RevGalBookPals: Calling Me Home

I grew up in North Carolina (American South) in the 80s and 90s. I’ve lived and worked in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest of the United States, as well as in England for a time. I’ve traveled around a bit as well. So it is not without some experience that I say that I have never been anywhere that did not have some kind of racial or social tension. It is not always black and white. Sometimes it is indigenous and interloper. Sometimes it is an economic disparity- emphasized by color or ethnicity. It’s always been there. Someone always sighs and says, “Those people…” and a choice must be made by the hearer to call attention to subtle racism, overt bigotry, “gentlemen’s agreements”, and inappropriate assumptions that only serve to perpetuate the foundational lies of the unequal structures of our societies.

Regrettably, churches are not exempt from these behaviors.

With this in mind, I encourage you to read Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler. A novel less like The Help and more like Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (read it!), it takes place in a time collapse between 1939 and the present day (whatever that might be). The premise of the story is a ninety-year-old white woman and a black woman in her mid-thirties on their way to a funeral. The younger woman, Dorrie, works as a hair dresser, with her own shop, and has done Isabelle’s hair for year. Their relationship has deepened, but only so far.

On the road trip to the funeral, Isabelle tells Dorrie the story of her first romance- her true love romance- with the son of her family’s housekeeper. Robert and Isabelle, black and white, were in love, but out of time in 1939 since her Kentucky hometown did not allow blacks to stay in the city limits after dark.

The writing is excellent and the dialogue is believable and warm. The truly villainous characters are a little two-dimensional, but they are also tertiary. The main characters are fully enfleshed and empathetic. The secondary personalities have enough character to make the reader care about them and be angry with them.

The story moves back and forth between the racial dynamics of the late 30s and of the “present-day”. If Isabelle is 90 and was 17 in 1939, the “present day” of the book is 2012. The tensions between Isabelle and Dorrie and strangers who encounter them on their road trip are all too real with a hotel manager who refuses to believe they’re together, restaurant patrons who stare, and a cop who grudgingly gives a speeding ticket to Dorrie because of Isabelle’s presence. The two women even have to deal with their own latent expectations and interpretations of one another’s behavior- always glimpsed through a lens of different races.

Church makes a brief active appearance in this book via the angry pastor who refuses to officiate a wedding for Robert and Isabelle and a kind clergyman who does officiate, after trying to dissuade them. Isabelle reflects later on the churches of her town that support the rules of city segregation. Church also serves as a backdrop for how they can meet and see one another.

As we mark the 50^th anniversary of many significant events in the civil rights struggle in the United States, I’ve been reflecting on how far we have and have not come in those years. Regrettably, tensions still exist. The furor over a biracial family in a breakfast cereal ad proves that the Great Chain of Being still rules the thinking of a significant portion of the population.

Is the church still in this fight? Have we come to accept inequality, injustice, and social spacing as inevitable? Is the fight for racial parity on par with other social issues of our time or do we think it’s over? We cannot assume that part of the kingdom will come without our willingness to participate in the work.

This book, a gentle and almost unremarkable read, opens the doors for conversations in our congregations and communities. What do our men and women’s circles look like? What does the youth group look like? We don’t integrate for integration’s sake, but because corporate worship means the corpus must come together, in all its colors, races, ethnicities, and orientations.

I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction and for church book groups. 

RevGalBookPals: The Reading List Edition

In my neck of the woods, summer time is slow-down-time. Church attendance drops, Bible study subsides, and it is a good time to get in lots of visitation and reading. (Not at the same time, usually.) Of course, it's not summer for all Rev Gals and Pals, but it is a good time to see what we're all reading and to make sure that To-Be-Read stack does not actually shrink.

My own personal To-Be-Read list (on Goodreads) has 211 books on it. Well, it did before I compiled this list- gleaned from our Facebook group and trolling among friends.

Dad is Fat (Gaffigan)

The Tao of Martha

American Savage

What We Talk about When We Talk about God

When Spiritual, but Not Religious is Not Enough

Middlemarch

Cutting for Stone

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Ghost Map

Blind Spot

The Emperor of All Maladies

There But for The (Smith)

Under the Tuscan Sun

The Blind Side

Day (Wiesel)

Inferno

Great Expectation

The Natural

The Thought Exchange

Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me

The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic

Failure of Nerve

Gifts of Imperfection

A New Harmony

The Magic of Hebrew Chant

Immunity to Change

What Every Church Member Should Know about Poverty

Switch (Heath)

Social Media and the Church

Speaking Christian

Saving Paradise (Brock)

The Weight of Mercy

Ten Things Preachers Get Wrong about First Century Judaism (Levine)

The Book Thief

The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Neighbors and Wise Men

Torn (Lee)

Christianity and Process Thought

The Naked Now

Falling Upward (Rohr)

Immortal Diamond (Rohr)

Call the Midwife

Salt, Sugar, Fat

Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith, and What to Eat for Dinner

Sex, Drugs, and Meditation

Anything by Gabrielle Roy

Anything by Margaret Laurence

Re-read Harry Potter

What's on your list? What catches your eye here? 

Do you have something you re-read every year? 

Let's talk BOOKS! 

RevGalBookPals: I Heart Sex Workers.

You might ask, if everything was equal, everyone had shelter, food, clothing, and jobs they loved, would people still sell sex? In all honesty, I believe they would. Some people sell sex because of sexual desire. Some people would sell sex to get one step further up the food chain. Some people would sell sex because they like it.

If everything was equal, though, the desperation around sex work would diminish. Sex works would be less likely to trade sex in risky situations. They’d be less likely to ignore their inner voice that says, “Run!” when a client is violent. They’d be less likely to have sex without a condom and risks HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. They’d be less likely to get into coercive relationship with pimps and more likely to keep more of their earnings. (44)

            By the time I reached page 44 in I Heart Sex Workers, I was completely drawn into the powerfully compelling book. I will read almost anything that’s sex positive, particularly from a fellow RevGal, and I’d been anticipating Lia Scholl’s book for months before I was able to get my hands on it. Yet, I could not have imagined how this book would challenge my (allegedly open) worldview and encourage me to reflect deeply on my own views regarding sex work, sex workers, and sex purchasers- along with a whole host of other topics.

            Paragraphs like the one above are carefully worded to bring the reader along a path of self-discovery that Scholl clearly traveled herself in her own years of assisting sex workers. Each book section begins with a midrash around a woman from Scripture who might have been involved in selling sex- either as result of her own choices or because of someone else’s choices. The creative telling of the stories of Tamar, Rahab, Hadassah (Esther), and the woman at the well set the stage for Scholl to explain various aspects of sex work and to expand the reader’s understanding of agency. Sex work is not a black and white world with clear causes and clear solutions.

            As mentioned above, people enter sex work for a variety of reason. Scholl makes clear that while sex trafficking is a real and genuine issue, it is not the most frequent cause or result of people choosing to trade sex. Sex trafficking might not even be the most pressing issue in your community with regard to sex work. Scholl writes that well-meaning people who want to help sex workers need to think beyond the parameters of trading sex.

If there is no poverty, women cannot be duped into sexual slavery. If there is no discrimination, sexual minorities can get high-paying jobs to support their families. If there is not greed, then governmental and societal safety nets can help those in real need.

Want to “solve” the sex industry? Seek to understand its multiple layers. Begin to understand the sexism, racism, ageism, transphobia, and discrimination against individuals with mental illnesses. Be sure to note the way those layers intersect with class, agency, and opportunities. (44)

            As individuals and groups reflect on their reactions to sex work in the community, it is important to consider both why different individuals are trading sex and what the correct response is. Knee-jerk responses like criminalizing the sex worker or setting up pyramids of rewards for “leaving” sex work do not actually address underlying issues and also do not respect the agency of people who choose to trade sex. A better approach to relational work with persons who trade sex is called “harm reduction”, Scholl explains.

Harm reduction works to minimize harmful effects, not ignore or condemn them. Harm reduction doesn’t believe that the circumstances of someone’s life are monolithic or black and white… It takes into account that there is potential and actual harm that comes from all of life’s experiences. Harm reductionists believe that “everything is overdetermined”, meaning that there are multiple factors that bring a person to where they are today… Harm reduction sees individuals as the primary agents in deciding their futures and sees to empower them by sharing information. Recognizing agency and not treating individuals as victims is very important. Victims don’t have agency. Survivors do. (143f)

            The discussion of harm reduction may be some of the most stunning writing in the book. Scholl’s reflections on the relationships between any two parties, particularly between advocates and sex workers, is enlightening. Is a sex worker struggling between fears of sexually transmitted infections and the fight to get each sex purchaser to use protection? Scholl describes the harm reductionist as one who would talk with the worker about offering to apply condoms with her/his mouth- a prospect that may make a recalcitrant sex purchaser less balky about protection. The harm reductionist understands that the worker’s current concern is protection from infection- not leaving the trade.

            By taking the current main concern seriously, an advocate builds a relationship with the sex worker based in the reality of the worker’s own agency and status as a human being. It sounds very simplistic to write that sentence, but in reading Scholl’s book, I have come to see how quickly sex workers are reduced to their trade, their history, their experiences, or their most recent decisions. Part of the life of faith is understanding, respecting, and advocating for the neighbor who is most difficult for you to understand. This advocacy is rooted love and affirmation of all persons standing in the light of God’s grace. Scholl writes:

If I hold you responsible for your past and assume that you will only act today in the way you have acted in your past, do I not deny your humanity in some way? Do I not deny you the human right to change? (112)

            Whether or not a sex worker chooses to leave the trade, she or he deserves (like all people) to know that there is a safe place to be known and loved. Scholl’s book is a lighthouse for any reader- illuminating dangerous shoals of assumptions and painful missteps that may wreck the voyage of support and journeying together. A person who chooses to stand with sex workers may well make mistakes, as any person in any ministry does, but Scholl has written a great guide to first steps.

            I recommend I Heart Sex Workers to everyone. Period.

RevGalBookPals: Keeping the Faith in Seminary

For some RevGals and Pals, seminary is a fairly recent memory- perhaps within the past ten years. For others among us, it may have been twenty years or more. For a brave few, the pioneers in our midst, in may be more than that because these women represent the first in the denominations to be ordained. Of course, we also count in our blessed company Gals and Pals who are not ordained, but who may well have attended seminary or encouraged others toward a vocation that included higher, theological education. Whatever your circumstances, today I ask you to draw up to the surfaces of your memory your own experiences with seminary, theological education, call committees, ordination exams, and the myriad hoops and doors toward service in God's church.

Keeping the Faith in Seminary is a small volume of essays that explores the issues that come with pursuing that Master of Divinity or Master of Arts in Religion. The essays themselves range from gently humorous and encouraging to the contemporary seminary to frustrated scolding of committees and one-size-fits-all tracks. The ink on my own M.Div is dry, but only just and I serve on my synod's candidacy committee. Thus, I read this book with an eye toward encouraging theological vocations, a way to explain seminary to those who may be curious, and perhaps a way to improve the church's system of training our future leaders of all sorts.

While all the essays are good in their own way, there are a couple stand-outs:

Rachel Wind's essay "Unclogging the Pipes" laid out how easy it is for people to assume a love of church and an exhibition of ministry skill is evidence of a call to ordination. Wind describes her love of church and seminary community and her slow realization that the work she loved was serving within that community, not within a parish setting. This made me think about the benefits of theological education and the community that frequently comes with that education can often serve as their own ends, not means for purposes of church.

Mary Hinkle Shore wrote a powerful essay about what it means to undo in mind and body the lessons and practices that were carefully imparted, with good intention, in seminary teaching. ("Never Stop Unlearning") Some of us drop like a hot potato important theological tenets because we did not embrace the history behind them, but other ideas we learn to shape, with a respect for history, to our community and our situations. Shore's essay stirred up for me the indigestion that comes when I do something I suspect is just heterodox enough to scare a certain professor, but reveals Jesus in a new and powerful way to the persons with whom I am working. Every former seminarian comes to those experiences now and again.

Tim Oleson's "Candidacy: An Expected Hurdle" is the essay for everyone who is part of shaping seminarians and church leaders. Is the process we use for the asking of forming, through the Spirit, a unique vessel to carry the message of Christ or is the process for the sake of process? His struggles with a candidacy committee are frustrating to read, but may help the current seminarian feel less alone in a similar experience.

RevGalBlogPal's own Rev. Marci Glass wrote about her own experience in failing failing one of her ordination exams for PC(USA). ("What Would Jesus Score? Finding My Call Through Hoop Jumping, Exams, and Grace.") Her essay describes a deep understanding of what it means to serve the church, to understand God's call to that work and, yet, to have a deeply human system fail to reach that same understanding. Glass's powerful reflection on the role of grace within the process of ordination is encouraging not only to current students, but to anyone who longs to hope that the power of the Spirit ultimately prevails.

There are seventeen essays in the book with a good mix of men and women writers, though heavy on the Lutheran (ELCA) tradition. I would recommend this book to anyone who has already completed seminary, but still reflects on that system and process. The book is a little heavy on theological language, generally as an example of how overwhelming seminary can be. Nevertheless, since the concepts are not explained the language can sometimes serve as the same barrier about which the writers are complaining. As a pastor and a candidacy committee member, I am not sure this book is what I would give to people early in a call/candidacy process, unless the candidate already had several years in church work and some concept and concern regarding the candidacy process.

I would, however, strongly recommend the book to all candidates who are 2-3 years into the process. These essays will speak very strongly, in my opinion, to those in that stage.

In today's discussion, speak to your own seminary/theological education/ candidacy process. Were you uplifted and affirmed? Was it a struggle? What do you say to those who come to you and say, "I want to know about becoming a pastor"?

RevGalBookPals: Summer Roundup

We're well into summer in the Northern Hemisphere and our Southern Hemisphere gals and pals are into winter. Regardless of the season you're experiencing, we can all use some recommendations. Earlier this week, I asked on the RevGals Facebook page what people were reading. Below is that list, in no particular order, but with a slight attempt at organization.

With all book recommendations, as with parables, your mileage may vary (YMMV). One person's beloved War and Peace is another person's @*!&!*^ War and Peace. Still, whether it's summer vacation or winter holiday, browse this list and share what's keeping you up at night in the comments below! There's always more to read!

Church Related (In Some Capacity) 

Keeping the Faith in Seminary

Scattering Seeds

Walking in the Valleys of Darkness

Wisdom Jesus

I Heart Sex Workers

Out of the Fog, Into the Sun

Still

Falling Upward

Called to Question

Follow the Path

Being with God (Journaling Series) 

Jesus Freak

Take This Bread 

Not Church-Related (But always potential sermon fodder)

Quiet

The Fault in Our Stars

Are You My Mother

A Wrinkle in Time

The Distant Hours

In One Person

Pride and Prejudice

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth

Theophilus North

The Long Christmas Dinner and Other Plays

The Cabala

The Uncommon Reader

The Frugal Gourmet

The Art of Possibility

The Games of Thrones

Change of Heart

Wonder

The Chronicles of Narnia

• • 
    

Wednesday: Preaching a Sermon on How I Have No Business Preaching Sermons

Today's post is by Katherine E Willis Pershey (you may know her as Kewp), a long time ring member and recently-published author of Any Day a Beautiful Change.  The book was reviewed on this blog last week.     

Katherine says:  When I learned that Rachel Held Evans would be hosting One In Christ: A Week of Mutuality to promote conversations about egalitarianism in the church, I knew exactly what I wanted to share - an excerpt from "Saved by the Childbearing," a chapter in Any Day a Beautiful Change. (Readers who have been around awhile might remember the precipitating event.)


I always answered the phone in the manner I had learned was most efficient: “South Bay Christian Church—this is Pastor Katherine.”

The man on the other end of this call apparently missed the verbal cue. “May I please speak to your pastor?”

I pleasantly reiterated that I was the pastor of the church; I asked what I could do for him. He clearly wasn’t calling to sell me something; perhaps he was contacting me for help with paying for a hotel room or a tank of gas, or maybe even for information about joining the church.

“I’m confused,” he said, the sarcasm so thick I could recognize it even in the voice of a total stranger. “You’re the pastor?”

As it turned out, I was speaking to someone who had spotted me in the "Ask the Pastor" column in our local newspaper and was so passionate about his conviction that I should not be a pastor (and that all my opinions were hogwash) that he tracked me down to tell me so.

I noted that Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:28). He reminded me that Paul also wrote in his first letter to Timothy, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (2:12).

Then I argued that Mary Magdalene was the first person called to preach on Easter Sunday, that Jesus himself ordained her to go and tell the other disciples that he would meet them in Galilee. Not that the men listened to her, but she did her part by proclaiming the astounding news that Jesus Christ is risen. He quoted 1 Corinthians 14:34–-35, where Paul commands, “Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.”

At that point I changed tactics and reminded him that slavery—of all things, slavery—is affirmed as an acceptable practice in the New Testament. Perhaps this business of relegating women to second--class citizens is another sign of the historical context out of which these sacred scriptures emerged.

And it went on and on, back and forth, and we succeeded in ripping the Holy Bible to shreds—-these are my verses, those are yours, and we are anything but one in Christ Jesus. I tried to engage the caller in a mature discussion about biblical interpretation and historical context, but when it became clear that the last thing he wanted was a rational conversation, I got off the phone as quickly and politely as I could. And then I cried.

I did a quick inventory. One of my childhood pastors was female. As a teenager, some of my best mentors were female pastors. I went to seminary for three years (where many of my professors were ordained female clergywomen) and earned a Master of Divinity degree. My home church as well as the regional committee on ministry discerned that I have a call to ordained ministry. The General Minister and President of my denomination is a woman. My first church unanimously called me to be their first female solo pastor. I have a phenomenal support network of clergy friends, many of whom are women.

When I called upon that circle for a little encouragement, they lovingly echoed the voice of the Holy Spirit, confirming in a hundred different ways that God calls women into ministry and that God had called this woman into ministry.

I know that, of course. Though it came as a surprise to me (and probably the vast majority of people I knew in my youth), I’m clearly supposed to be doing what I do. I’m not the best, though I’m better than I thought I’d be. When I’m rattled by a tough pastoral visit, I dream about ensconcing myself in some ivory tower as a literature professor. When our bank account plateaus just south of comfort, I wonder just what it is lawyers do, anyway, and could I do it if it paid well enough? But my sense that this is the life to which God has called me is so strong it’s enough to make me read the book of Jonah literally. There’s no escaping pastoral ministry, and I really wouldn’t want to if I could. And while it wasn’t a primary reason I kept working after Juliette was born, it matters that my daughter witnesses me responding faithfully to my vocation.

And it is her watchful eyes that make me that much more indignant about— and that much more sensitive to— arbitrary nonsense about what girls can and can’t do. I’m not the type to teach my daughter she can do anything she wants to do if she tries hard enough. It’s an appealing sentiment, but it’s not exactly true (for instance, if she inherits my math skills, her chances at becoming a mechanical engineer are totally shot). Neither does that line allow for the very real stirrings of the Spirit. Perhaps I’ll tell her she can do anything God has in mind for her if she tries hard enough. What I can’t abide by is anyone else telling her she can’t do what God calls her to do. Or, for that matter, anyone telling me I can’t do what God has called me to do.

I just couldn’t quite shake the conversation. It haunted me for weeks. At first I heard the voice of the man, snide and condescending, rattling around in my head. But before long his voice was replaced by the voice of scripture, the sacred shared book that he had used against me. In particular, the verses from the first letter to Timothy lodged themselves in my mind:

Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. (1 Tim. 2:11–15) 

The passage alternately angered and fascinated me; I couldn’t imagine how I’d been a Christian—-a pastor—-for so long without having ever seriously considered these words. My previous tack had been to simply ignore them, to write them off as culturally irrelevant drivel and as a sign that while the Bible may be inspired, it is far from inerrant. But when a passage gets stuck in my head, there’s usually only one way to get it out: to proclaim it from the pulpit.

And that is how I came to preach a sermon about how I have no business preaching sermons. Naturally, that isn’t exactly how it went down. I recounted the phone call (with many an incensed murmur from the pews), confessed my frustration with scriptures like these, and acknowledged the matter of cultural context. And then I focused on the strangest part of the scripture: its left-field emphasis on childbearing. When did Jesus ever teach that having babies saves women or that becoming a mother is tantamount to eternal salvation? What about our fundamental confession that Jesus saves? The punch line of the sermon was supplied by my favorite biblical commentary, which noted that in the original Greek, the scripture reads “women are saved through the childbearing”—-which is supposed to be a pun for the birth of Jesus. Of course women are saved by the One born fully human and fully divine. So are men.

It was a happy ending to the sermon, a means of celebrating the presence of good news in a challenging and unpopular scripture. I think everyone left happy. But as I went home to my husband and my kid, I realized that I might have been a little too cavalier about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Though it seems an affront to my feminism and my faith, it’s true: I am one woman who has been saved— at least in part— by childbearing. Not just the childbearing that Mary undertook to bring the newborn Christ into the world, but the childbearing I did to bring the newborn Juliette into the world. Her birth opened something in me, and while that opening is a magnet for fear— and oh, what a risk it is to love so completely— it is also an invitation to greater faith, love, and holiness. But salvation will never cause me to be silent, not the redemption of my soul by Jesus or the rescuing of my spirit by Juliette.

I will preach this good news and sing in praise of all that saves. How could I not?

Book Discussion-- "A Church of Her Own" by Sarah Sentilles

It was the subtitle that caught my attention and made me want to read this book. It is: "What Happens When a Woman Takes the Pulpit." The book is disturbing, and the answer of just what happens seems incredibly elusive and complicated. Sarah earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard. She did begin the discernment process for ordination in the Episcopal Church, but withdrew. She is not ordained, not involved in any sort of traditional "ministry" and (at least at the time she wrote the book) not attending any church. She admits that when she began the book she was angry and only wanted to expose the hypocrisy of the institutional church.

Sarah interviewed several individuals whose stories are featured in the book. They are young, not young, married, single, White, Black gay, straight, transgendered, Christians and....a few who would not identify themselves that way. Since the writer's background is Episcopalian, the majority of her interviews were either from that denomination or the UCC. I found myself wondering how she found the women she interviewed. Their stories are humorous, heartbreaking, infuriating--and triumphant. The author does find a degree of healing from the conversations and stories she heard, and she ends on a hopeful note. Sort of.

Let me be honest from the "git-go" and confess that there were things I did not like about the book. Perhaps I will share more in the comments. At times I was perplexed, frustrated, angry, deeply sad, disturbed, impatient, irritated. I would find myself reading a passage and thinking, "Oh, come on!" and wish I had volunteered to lead the discussion on a different book. A nice, simple fun book. I got angry, and then I got depressed, and then....a paragraph, a sentence, a word would leap out at me from the page and I would be caught and held. And I would find myself pondering my own experiences, those of women I know, both theologically "conservative" and progressively "liberal." Was there a common thread?

Trying to distill my thoughts has been difficult. Sentilles divides the book into sections which are divided into chapters, each of which contains at least one powerful paragraph that deserves exploration. I borrowed the book from the library, but if it had been my own copy it would be filled with highlighted sections. I won't try to say something about every chapter, which is what I originally expected to do. There is just too much material that is difficult, challenging, potentially divisive, and potentially transformational.

The Introduction is called, The Most Sexist Hour. The sections are:

Part One: Vocation in which she discussed the "call," the ordination process, mentors, the job search, and being an associate minister.

In Part Two, Incarnation: the Body the author writes about the way language is gender-related, the special challenge that clothing choices can present to the woman minister, sexual issues, and some particular issues encountered by gay or transgendered ministers.

Part Three, Creation: Ministry has some fascinating insights into Catholic Womenpriests (one word--a new one for me), being a minister (noun) and what that has to do with ministry (verb) and concludes with a chapter describing some very non-traditional "church" gatherings created by women.

I started feeling a bit stirred up before I even read the first chapter. Here is a little from the book's introduction, The Most Sexist Hour. After describing the frustrating experience of early seminarian, Antoinette Brown, Sentilles goes on, "Brown's story sounds eerily similar to those told by the women I interviewed...Churches and seminaries and divinity schools and congregations have been doing the same thing to women for hundreds and hundreds of years. For a long time women have been filling pulpits men do not want in places men refuse to live, for salaries men will not accept...If churches have been doing similar things to women for hundreds of years, why do we continue to deny that sexism is a problem? Why do we continue to administer surveys that tell us the same thing again and again? ...Unless there is an explicit, concrete, commitment to remedy what they expose, surveys can be...dangerous...allowing us to look like we are paying attention to look like we are paying attention to discrimination without ever having to do anything about it."

What are your thoughts? Has your denomination administered such surveys? If so, did they change anything? Do more harm than good? Help? Are we talking the talk but not walking the walk?

Sentilles' description of the Episcopalian ordination process was astounding to me. In my own denomination it is altogether too easy (if one is a male) to reach that step. We need, in my opinion, to be more stringent and do more interviews and psychological tests, etc. The Episcopalian process seems to be the opposite end of the spectrum. What were your experiences? Did you find the process to be reasonable? Was it unduly intimidating? For Rev Gals, did you encounter encouragement or discouragement from leadership? Did being female make any difference in what happened?

Women senior or solo pastors are most often found in small churches, in rural areas, in "difficult" and particularly challenging parishes. As a result, many find themselves in associate pastor positions. The stories from that particular chapter horrified me. I'm not currently serving a church, and I've tried to be open to any area I might be able to express my calling, but during that chapter I tossed the book down and said to my husband, "Yow! If these stories are even partly true I NEVER want to be an associate pastor. ESPECIALLY not under a male pastor." The section on mentoring was equally distressing.

It might be difficult or too revealing to discuss that here, but if you can, tell us about associate pastor or mentor experiences. Mostly positive? Mostly negative? Sexist, or egalitarian?

I found myself clenching my jaw at more than one point! The stories in this book were all too familiar. I was surprised, since the book was exclusively about women ministers from mainline traditions (and I am not) to find this to be the case. I had assumed that it was much easier to be ordained, employed, and respected in a denomination that has a large number of women clergy (the United Methodists, for example). Nonetheless, Sentilles notes that some of the women she interviewed started out in more conservative denominations but left for more liberal ones because they were more accepting of women in church leadership. She implies that it is not possible to have a high regard for the veracity of the Bible and still be accepting of women in the pulpit, let alone be loving and accepting of those who are something other than straight heterosexuals. What do you think? Are the generally more "liberal and progressive" denominations the future of women ministers?

There was one interview (I won't say which one) with a minister who was describing her lack of acceptance by her first congregation. As I read the particulars, I found myself thinking, "Well good grief! I would have been one of the congregation members who wasn't happy with you!" If you read the book, did you find that to be the case with anyone?

I found myself wondering, "Should a few of these women have chosen another profession where they can serve people but don't have to believe much of anything and certainly don't have to affirm Christ as savior?" One minister, who is Black and a lesbian, told Sarah that much of the theology of feminist ministers is "not thick enough" and noted the absence of Christ as the center pillar, instead finding it to be justice or social issues. This reminded me of a post from Quotidian Grace a while back about an atheist being accepted as a Presbyterian church member. (She was appalled.)

So are the gospel and social justice inseparable? Two sides of the same coin? I recall a friend once saying, "What is the gospel if it does not engage society?" So what do we do with the tension of personal transformation (what the church used to call "conversions" and the need for action--for faith shown by works, to quote the Epistle of James?

I loved "Liz" who experienced worship in the Disciples of Christ and the Assemblies of God and said, "I'm excited about bridging the chasm between the two...we need progressive evangelical churches." Is it possible to bridge the chasm? (I hope so because I somehow feel I need to try to do that.)

I'd better stop here, just taking time to note that I found the statement, "There is no going back; we have already won!" to be questionable and a bit trite, but the following paragraph made me shout "YES! "

"The Roman Catholic Church can refuse the priesthood to women...Southern Baptists can tell women to submit and be silent...but it is too late. The horse has left the barn."

Any other issues or insights that stood out to you?

RevGalBookPals: Tribal Church

I’m in Black Mountain, NC right now because my godchildren were baptized yesterday. It’s breathtaking to see the mountains, and to be out of the city for a bit. We’ll be traveling back to D.C. today, but Songbird gave me this wonderful opportunity to talk about Tribal Church with you, so I’m going to check in as much as I can.

My day job is working as a pastor at Western Presbyterian Church. And, like most of you, I also write and blog in my spare time. I wrote Tribal Church because I was tired of hearing about how the only way to reach out to a new generation of young adults (adults under the age of forty) was to get out the praise choruses, ditch the pews, and ignite a worship war in your congregation. It seemed like the only way that it was possible to minister to them was to throw out all of our traditions, and plant a booming, Gen-X church, with lots of imagery flashing on a powerpoint screen.

But that was not what was happening in the congregations that I served for the last ten years. When I talked to young parents, they said they liked being at the church because it gave their kids a chance to be around old people. And people told me over and over again that they appreciated the traditions and the liturgy. They enjoyed being a part of a community that was not about a charismatic pastor, but it was more like they were stepping into a stream, a deep current of faith and doubt that had been flowing before them, and would be flowing after them. They longed for sacred traditions like contemplative prayer.

Their words echoed my own experience. As a woman, growing up in the midst of various churches—conservative Southern Baptist congregations and mega-churches—I longed for the beauty, art, liturgy, and social justice traditions that mainline congregations had to offer.

I use the metaphor “tribe” because tribes are intergenerational communities that care for one another. And when we are at our best, we do the same thing—when we walk alongside each other, encouraging each other on our spiritual journeys.

Of course, it wasn’t always easy in the mainline church. Strangely, I often sensed a fear of outsiders, rather than a welcoming. People had a difficult time understanding why I would leave my conservative upbringing and join the mainline, and the switch was viewed with suspicion (especially during my ordination process).

The church’s healthy love of education could grow into a pernicious classism that made people check my resume at coffee hour. As they would ask, “And where do you work?” they were never thrilled about me working at the mall. And when they asked, “Where did you go to school?” they were not asking for a reference to the local high school.

So, I also wrote the book to try to sort out some of the roadblocks that we have to reaching out to men and women under forty. For instance, many of our congregations do not understand some of the economic realities of young adults, and they have a tendency of thinking of them as simply irresponsible with their money. They don’t always understand that many of them are not able to make long-term financial commitments to their congregations.

Congregations have difficulty realizing that a new generation of women is not able to keep up with the time-consuming customs that older generations have constructed. If certain practices are dying, we may need to rethink them, instead of berating young adults for not being involved. That means that some of our most sacred customs—the women’s clubs, the yard sales, the quilting circles, and church cookbooks—will need some serious thought.

And we have difficulty allowing young leadership to flourish. We tend to expect people to take a lot of time, working their way up our church systems, instead of our congregations being actively recruiting young, innovative leadership.

So, I wonder, what are the major barriers that your church has while reaching out to young adults?

Are there customs that are clearly not making the shift to a new generation?

Are there traditions inherent in the customs that your congregation needs to maintain and nurture?

What sort of things are your young adults passionate about?

And, of course, if there’s anything that you would like to ask me about the book, I’d be happy to answer. As usual, you can buy the book through the Amazon link on the right, and the portion of the proceeds will go to RevGals.