In the beginning God created a man. It seems that pretty quickly God knew that if that’s all there was there wouldn’t be any more and so … woman. Humankind in two forms with infinite variations. Size and color, habitat and interests, aptitudes and preferences and … well, look at just your relatives and add to the list. God’s plan. Our destiny.
It’s taking quite a long time for all of us to get the big picture and maybe in this life we’ll never get all that God intended but we still have to keep trying and celebrating whatever and whenever we do get it right.
And so here we are in the 25th anniversary of two bodies of Christ’s church becoming one and looking at the role women played and are playing in that event and in its life since.
When children finally get their acts together, when a marriage finds a way to accommodate two styles of being, when government finally sees that together we are stronger and better able to care for one another, it is easy to mourn what might have been before. It is more grace-filled to recognize that it is never too late and that God is beckoning us into a future in which all of God’s children can participate.
The union of the Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1983 followed several decades in which it seemed impossible at times to expect union. People who had more in common than what kept them apart acted as if that wasn’t so. The loudest voices often prevailed.
And right in the middle were women, and people of color, and struggling ethnic groups of Presbyterians, and people who couldn’t stand up and walk into most churches, and many more who tried to enter the conversation and were sometimes heard and sometimes ignored. From the perspective of 2008 we can quietly claim that some of the invisible and silenced are now in the midst of the decision-makers and telling their side of the story to listeners.
But this piece is about women … the women of both denominations, as different as the men who were once the only ones entitled to speak or make the rules or shape the vision that would keep the church on track and faithful. After much debate women in the UPCUSA were finally allowed to be deacons in 1915 and elders in 1930 and it happened in the PCUS in 1964 for deacons and in 1964 for elders. Some of the people had deep concerns, almost fears, over these steps, which upset the way it had been for centuries. It is not a secret that there are some people in our denomination who still have misgivings about the recognition of women in ordained ministry. In the years of debate leading up to 1983 many were forced to make compromises that led to disappointment for some and angered others.
Even as we consider the role of women in reunion we must not forget that there were also serious debates regarding the place of African-Americans as well. What most of us see as natural and obviously in keeping with God’s call to the church is still the source of concern for some people.
Only two women were named to the original Joint Committee on Church Union and then it was realized that there had to be a greater representation if the denominations were to be fairly representative. A Task Force on Women was created to bring more of women’s concerns before the Committee. The country, in the wake of “feminist revolts” in the public sector and in institutions, was awakening to the fact that only a few women had been brave enough or convicted enough to have been the “firsts” in their particular venues. Many women were cautious about asking for “too much”; others were not sure they wanted to give up the benefits of being “taken care of,” still others were resisting being taken for granted or patronized as the “little women” or knowing that what they believed were God-given gifts were not blessed by either the males or by some of the females, in their families, churches, or communities. Women who were called to leadership positions were supported by many other women, some of whom were anxious about the ways women would perform in new roles. One of my own awakenings came at the hands of a few women seminarians who noted my anxiety at a dinner at which Lois Stair (Moderator ’71) spoke. I wanted so badly for her to be seen as the able and committed woman she was. Those young women said to me afterward, “Freda, she did fine and she had every right not to be perfect … just like the privilege we offer men.” In those days we spoke of “clicks” when truth became apparent and we knew we were pushing toward rights and not privileges.
After centuries of considering that only men were fit to be “official leaders,” the facts of women in leadership of both denominations is important to note. The PCUS in its 1923 Assembly added three women to each of its executive committees and the next year elected a woman as one of its official delegates to the International Conference on Faith and Work to be held in Stockholm.* While women were taking on many leadership roles in congregations, especially in education, pastoral care, and mission endeavors, they were not considered fit for ordained leadership until 1963.
In the UPCUSA an amendment to the church’s Constitution authorized the election of deaconesses and in 1923 women were made eligible to membership on all the denominational Boards and to membership on the General Council, while a Constitutional amendment in 1930 opened to them the office of ruling elder … and, finally in 1956 women were made eligible for the ordained ministry.*
When you look at those women who were the first to be ordained to Ministries of Word and Sacrament: Margaret Towner in the UPCUSA and Rachel Henderlite in the PCUS, you have to stand in awe that it was such a big deal. It was and they both deserved awe. Rachel Henderlite was a quiet giantess, an erudite scholar and author, someone who knew from the start that faith without works was dead and works were both private and public. At PSCE (then the Assembly’s Training School) part of our course in Theology and Ethics included visits to labor union meetings and voter registration. Margaret Towner was also a quiet woman, until she had something to say and she spoke that with a conviction both illuminating and challenging, and she still does.
In considering this anniversary year of the creation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the participation and roles of women in that effort, it would be remiss not to acknowledge what women brought to the table in addition to their concern that women in both denominations would not lose what they had already accomplished and what many had prayed for in many years past. That work brought into the new church the work of previous committees in both denominations that had focused on racial ethnic women and women in the Third world and those gathered into Women Employed by the Church. While some women focused on the plight of many women seeking survival, others were concerned about entitlement to address the historic exclusions of capable women from the courts and decision-making of the church.
While this article is focused on women, it is impossible not to recognize that, over the same years, men and women of every race have moved further into the structures and decision-making bodies of the church. Many have brought with them a heightened sensitivity toward any of God’s children who may have faced discrimination or exclusion at the hands of those in power.
And where are we today? Twenty-five years later how is it with women in the church?
There are fewer churches that wouldn’t think of calling a woman pastor. The numbers of women called to ordained ministries of some kind are growing. Gone are the days of one or two women in a seminary class or daring to speak in presbytery. Fewer and fewer Sessions are men’s clubs, the General Assembly is as diverse as God’s creation. Only two women on the original Joint Committee then; today few committees of the church would neglect women’s presence at any of the tables or decision-making bodies of the church. When Lois Stair became the first woman Moderator of the UPCUSA in 1971 and Sara B. Moseley became the first woman moderator of the PCUS in 1978 it was startling to many; but when Joan Gray was elected in 2006, preceded by nine women so elected, most people in the PC(USA) considered only the gifts she and they were bringing to the church and its mission.
Because the church is a human as well as a holy institution, however, we are still being perfected. Old prejudices die hard and there is sometimes deprecating talk about “how women do it.” It’s then that we should remember the women who first sat alone on committees, the ones who visited the sick and taught children the Bible stories, those today who teach prisoners and immigrants to speak English, those who had no voice except in their prayers, who ministered without the title and those who stand up to speak without any authority but that they are disciples of Christ, who keep on knocking at doors that refuse them entrance, who preached by word and deed before they were granted the recognition or the right, who believed they were children of God when they sat with the lonely, sick, and dying or who said again and again when they went unrecognized in a group “and women too.”
Thanks be to God for all those women who dared to believe they were included in God’s providential care and in God’s bestowal of gifts and kept believing in spite of the odds and for the men who were awakened to know that God loved them no less when they saw into God’s plan for creation both women and men whose identities were to be found not in their gender but in their common call to make Christ’s ministry their own with the special gifts given to each.
*Dates taken from A Brief History of the Presbyterians, Lefferts A. Loetscher/ George Laird Hunt, 4th edition.
Freda Gardner is professor emerita of Christian education at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Moderator of the 211th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1999. Gardner was the first woman to serve as a tenured faculty member at Princeton Seminary, teaching there from 1961 until her retirement in 1992.
