THE Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, allowed herself to be vulnerable while addressing the General Synod last week. It took courage. Her moment of vulnerability was also a call to all women who experience what she called “micro-aggressions” in their ministry to take heart.
In this context, she was referring to gender imbalances in those invited to take part in selection processes, notably that of selecting bishops. But her sadness was an expression of the sadness that all women experience when they are victims of the Church’s ongoing, but usually covert, misogyny. Her vulnerability makes the rest of us stronger, if only for a moment.
For years, women have been diminished by a Church culture that enshrines polite misogyny. Degrading and undermining comments are made in a toxic climate of niceness, which permits women to be sidelined or passed over in matters of preferment, or to be discouraged at every level of their ministry, for fear that they might become an inconvenience or a threat to other clergy, many of whom are women.
THE machinations of power affect women first; but the sad truth is that women are all too often the perpetrators of this micro-aggression as often as they are its victims. A culture of deference makes things only worse. For Anglicans, this is of particular concern, given that the fundamental ethos of Anglicanism rests not only on an authority system that is so open to being abused, and is also arguably outdated, but on principles of collegiality.
The diminishment of women’s ministry, as well as personal insults delivered in ways that may sound innocuous, emanates from a system that has learned to be tough, resilient, and geared to increasingly pragmatic methods of ensuring its own survival.
Sometimes, these insults and diminishments are not so innocuous. One woman priest I spoke to was told, for example, that her own contributions and ideas should always be seen to come from someone else — ideally, another cleric. I have known women come to their ministry with gifts that they have honed and worked for over years, such as academic qualifications from good universities, or wisdom gained from working in other professional contexts, who have been consistently ignored in favour of the bland and the local. Educated women often have independent minds. They are seen as a threat.
It is, admittedly, not always so. I have known kind and humble clerics, some highly placed, who have affirmed and supported me personally, as well as other women in their dioceses, often quite publicly — and, I sensed, at some personal cost. The same is true of many of the people whom I have been privileged to serve.
Nevertheless, while congregations may be warm and receptive to what a woman may bring to them intellectually as well as personally, the Church often is not. A woman priest who has much to give, possibly by virtue of coming to ministry in her later years, is seldom sought out for what she may have to bring to the Church’s wider life in terms of life experience and theology. These women are still consistently overlooked when it comes to appointments or preferment.
Added to this, their own pastoral concerns are frequently diminished, or denied altogether. This leaves them vulnerable and further embarrassed by the professional jealousy that they may be experiencing at every level, often at the hands of other women. I have met women who have been told that they are “too clever” or “too popular”. None has been able to account for what has often been the sheer hostility encountered at the hands of some of their colleagues.
On the other hand, it is quite obvious to the people in the pews, who know professional jealousy for what it is in the secular workplace, that this is what is happening. They rally around their priest, even when she discourages them from doing so. In the cases that I have come across in a pastoral context, it was clear that this makes the woman even more of a threat to her colleagues, who see her as courting popularity.
PARTLY as a result of this scenario, many women priests experience serious mental-health issues. They will resort to anti-depressants rather than seek the pastoral care of senior clergy who, they may have realised, are beholden to the system and whom they have learned not to trust.
One woman priest I spoke to was told by a senior cleric, in the nicest way, that it would be helpful if she sold her house and moved away. Some do this, and leave the Church altogether. Most of the ordained women I have spoken to have managed to hold on to their faith despite the toxic environment in which they try to fulfil their calling. When they do, they are, like Bishop Mullally, an inspiration and a source of encouragement to others.
So, there are important questions to be asked if the institutional Church is to retain any credibility in the world of today. Why are women still consistently diminished and their gifts so often undervalued? How has the Church lost sight of its humanity? How has it become simply an institution like any other, despite the fact that many of its employment practices would be barely legal in the secular workplace? Why does the Church feel barely Christian, as some are beginning to ask?
The Revd Dr Lorraine Cavanagh is a priest in the Church in Wales and a trustee of Modern Church.
