Women in Ministry: Men in the Pews

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss and Bill Hurlbut

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, April 29, 2007

a sermon by Rev. Lynn Strauss

The Reverend Caroline Julia Bartlett Crane, ordained by the First Unitarian Church of Kalamazoo, MI in 1889, wrote these words;

“I believe that the greatest need of the church is to be mothered. Until the creeds are humanized, which were formulated by the early “church fathers’ and by our Puritan forefathers, until the lost balance of religion is restored by the restoration of the woman element to the mutilated human and the mutilated divine; until the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God is recognized by this world of self-made men, until these things be, the supreme call to the ministry that vibrates through the world today is to womanhood to give herself to the service of unifying and uplifting humanity and bringing it up to the true knowledge and glad service of our Father and Mother God.”

Over 100 years ago Unitarian and Universalist women felt called to the ministry and they believed their hand was needed to “mother” the church, to balance the male concept of God with a feminine God. To humanize the ministry by adding the missing gender.

For a brief period of Unitarian and Universalist history they succeeded. For a brief period on the western frontier of Iowa and Illinois in the 1880s and 1890s, there were a group of women ministers who started and grew churches together. And then the moment was gone and pulpits passed back into male hands, and it was 70 years before women started to attend seminary again in any significant numbers.

It is important that you know about the Iowa Sisterhood, the name given to these amazingly dedicated and successful circuit-riding ministers. As we continue to fight for pro-choice, for marriage equality, for a new equal right amendment, as we take pride in Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and other women in public leadership positions, we need to remember.

The sisterhood aspect of their work was crucial. For none could have done it alone. None could have lived on the Prairie alone, none could have led congregations if they were wives and mothers, they succeeded in large part because of the support they gave to one another.

This is a story of liberated women supporting one another in daily tasks, this is a story that was lost to history, until the feminist movement reclaimed it, this is a story that must not be lost again.

In 1927 two elderly women rode a train from their retirement home in Florida to the small town of Hamilton, Ill. Not far from the Mississippi River. Both were retired Unitarian ministers.

Hamilton was Mary Safford’s hometown and the place where she began her ministry in 1879. At the station to meet them, was Eleanor Gordon, Mary’s childhood friend and the associate pastor of that First Unitarian Church in Hamilton.

After a lifetime devoted to ministry on the frontier and to leadership in the suffrage movement, Mary Safford had come home to dedicate a Memorial Auditorium in honor of the contributions of her mother and other pioneer women who modeled self-sufficiency, inner strength, and dedication to home and church.

Mary Safford and Eleanor Gordon grew up in a time when new questions were being asked by the liberal thinkers on the prairie. It was just after the civil war and Mary’s father, a farmer and teacher, was outspoken in defense of biblical fallibility, abolition of slavery, and the new Darwinian theory. A Presbyterian, he was repeatedly called before his church board to justify his radical views.

Young Mary and her friend Eleanor read extensively in Mr Safford’s library, discovering Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Wm Ellery Channing, Emerson and Theodore Parker. These thinkers influenced by the Enlightenment challenged the authority of scripture, spoke out for rational religion, and supported the right of women to speak publically.

There in rural Illinois Eleanor Gordon lived on a neighboring farm amid a family of colorful religious diversity. One uncle was a radical Unitarian, her Aunt Caroline was a Channing Unitarian, her uncle James a spiritualist and her mother’s family all Baptist, but divided between free will and regular, their house was strewn with religious journals and family religious debates were commonplace.

Mary and Eleanor were devoted friends. They identified with other professional women of their day, and decided marriage was not for them. They considered the outlook for ambitious young women in 1874 quite promising. Thus the Iowa sisterhood was begun. They pledged commitment and support to one another through a lifetime of ministry and social service. They had not chosen an easy road.

Through this period, Harvard Divinity School refused admission to women, securing any college education was difficult. Mary and Eleanor attended one year together at Iowa State University, but their families needed them at home. So they formed their own literary society with other young women and read widely on their own. They got support form the Unitarian minister from Keokuk, Iowa and with his encouragement they organized a church service in 1879. The women were popular, well-organized and well-read. After one year they had 150 people attending services.

At this time, the American Unitarian Association was offering some assistance to begin congregations on the frontier, few men were interested in the low paying, difficult conditions of the frontier churches, so Mary took the job in Humbolt, Iowa, where she worked 18 hour days and was paid $60 a month. Eleanor went with her and took a job as high school principal. They lugged water and firewood for the church and for their rooms above. They called it Unity Church and there Mary Safford was ordained to the ministry. She became known for her novelty, pulpit power and charm, soon there were 300 on a Sunday morning. Mary and Eleanor shared the work of pastoral calling and managing the church.

This kind of success was replicated by other women ministers on the frontier. The Iowa Sisterhood lived and served through helping and caring relationships. They modeled solidarity, where all is shared for the benefit of all. The skills and participation of all was welcomed. Those who were not ordained, served as parish assistant or teachers. There were women behind the scenes and women behind the pulpit.

Mary Safford saw ministry as common work, she used her intellectual skills in the service of community building, she encouraged lay led services, she considered every part of a service vital, not just the sermon.

Eleanor Gordon rewrote hymns to make the words less Christian focused, and when they designed new church buildings, they made them open and spacious, without the high pulpit of the eastern parishes…and they trained younger women to follow in their footsteps in the ministry.

The women did ministry in common ways, they did not seek the status and divine authority that male ministers so often relied on.

Mary Safford wrote about her calling; “the human soul would evolve, not in solitude, but in society as people made their common tasks divine by doing them in the spirit of love and helpfulness.”

It seemed then, as now, that women in the ministry emphasized community, connected on a heart level, and shared the ministry with all who wanted to help.

Today, more than half of seminary students are women. And women hold many of the visible positions of lay leadership in our UU congregations.

Some say as women become more prominent in the pulpit and the board room, some say men are losing power and status. Some say that the ministry, traditionally a male profession is being feminized and therefore devalued. Some say that men are less likely to stay involved if church takes on feminine characteristics.

The question of men’s place in churches is not a new one. It has always been a concern. When I googled “feminization of the ministry” I found articles by evangelical Christian male writers. They were concerned that feminists were taking over churches as a way to overthrow the traditional family structure of husband as head of the family. They were concerned that in defining God as Love and stressing sensitivity and intimacy that men would not feel comfortable in the pews.

Here at UUCR, women do seem at times to be the more visible leaders, but the men are very much present and active. They are teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, serving on the CPC and the building committee, they are ushering, organizing lay services, making the coffee, leading Socrates Café, they are involved in finances and they are here on Sunday mornings.

I asked Bill to speak to what church means to him. To tell us why coming to services on Sunday is important in his life.

Over and over Unitarian Universalist today concur that one of the most important aspects of church life is being part of a community. We all come seeking a place to belong, a place to build. The Iowa Sisterhood was effective because they worked as teams, because they focused on church as community. I love the image of Sisterhood.

Our churches no longer need to be “mothered” we have achieved a more complete sense of the holy as containing both male and female. We have changed the words of enough hymns, we have experienced a shifting of roles, and an acceptance for everyone to find their place regardless of gender.

But it is important to pay attention. To make sure that a balance is maintained and that leadership and service are open to all.

I don’t think of church as family, but I do find the idea of brotherhood and sisterhood meaningful.

It is essential that ministry and leadership by women and men be valued and respected. It is essential that ministry and leadership by people of all ages be valued and respected.

My message this morning is an encouragement to right relationship. A healthy congregation is open and affirming to all people. As Bill said, congregational life is a great place to learn leadership , to learn new skills , to find tools and resources to take back to the rest of our lives.

It’s not so much who leads, who does what, but how we work together, how we build a healthy congregation, how we create the Beloved Community here at UUCR.

It is how we live and embody our faith that matters. How we are in relationship. It is simple really.

Writer George Eliot wrote; “What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other.”

Let us become as brothers and sisters. Let us learn to support one another. Let us lean on one another.

So May It Be/Amen

Men in the Pews by Bill Hurlbut

It falls to me this morning to present the “view from the pews”…to make the case that we also serve who sit and listen.

We men are builders. Building things is fundamental to the way we interact with our world. We all use different tools and materials, but the goal is the same: to shape the world in ways that will leave it improved by at least some small measure. We leave our mark by what we build. But how do we decide what shape we want the world to have? What mark we want to leave?

In our home workshops necessity usually determines what we build, but where does the design come from? When we start a home building project we generally follow a predictable order of events. We sketch out the idea, calculate the materials list, round up the tools, set up a work area. Then the fun really starts: we go to the place where all middle-class suburban builder’s dreams come true…Home Depot. We browse the aisles for just the right lumber, hardware, and fixtures…probably pick up a few things we forgot we needed. Along the way it is not unusual to run across something new or special that suggests interesting or useful changes in the original design.

When we’re done…well, we’re never really done….we lug it all back to the workshop and begin bringing our idea to life. This creative process may not be gender-specific but it is commonly male—it may in fact be related to our well-known resistance to the use of maps. At any rate, the final shape of our construction is in part by design and in part improvised from creative interaction with our materials.

Sometimes we have to make several trips to Home Depot to get everything to work the way it should. That’s right, there are no real “mistakes” in home building projects, just new opportunities. The discovery of an unanticipated problem is just part of the creative process. However long it takes, and however many trips to Home Depot are required, we keep at it until we’re satisfied that we’ve built the world’s best…whatever it is.

It's not that much different in my own workday world, and perhaps not all that different from yours. There too the pleasure I get from work comes from the satisfaction I get from putting things together in just the right way, in making steady improvements in the way things work, the way they are arranged. I get pleasure from building. Here too, what I build is part design and part creative interaction with my tools and materials.

Perhaps I should explain that I am an editor and writer for the World Bank. As an editor my tools are all in my computer and mostly my materials are words, but I also count people among my materials. Editors interact with ideas and the people who generate them, the words are our vehicle for communication between ourselves and with others. I help researchers, subject matter experts, and writers to build towers of words whose purpose is to improve the world by improving the work of the World Bank in ways that will help it inch just a bit closer to its vision of “A world free of poverty.”

When talking about my work it is not unusual for me to use metaphors from the home workshop. I draw up plans, sketch out ideas, round up my tools. When I work on a report I sometimes use sandpaper, sometimes a file, and on occasion a sledgehammer or chainsaw is the only tool that will do. But then there are the people to think about too. You have to be very careful when you take responsibility for altering someone else’s building project. You cannot take a sledgehammer to someone else’s work without acknowledging their inherent worth and dignity at the very least. Negotiating changes to people’s ideas also requires a democratic stance, as well as some compassion.

So, though much of my work is guided by unalterable rules of language, grammar, and logic, and the evidence at hand, it also must be guided by sometimes tricky matters of conscience and human relations. This requires a high level of trust, and it requires leadership skills. It is the responsibility of leaders to build.

Jane Addams, the founder of American social work, women’s rights advocate and a Unitarian said: “Action … is the sole medium of expression for ethics.” So when we act as leaders, when we build, we project our moral selves, our principles, to help shape the world we want. When the ethics expressed by a leader’s actions are at odds with right relationships in the world it creates problems. It is in our interactions with one another that we can all too easily lose our way, put the desired goal before the higher concerns of ethics.

For those of us who practice leadership in small ways, forgetting or ignoring our ethics, may upset a few people, but for those who are at the pinnacles of leadership it can be disastrous for many. Among the examples are public figures, most recently Don Imus, and of course plenty of political figures throughout the world: Ahmedinezahd in Iran, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Bashir in Sudan, and others. Here at home we have Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and Paul Wolfowitz.

The recent case of Mr. Wolfowitz is particularly well known to me as I am a leader in the staff group that first called for his resignation from the World Bank. He, like so many others in our political system today seems to have forgotten that with leadership comes a duty to set an ethical example. It is not enough to declare that we build a world free of corruption, we must live it first.

What we build—our action—must necessarily express our ethics. Building democracy in the Middle East will not be accomplished by destroying people, it is from them that democratic institutions must flow. Building justice will not be accomplished through ideological purity in our courthouses. Building a world free from poverty will not be done through the enrichment of the few. It is impossible to lead a country, a legal system, an international institution from an unethical position. If you attempt to do so you will eventually find yourself standing alone with a pointless or unachievable goal.

Where do we get the materials and tools that we need to be sure that we do not leave our ethics behind when we act? Unlike a home building project that can be put together in a single weekend, our lives are a continuous building project for which we are in constant need of new materials, of supplies that will help us maintain the ethical house in which our lives reside.

For that I rely on this place, the Home Depot for matters of conscience, this great Unitarian and Universalist store of ethics and ideals. I also rely on you, its customer service representatives. When I am need tools and materials for my relations with my family, my friends, my colleagues at work, I only have to come here and browse the aisles to find everything that I need. On any given day that I am here I may find a child brightening the aisle of “worth and dignity,” a teen loitering in “justice, equity and compassion,” a senior member helping out in the aisle of “right of conscience and democracy,” or you in “interdependent web.”

When I am here I am open to whoever and whatever will be present to me. I come prepared to take back to my workshop a reel of compassion, a box of justice, or even a single shiny nail of truth that will help make me a little bit better person, a little bit better man, a little bit better leader. Sometimes what I find is familiar and expected, sometimes an unusual surprise, but it always stirs my creativity and adds just the thing I need to help shape the world into a place I want to live in, a suitable heirloom for my children.