tradition was added the concern for transforming that tradition in light of women's experiences. Women began to conclude that the rituals, texts, beliefs, and ethics of Christianity excluded women in ways just as powerful as church polity. This consciousness-raising was facilitated by denominational studies, women's study groups, and publications such as the article in Readings from The American Baptist Woman (8.3). Try to relate the points of the author to themes in nineteenth-century history when you read the article. In terms of consciousness-raising, Mary Daly's book The Church and the Second Sex was an important watershed and one of the foundational works of feminist theology (8.4). Daly represents what scholars have identified as the first phase of feminist theology in her focus on identifying the sexist and misogynistic nature of Christianity. Chapter Ten re-examines this stage and the subsequent evolution of the movement. Pay attention to the particular targets of her anger: a "paralyzing and alienating" picture of God and a view of the created order as "static" rather than always changing.

Additional Readings

• Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts. Fundamentalism and Gender, 1875 to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
• Boyd, Lois and Brackenridge, R. Douglas. "Presbyterian Women Ministers: A Historical Overview and Study of the Current Status of Women Pastors." In The Pluralistic Vision: Presbyterians and Mainstream Protestant Education and Leadership, edited by Milton J. Coalter et al, 289–307. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992.
• Brasher, Brenda E. Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
• Campbell, Debra. "Lost Innovation: When Catholic Women Preached." Commonweal 113 (June 6, 1986): 334–35.
• Campbell, Debra. "Part-Time Female Evangelists of the Thirties and Forties: The Rosary College Catholic Evidence Guild." U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (1986): 371–83.
• Carpenter, Delores C. "Black Women in Religious Institutions: A Historical Summary from Slavery to the 1960s." Journal of Religious Thought 4 (Winter-Spring 1989–1990): 7–27.
• DeBerg, Betty A. Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism.Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990.
• Earl, Riggins R. "The Black Church, Black Women and the Call." Liturgy 7 (Spring 1989): 87–95.
• Krugler, John D. and Weinberg-Kinsey, David. "Equality of Leadership: The Ordinations of Sarah E. Dickson and Margaret E. Towner in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A." American Presbyterians 68 (Winter 1990): 245–57.
• Lincoln, C. Eric and Mamiya, Lawrence H. "The Pulpit and the Pew: The Black Church and Women." In The Black Church in the African American Experience, 274–308. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990.
• Noll, William T. "A Welcome in the Ministry: The 1920 and 1924 General Conferences Debate Clergy Rights for Women." Methodist History 30 (January 1992): 91–99.
• Preus, Marilyn, ed. Serving the Word: Lutheran Women Consider Their Calling. Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1988.
• Riley, Janet. "The Ordination of Disciple Women: A Matter of Economy or Theology?" Encounter 50 (Summer 1989): 219–32.
• Roberts, J. Deotis. "The Quest for Mutuality: Confronting Sexism in the Black Church." AME Zion Quarterly Review 99 (October 1988): 20–29.
• Schmidt, Frederick W. A Still Small Voice: Women, Ordination and the Church. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
• Smith, Frank J. "Petticoat Presbyterianism: A Century of Debate in American Presbyterianism on the Issue of the Ordination of Women." Westminster Theological Journal 51 (Spring 1989): 51–76.
• Troxell, Barbara B. "Ordination of Women in the United Methodist Tradition." Methodist History 37 (January 1999): 119–30.
• Zikmund, Barbara Brown. "Ministry of Word and Sacrament: Women and Changing Understandings of Ordination." In The Presbyterian Predicament: Six Perspectives, edited by Milton J. Coalter et al., 134–58. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990.

Questions for Reflection

1. If you are familiar with local or national discussions in a particular denomination on admitting women to official church positions, describe what they were like.
2. Have churches in the twentieth century been more receptive to feminism than secular American society?
3. Is the distinction between social and radical feminism a useful one?
4. Why was it not enough for women to break down legal barriers?
5. What insights do you get into traditional thinking of church men and women from the documents by Bliss and Bennett?
6. What are the "causes of unrest" among women revealed in the documents by Bliss, Bennett, and Blankenship? What changes do they advocate? What do they want?
7. How do you respond to the points Towner makes in the interview on both her own ministry and the future she sees for women in the Presbyterian Church?
8. According to Daly, what fundamental changes need to be made to eliminate androcentrism? How would you evaluate her analysis?

Related Websites for Chapter Eight

• Women and Twentieth Century Protestantism Project: www.wheaton.edu/isae/Women/women.html
• Presbyterian Historical Society: www.history.pcusa.org/
• Sources for Women's Studies in the Methodist Archives: www.rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data1/dg/methodist/methfem.html
• Historical Firsts for Women Clergy: www.gcah.org/women_ministry.htm