Facing the Stained Glass Ceiling: Gender in a Protestant Seminary

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2004 by Adair T. Lummis

Facing the Stained Glass Ceiling: Gender in a Protestant Seminary, BARBARA FINLAY. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003, xiv 150 pp.; $30 (paper).

Major insights about the factors affecting the values and career choices of seminarians and ultimately congregations are found in this study of one seminary. While this book is based on research conducted at a southern Presbyterian seminary in the mid-1990s during the time that the author was enrolled as an M.Div student, its depiction of the social factors differently influencing the paths of women and men into seminary and then into ministerial careers, particularly parish ministry, has wider ramifications.

The study's central focus is the extent to which men and women encounter different career shaping experiences prior to and during their studies for the M.Div. degree. The data to explore this focus were gathered through survey responses from over a hundred seminarians (one cohort at two points in time), hundreds of informal interviews with students, faculty and administrators, and extensive participant observation. Questions asked through the survey (reprinted as an appendix) and apparently also in the interviews, concentrated on the following areas: (1) the students' religious involvement (and their parents) growing up, their education and occupation prior to seminary, present political involvement, and other past and present demographic characteristics; (2) their reasons for attending seminary and degree of material and social support for this decision, (3) their attitudes concerning women as pastors, use of inclusive language, as well as their opinions on divisive issues in the Presbyterian Church (and most other denominations) including the appropriate stance on abortion, homosexuality, and how much attention should be given to gender, race and sexuality in the seminary curriculum; (4) their educational and career aspirations on entering seminary; (5) and for the panel sample, what courses they found most and least valuable, and whether their career plans changed as a result of their seminary experience. Generally, men received more material and social support for becoming parish ministers before, during and subsequent to seminary than did women.

Compared to the majority of male seminarians, women demonstrated higher religiosity in terms of variety of spiritual disciplines practiced and chapel attendance, were more feminist, more actively involved in political causes, and more theologically as well as socially liberal in their views on abortion and homosexuality. Men, who endorsed theologically liberal perspectives, were also more likely to be social activists; however these men composed a clear minority of male seminarians. Seminary courses that might have altered men's values toward more liberal, inclusive perspectives were typically electives, in which mainly women registered.

These findings on the selection and socialization of male seminarians have major implications for churches, especially when combined with those on the career socialization of women in the M.Div. program. Prior to and during seminary, women were discouraged from considering seeking a full-time pulpit. Women's career aspirations during seminary were disproportionately channeled away from the parish to non-parochial ministries, particularly if these women held more theologically and socially liberal values. This latter majority of women seminarians came to realize that they faced great obstacles to obtaining financially secure and otherwise rewarding careers as pastors. Consequently, they turned their attention to preparing for and seeking other work in or outside the occupation of divinity.

The author points out that if the number of women who initially wanted to be pastors but were discouraged from doing so before ordination were added to the numbers of ordained women who left congregational positions for other pursuits, the dropout of women from parish ministry is far more substantial than many realize. Further, from looking at characteristics of the women who did get parish calls as seniors at this seminary, the author concludes that these were the more conservative, traditional ones. Compared to the majority of men, these women were still relegated to being offered far less desirable parish positions which would provide few opportunities for their career advancement or to influence lay members and church leaders.

Many have been disappointed that projections have not materialized that the great increase of women in seminaries over the past several decades would be accompanied by a substantial liberalizing impact on congregational values, especially in the areas of sex and sexuality. This study provides an in depth look at why this has not occurred. Primary reasons are the continuing trends of male seminarians being able to obtain the better parish positions, especially men who espouse more conservative theological and social values, combined with the socializing-out of women in pursuing parish ministry, particularly those with more liberal views. These findings at one seminary, the author postulates, suggest a similar and pervasive phenomenon within other mainline Protestant seminaries resulting in: "a winnowing process early in the game that maintains congregational pastorates pretty much as they have been." (127)