Double-Binds of Clergywomen with #MeToo

Hard to say how many clergywomen these days are victims of sexual harassment in Christian churches. Only one denomination ever tried to track that specific fact--the most progressive one, as you might have guessed. Yet that study by the United Church of Christ Coordinating Center for Women's Study is ancient. Published in 1986, it showed 48% of those surveyed revealed they had been victims of male clergy.

With all the education done since, some may insist this percentage has surely changed. I'm not at all sure. My hunch is that women in ministry have just been driven further into the margins on this issue--shamed into submission. Or, like so many I've heard from, willing to work in positions of lesser prestige, even doing menial work, rather than remaining in the toxic environment where they are educationally prepared to work.

The 48%, of course, excluded representatives from groups just starting to emerge in more conservative denominations in greater numbers, where the latest generation of women has been making their voices and rights to be in the pulpit known. This now includes the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which did not organize until 1991.  Today women are stepping up around the globe, declaring boldly that a failure to honor gender equity in the pulpit is a violation of the Gospel.

So while we wait and wonder, until somebody takes on a very progressive study that would reach outside the church to somehow find even the clergywomen no longer associated with the profession, we might at least hope for studies from groups like Next Church,

Meanwhile, as one of the oldest of the Baby Boomers, I want to record some of my own experience in collaborating with clergywomen who dare not come forward as much as they'd like to publicly register their outrage about sexual harassment by male colleagues. Through the years, scores of ordained women with much the same story have dropped into my inbox. They either have left the ministry or remain caught between staying and working with abusing male colleagues, in positions to which they feel called.  Or leaving. If they dare to report sexual harassment, knowing they are likely to find others, it's extremely risky. For they not only risk their calling, but their livelihood, since many of them have placed "all their eggs in one basket," professionally. So they stay and work as advocates, often supporting other women in their own congregations who are victims of gender-based violence. I cannot imagine living under this cloud!

Like many of the Next Church women, I am not ordained. Nor do I aspire to be. Though I might have been among those seeking credentials that might have increased my likelihood of being heard in this new generation. Might have, eventually, if it had not been for a midlife crisis of immense proportion.

In 1986, the year of the UCC study (and also the year I turned forty), I was among the thousands of Southern Baptist women with a full-time career in the faith community, quite progressive in social views. In my youth, fortunate to have been nurtured by women with more progressive views than most in the SBC, I'd found it easy to incorporate "radical" ideals into my work in community development and public health nursing, while serving in one of the most tyrannical of political environments in the world. I just never stopped to think of myself as a radical woman.

As it turned out, finding ways to work around the power mongers in that regime ended up being excellent preparation for what I, unknowingly, was going to soon find myself doing in the "faith" community.  For, in 1988, I would be facing the truth about violence against women and children in the very organization I'd felt called to serve under. Suddenly, I knew I had a new "mission," a mission to the world, one for which i felt totally unprepared. Somehow, I had to find a way to address this community of Fear, which is what I now understand to be the best description for any patriarchal system.

That story, written in full in a 214-page, 1993 book is summarized here, in an article I wrote for a newsletter shortly after the publication of How Little We Knew.  The summary begins by capturing my feelings after being forced to resign, alongside my husband, because we'd dared not to back down in protesting attempts to return to the mission field a sexual predator, who had even assaulted a national teenager representing the very people we'd been called to serve!

Until 1993, when my husband Ron and I were safely in the folds of American Baptists, I'd only met two clergywomen in my entire life. Yet, the very day this book was released, I stood at what some said was the most scandalous of all gatherings of Christians in the history of the world, the Re-Imagining Conference. Men of the most progressive denominations in The World Council of Churches (along with quite a few women) vowed they would never again support any such event, which they declared to be "total heresy."  

Yet, there I was serving "the least of these," so to speak, right "in the midst of them." Standing in solidarity with a group of over 2000 women from all over the world, many who were scholars and ordained clergywomen--almost all with a story to tell, I soon discovered, if I had time to listen.  And there I stood as they lined up, many whispering the unspeakable, because I'd dared to write "the unspeakable," the story of incredible collusion by the largest, most powerful denomination in the world, though I wasn't naming a denomination for fear that others would say "Oh, that's just Southern Baptists." Naming would come later, and still my message would be embraced and still is to this day.

So why, after all the publicity on abuse in the church, do clergywomen still have to endure sexual harassment?  I suspect it's largely because few sitting in the pews have any idea how common this problem is.  Nor do most in dropping contributions into the plate each Sunday know how many of those dollars go to pay silencing money to victims whose perpetrators may still be allowed to continue in ministry after a slap on the wrist. Or to go quietly into another denomination with gatekeepers not as likely to ask the right questions. Or if they do ask the questions, not likely to get the answers because of the collusion that has permeated the Good Old Boy System for time immemorial, which is the opposite of the Gospel message that I understand. 

Clergywomen cannot afford to step forward--more than two decades after Re-Imagining. Those less naive than I was in 1986 know they can't if they intend to keep any status at all in their professions. They may get by with standing by women in their denominations who have been abused, but even that's likely to cost them in subtle ways. Only radical women stand in solidarity with other women in a system that's still skewed heavily toward male domination.

This leaves people in the pews with power that they are refusing to exercise. The power to talk to clergywomen about these problems. To give support. To be alert. And most of all to ask denominational leaders to publish and widely distribute the facts about how much hush money is being paid to silence individuals from speaking the full truth when allegations are founded. Money that these individuals often desperately need, but are not allowed to receive without silencing agreements that protect only denominations and perpetrators.

Furthermore, people in the pews, as some Catholics have done, can threaten to boycott collections if need be unless the number of investigations are published for each area of the country, as well as nationally.  This annual report for Catholic and public scrutiny is now published each year, as a result.

How does this compare to congregations with local church autonomy:  specifically non-denominational churches and for Southern Baptists, who still insist they cannot have a central committee to process allegations. There is nothing requiring that churches report to entity, wishing to stay in good standing. Not with the SBC in spite of everything else being highly organized. There is no required reporting system and no centralized accountability anywhere. Autonomous churches value independence above accountability.  With no legitimately ordained clergywomen, the SBC, which remains the largest of all Christian denominations by far, holds the wild card. They refuse to consider changing this "sacred" arrangement that's also espoused by the second largest group of all Christian congregations-- the non-denominational churches, growing by leaps and bounds.

Bottom line: whether a group has ordained clergywomen present and a central way of processing cases or not, we Protestants have a LONG way to go before transparency allows women in ministry, ordained or not, to step up to the plate and bring allegations--unless they are ready to be treated as outcasts in positions to which they have felt a strong calling.  

Sadly, few clergywomen have the advantage that I did. A second career waiting with a license that allowed me to step up to the plate, helping to support my family in another profession.  

That's the double-bind.  That's what made all the difference, giving me the freedom to speak with an independent voice, which turned out to be a spiritual gift--one that cannot be censored by any non-profit, church or otherwise.

If I have any advice to young women going into professional ministry today, it's this:  "By all means, have a back-up career. It just may see you through the darkest night of your soul." 

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Dee Ann Miller is the author of three books on abuse and violence within the institutional church. Her latest, published in May, 2017, is partly based on her connections with the Spotlight movie.  Enlarging Boston's Spotlight: A Call for Courage, Integrity, and Institutional Transformation

Much more on her work and contact info can be found at takecourage.org