Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 26, 1994 TAG: 9411280005
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Denomination appears to be more influential than sex in determining whether a pastor's leadership style will be democratic, according to preliminary findings from a Hartford Seminary study of more than 4,000 clergy in 17 denominations.
At the liberal end of the scale, both female and male Unitarian Universalist clergy are most likely to share power over the church with congregation members. In conservative denominations such as the Assemblies of God and the Church of God, clergy employ more take-charge authoritarian styles, but again with little difference in approach between clergymen and clergywomen, according to the study.
In a separate study of United Church of Christ pastors in Wisconsin, Mary Claire Klein of Marian College in Fond du Lac said that although the sex of a pastor continues to be a divisive issue for many congregations hiring new ministers, she found no significant evidence that gender mattered in the leadership styles of male and female pastors.
The findings in both studies were reported in early November at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in Albuquerque, N.M.
Even two generations after female clergy began appearing in significant numbers in U.S. churches, the issue is far from settled. Each side turns to the Bible to support its arguments.
In the Roman Catholic Church, where Pope John Paul II has attempted to close off discussion of female clergy, Christ's selection of men as his first apostles has been cited to support the all-male priesthood. In groups where there are relatively few female pastors, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc., those opposing female clergy often refer to passages such as that in 1 Corinthians where Paul says ``the women should keep silence in the churches.''
Those supporting female clergy cite the numerous important roles women were involved with in Jesus' ministry as evidence for transcending boundaries to female ministers that they say were imposed for cultural - not theological - reasons.
In their own Pauline argument, many also refer to his discussion of the relative unimportance of old differences: ``There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.''
Defying the expectations even of some clergy themselves, the new studies found that as far as clergy leadership styles are concerned, there was little difference between male and female pastors.
In the Hartford Seminary study funded by the Lilly Endowment, about two-thirds of parish clergywomen said female leaders tend to share power more than do male leaders, while only 18 percent of male parish clergy agreed with that perception.
In her summary report at the SSSR meeting, Adair Lummis said that female pastors among Southern Baptist, American Baptist and United Church of Christ clergy tended to be stronger advocates of the ``equality of orders'' within the church than male clergy in their denominations.
But overall, female pastors do not differ significantly from male pastors in their leadership styles, she said the study findings indicate.
In one unusual finding, women who were senior pastors in the Episcopal and Lutheran denominations were less democratic than any other male or female clergy in the study.
In her study of 131 United Church of Christ pastors in Wisconsin, Klein said the results indicating no statistically significant difference in leadership style between male and female ministers were somewhat perplexing.
If gender is not the determining factor, then what is, she asks.
``The question begs an answer,'' Klein said. ``If not for the sake of scholarship, [then] for those denominations which refuse to ordain women, for those churches considering their pastoral leadership needs, for those congregations which hesitate to hire women as pastors, and for all people who hear the pastors I call to serve.''
by CNB