“We’re seeing a new day of understanding of who God is,” said Dr. Serene Jones, President and Johnston Family Professor for Religion & Democracy at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. “When the people who are representing God, making God present, have female bodies, that inevitably changes the way you think about how God is” (from an article in the April 1, 2018 edition of The New York Times).
This March, during Women’s History Month, let us reflect on our own history. It took 438 years for Protestants of the Presbyterian Church (USA) stream to ordain women to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. In 1956, Margaret Towner, became the first Presbyterian woman minister. In the subsequent 69 years, the change to our denomination has been profound.
Today, roughly 50 percent of Presbyterian ministers of Word and Sacrament as a whole are women, and here in the Presbytery of Genesee Valley, 55 of 115 ministers and commissioned pastors, are women. Of the presbytery’s ten largest congregations, seven are served by women heads of staff. Every year since 2011, more women are ordained to the ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA) than men (60% to 40%). At this rate by 2027 women will represent the majority of ministers serving in our denomination. This zero-to-majority transformation within pastoral leadership will have been accomplished in 71 years. (Women ruling elders eclipsed in number their male counterparts 20 years ago.)
What does this gender-based leadership transformation mean for faith and life in the Presbyterian Church (USA)? At the very least, I think that it means that you and I, can more fully experience Paul’s vision of justice—in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female—but unity and equality in the midst of diversity.
In powerful and prophetic ways, women in ministry are transforming the Presbytery of Genesee Valley, “bending” us toward justice as evidenced in the inclusion of mandatory family leave and sexual harassment policies, and a growing sensitivity of work-family balance for all pastoral leaders. The historic use of the divine to justify discrimination against women is being discredited for the evil that it is, and faith is being reformed from a rationale for women’s suppression to a means for women’s empowerment.
“When the people who are representing God, making God present, have female bodies, that inevitably changes the way you think about how God is.” And I imagine in my own mind’s eye, that as God looks out on all of this change, God sits back, and She smiles.
