Clergywomen

10,470 are now ordained

There have been plenty of squabbles about the recent rush of women to become members of the clergy but few statistics. Last week, however, the National Council of Churches reported that an estimated 10,470 women now have full ministerial credentials. They make up 4% of the clergy in the 76 U.S. church bodies (out of 163 surveyed) that ordain both sexes.

That is an increase of 178% since a previous study in 1951, compared with a 62% increase for male clergy. The women are located pretty much where they have always been. Nearly two-thirds work in Pentecostal groups or paramilitary denominations, like the Salvation Army, which have given women full standing for decades. So have two denominations in other categories with the highest number of women clergy, the United Church of Christ (400) and Christian Church-Disciples of Christ (388).

Clergywomen tend to be employed as chaplains, in other special ministries or as parish assistants, rather than as chief pastors of local congregations. One exception is the United Methodist Church; there bishops, instead of local church boards, decide who gets hired where.

A new study on the "Clergy Job Market" by the Hartford Seminary Foundation finds that women clergy are increasing most in the church groups least likely to need many new ordinands of either sex. The worst example is the Episcopal Church, where the rise of women clergy is provoking the greatest trouble. Women now make up 18.4% of students earning Episcopal divinity degrees. Yet that church is already so oversupplied, the Hartford study figures, that if current trends continue, there will be one priest for every lay member by the year 2004.

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