Women Clergy Research and the Sociology of Religion

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2000 by Adair T. Lummis, Paula D. Nesbitt

Adair T. Lummis [*]

Paula D. Nesbitt [*]

As two sociologists of religion having researched women clergy for much of our academic careers, we have discovered sometimes hauntingly similar themes in our research and results despite the very different methodologies we use. Adair Lummis, faculty associate for research at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research of Hartford Seminary, does full-time basic research supported by foundations and evaluative research sponsored by various religious organizations. Her research on women clergy relies primarily on survey and interview methodology. Paula Nesbitt is a sociologist and director of the Carl M. Williams Institute for Ethics and Values at the University of Denver. Her longitudinal database of clergy occupational biographies, constructed from denominational documents, is supplemented by interviews and participant observation. Our aim for this essay is to explore other mutual themes -- about how gender-related inquiries, variables, and findings have challenged or transformed our own scholarly presuppos itions, interests, questions for further scholarly discussion, and research direction. For comparative purposes, our substantively different perspectives and experiences require a format that allows our respective voices to be identified.

DEVELOPING AN INVOLVEMENT IN RESEARCH ON WOMEN CLERGY

We both became involved in studying the situation of women in the clergy as doctoral students. Our individual research interests in women entering the ordained ministry were confirmed after receiving our degrees, as sociologists employed in seminary environments. However, our history of involvement in research on women clergy is quite different, reflecting both our own social locations and the timing of our entry into the field.

Lummis: During graduate school at Columbia University, I was interested in the sociology of professions and professional socialization, but not the sociology of religion. However, in 1972--73, I was asked by Union Theological Seminary, NYC, to do research relevant to redesigning their M.Div. program. This was a wonderful, paid opportunity to study a professional school and professional socialization that the seminary agreed I could use for my dissertation. The early seventies were exciting and tumultuous years at Union Seminary. In contrast to previous decades, the Seminary's whole concept of its historic mission to train "scholar-pastors" was being challenged both by outside constituents in academic and church circles and by internal constituents. One of the most important internal constituents were women seminarians, who made up two-fifths of the 1973--74 entering M.Div class. In the early seventies, women were generally beginning to enroll in M.Div. programs at liberal Protestant seminaries in greater num bers than ever before. Female seminarians at Union, supported by several faculty members, began demanding that this ecumenical seminary be far more active in helping women become pastors, and that "feminist" (and that term was much used) perspectives be included in both courses and community worship. I am sure I changed as much as any Union student in becoming consciously aware of some of what women faced in attempting to become ordained.

This awareness was broadened after getting my degree when I came to Hartford Seminary. In 1979, Jackson Carroll, Barbara Hargrove, and I began research, funded by the Ford Foundation, on the experiences of the first large wave of women M.Div. graduates who were also the first women pastors most members of their congregations had ever seen in their congregations or in their communities. This research eventuated in the 1983 book, Women of the cloth: A new opportunity for churches.

In the ensuing years, the experiences of ordained and lay women in the worship life and leadership of denominations and congregations continued to be a research focus both in my policy and action research projects (mainly for the Episcopal Church) and for two basic research studies, funded by the Lilly Endowment, which I conducted with other women scholars then at Hartford Seminary. The first of these latter projects, with Miriam Therese Winter and Allison Stokes, was based on lay, vowed, and clergy women respondents who subscribed to feminist journals or attended conferences at women's centers. In the resulting 1994 book Defecting in place: Women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives, we looked at the sources of support these women, holding a variety of feminist values, used for remaining in their congregations and trying to change these in accord with their beliefs concerning both the female aspects of God and explicitly including women in worship services and church leadership. The second study, begun in 1993, with Barbara Brown Zikmund and Patricia M.Y. Chang, and published in 1998 as Clergy women: An uphill calling, updates the Women of the cloth study and extends it to look at the current experiences of clergy women and men in fifteen denominations. This research involvement has been pivotal in sustaining my interest in the social and cultural factors affecting women and men in the church.