Women Today; Women in Religion

and when you lean from communications center at the university of texas at austin the longhorn radio network presents women today baking cookies and an end to keep him off the flower straight not that those things i think they are extremely important things but not the only things that when ed campion women are experiencing increasing consciousness and a society more aware that there are majority many women questioned longstanding assumptions roles and many others questioned the questioners this series is produced in association with the editors of the texan woman magazine hodges guests this week are jealous ewing associate minister at the university methodist church in austin and susan

spruce a second year law student and member of the commission on the status and role of women in the united methodist church at this point they're just asking us citizen end janice howe they happen to get involved as deeply involved in the churches they are and janice tell me about the thinking of becoming a minister tossing strange to me for a woman to have thought of it well i do think that for a very long time i grew up in a church i'd been going to church i suppose since i was a child and it took a long time before i decided to do anything i might through i graduated from the university of texas with a double major in english and sociology and i'm sadie i didn't want a teacher matt first became aware of what i want to do that what i didn't want to do i really it had a lot of questions that i wanted the ancient i just wasn't clear that where i stood and

relationships must say out into other people and and two my mouth it so i'm sad i went to go see anything and that was a radical decision in a way and my parents were almost an antibiotic that's where a lot of people could say passion the teacher and then so i guess i'm curious in hearing and i got there and i saw i didn't have a particular course of study in mind i thought some about working in the church but i didn't i never really knew the agent myself as a pastor and i was pretty clear i mean one of the director of education put out on that second class and it was only it would only get me into more what i was just trying to push against and that is to end up in a very narrow path to feel that i mean they have them that i was destined for him in some way because i'm a woman or just because of the inmate i didn't have a whole lot of consciousness about women at that point the seminary people would say you know what courses that your union and a

lot of the women they were going for him are you which is the message of religious education and other option wasn't going to get to two semesters of theology i was pretty clear which one was the first glance the greenwich mine was sank us to grieve so i just said i was going for him tea and will sasso that they're that coursed steady and let it i'm really that was that turned out to be one of the most exciting years and that existing the most natural thing in the world the end for me that team and continued to work professionally in the church and then so i went on to finish my aunt ph degree and then and here i am supposed to ma'am i know there's a lot in between personal ethics well we'll talk some more about the process of getting there and what it means to be a pastor of a church end of the season you're not a full time person in the church but you're working on explain to me what it is and then not then how you happened to get there okay i'm presently a member of the commission on the status of role of women that was established at the

nineteen seventy two general conference of the united methodist church that bodies that are national governing body of united methodist church during that particular meeting house member of the women's caucus there and it was our go to get established a commission that would try to be an advocate on behalf of women in the church a study had been done under previous squadron in analyzing oh what roles of women you played in the past in the church and we wanted to have a commission that could push for increased the dispersion of women i got involved in that caucus and in pushing for the commission out of their longtime involvement with the church since i was a child i went to school at southwestern university and georgetown and after year he dropped out and took a job with united methodist council on youth ministry which had said that to employment positions in washington dc on a subsistence our bases

and i qualified one of those positions and were therefore year for the youth council anniversary of that involvement full time that i became interested in the potential for increasing winds to suppression church this is fascinating because the law that you probably with a long lifetime involvement in the church and watched how women did work and what was allowed them and what wasn't where did you really are evidently a chance to antarctica verlee about that aspect of it the season they must have occurred to you that women were not being fully utilized by the church was that we noticed that in my position in washington about while we were working there and stuff so she's really huge council we were housed in the building other social concerns board of the church which was composed of twelve staff person's approximately all of your mail with and all of the women had jobs as secretaries in that building

we as staff members for the youth council there were continually refer to as the girls in the same category and it got asked to do similar types of things we didn't feel that we were secretaries and out were offended by these practices especially since our predecessors in the job had been man and were not treated in the same way let's go and just miniatures and ed talk about what happened to you in in the non academic way of theological seminary were you treated as any as an anomaly or were there enough women there so that you felt the support around you there were not enough you need to make any kind of real significant difference at the beginning but there were enough women mayor the former caucus do to stop acting as individuals in start acting as a group

and once we got our heads together their way and begin to work there are some pretty significant changes that were affected just tear my house or three years and just turned my three years later we had them the first woman professor at to be on the staff of perkins theological seminary which we saw just as the fantastic thing in a major breakthrough now last year the president of the student body was a woman as we're i guess three out of five or six of the top ten offices in there in student government and also that the governing body pierced the senate which is composed of faculty and students and that women were on that for the first time and gender non three years they are announced out of privilege to be one of us and that was that just isn't really saying everything because as we were visiting before we started she has said that she had been chosen to tell me that now alice had selected as an aide to win the preaching award and i also was silly featured sea bass thinks tina with the year that

i graduated and that's kind of an interesting thing going to get a very interesting diseases is definitely kind of the season and be in the euro area that you're working and what kinds of decisions do you really enter into ru ru ru just simply out lobbying for certain kinds of things that happened in the church and the commission which i'm working with several areas specific concern one of them is that women who are employed directly by the church which would include women ministers and staff people another is to take a look at our theology out from a perspective of women what new kinds of interpretations might be needed to encompass the women's experience another is to look at the language that our church uses in its discipline and emits x and to try to eliminate the sexes and of course they are

and as a matter of fact some of that's already being done in terms of the last and general conference as a result of that conditions were disciplined now reads both masculine and feminine all the way through he reads the minister kishi instead of the ministry he reaches the way formerly mean is anybody re written the bible and how clarke and on the interpretations when you say working and new interpretations what you mean i mean really try more seriously to understand the kind of cultural context in which the bible was written we've not often than that we just kind of take the words that are written down here without looking seriously at the culture which came and that culture believe a lot of things that we don't understand is necessarily true anymore it believed in a three story universe and we have about the bed in in the earth and then hell underneath that was kind of the cosmology of the day it so ivory was an accepted kind of phenomenon in the first and second centuries and later the man and also considerably earlier than

that and women as the pendant creatures and dependent on me and then everything else women who stayed at home those were all accepted parts of the cultural context of the day so to look at the bible and you know and when it has passages and there are plenty of bad knee and women real estate in their place a device to be seen i think in the context of cultural context in which it was written and when one does that and then you look again at those passages where women are called to be equal human beings and are called to take their place alongside all of the creation and alongside me and they become even more radical than they might otherwise be is a passage and jeremiah wright talks again in the new creation a woman will protect him a nap you know that's really very radical can a passage and it's parallel to the text we talk about la him an ally and windy on together it's that

kind of a change that's going to be possible and ian intimate creation and i think those to begin to point out those kinds of references and to look seriously at what women in the bottle have done other than marion ruth and a few others but to look seriously at some of the others i think well it makes it possible for us to look back at history then becomes much more rich than there for the pilot thought let's set the way it straight uses and this i think is an much room in the church to do with these kinds of questions a lot of education and open discussion needs to occur around the issues of theology i also think that some of the early on terms that were low for many within the church but such as saying that was their emphasized and talked about in our sunday school classes it's to be like that the experience of women so one sided

example to me that one of the sayings that is often talked about as the sin of pride and of too much emphasis on self but in women's experience sometimes the simplest not enough pride and not enough thought and consideration of one's own dignity or one's own interest in what she wants to do with her life but rather she's too involved in self sacrifice our man welcoming women's questioning are thinking along these lines ellie us me and they always say that they're for women's liberation that an orphan liberation in the church when he gets here to get down to the nitty gritty at cannes a much more difficult question i think some men aren't sunday night israeli built a fascinating discussion so you find a lively discussion about things come up in the course of an evening own no doubt nadine possibility and we're going to take time a more prominent part of decision making

an end and really for to supply him in the life of the church makes possible much more freedom for me and to end them it's it's hard look and i think maybe for me sad to see what's going to be on the other side that i think that new freedoms for me in a band to come and fix what kinds of freedoms that are generous offer we say that the women's liberation is going to give them freedom what kind of freedom do you see that it might give them well one of one of the interesting kind of phenomenon that are coming out of this as married clergy when has been a score card human life as clergy woman we're at jet now that's a huge thing going for the methodist church and the way i am given that avalon annette can carry law it is to see what's going to happen once that doubt is that for example we like to really work out what it means to have a shared past and instead of having you know the whole low down to a man

to be the decision maker and the woman to furnish tea and coffee for various groups that come into their home to oregon women's groups or whenever to really look at what it might mean to have to share those responsibilities and i think that does offer new possibilities for the main and to do something since he's not done before and so often past that these women to do things that jealous when you save on that category are you and your husband associate pastor is no same shirt you know no we're both we're both clergy that we're not pass to the same church he's pastor of the first methodist church in leander and then i'm associate pastor university methods so far no way it's been found for s to do that in this conference or in place it suddenly looked outside this conference the austin i went immediately and i think you know i think they'll be more possible when you speak of this is kind of a shift that season when you're thinking about the status of women in the church are you thinking of all women and you have a strong concern for minority women

i do personally and i hope that an increasing concerns about the part of other women in the church in this area the commission that i'm involved with hazards one of its goals to be sensitive to involve more ethnic women in the church one of the things that we have found happens and then the new car increasing awareness of the poor the church to involve more minorities and more women and that after that the what comes about is that more minority men get positions of responsibility and more white women but the ethnic women are left out and we hopped through the commission and to the women's caucus which is a less formal group within the church to try to raise more of the concerns on the part of ethnic women ethnic women who won it seriously which is right in the life of the church and they're just a lot of factors that militate against they're not the least of which is just scholarship and financial resources to make it to seminary that's a

major kind of experience and then if they're a scholarship resources available they'll often go mien and it's not that that happens at the seminary level but it happens when that damn mind when women are encouraged not to do those things there's only so much money available and obviously mia going to be more serious about the ministry and women i mean that's kind of been given sort of mindset for lots of people and that's true for white women for white women to be probably one of the most often asked questions of women clergy or are women seminary students particularly and said are you really serious about them pastor dean minister for you if you are you really serious do they are not due out artillery is one knock out if one says one is wants to do it for four one's own personal fulfillment demi have a serious about your being serious and they truly want you to carry through if you are going to start because some professional schools truly only want you to get the academic learning and not use it in a professional way ford did

in the past he'll employ all of that that's a hard question i think probably been the strains of both both things going on the air that it was alright mean people just have to say that although we might get and the degree that we were really asking for jobs right right right write what you know why do we keep the participants better because we had you know all this training and my goodness what a great thing in me to people for one to train people one salary and mean don't tell me that the georgians about finances too going outside the methodist church a little witches which you probably cannot have figures on but as soon as you listen and read susan do you find that there are more more women being involved in the church and an active decision making way yes i think definitely saw the other denominations have got women working for these kinds of changes in the last ten years a number of

changes have been made in church policy regarding to allowing women to be ministers are to him because for many years they were not allowed to also there'd been other studies in the denominations with changes being recommended and i think this is the two and i think i think almost all major mainline protestant denomination started to use dave b category awkward dating women now except episcopalians because fans voted very recently to enter now ordination to women who were seeking but the main thing is for example that's been on the books since nineteen thirteen standing there and in fact there've been very few women who had been in the car just since nineteen and it's interesting to me as a child i remember the protestant presbyterian church that often when the missionaries came back there were women missionaries from la la la

is this is still so now i i know that mission i mean they're women anne meehan missionaries now but traditionally that's been the place that the women at hand their teens to exile and i've done it beautifully the board of nations the women's division within what was formerly called the board of nations within the united methodist church is one of the most active the strongest as the most money groups within the united methodist church and just historically when women women wanted to be a part of the mission societies that meehan and they were denied that way back in i think in the nineteen twenties and so the women formed their own home missionary society and in another group was the foreign missionary society and just as a nanny and better many hours as i was talking with a woman the other day and she was she said her age thing and she was telling me what it was like she was a little girl eight years old and how she wanted

reed covered and her murder scene now married that could cost eight dollars and there's a tweet ok will do you as well and we'll have four dollars and instead of the data seem to the missionaries in japan and so they seem to china knows the rankin sisters and i gather that that four dollars the difference between a tweet out in america and encino done and that's now that the kind of growth that's just come forward from the women it's been separate that it's been a year and it's been very strong it's fascinating how the use of terms here too and that the two of you have used when you talk about women's caucus anything the women's caucus in political circles and simon your time about women's caucus and and so on in the church but the methodist church is a better organized a little bit a good deal like a political body as he did yesterday as other three major groups nationally related to women and there are interrelated and cooperate united

methodist women that janice was talking about has been in existence for ford well it was it was really in it to form if his body's been substance has existed for a number of years the caucuses are more informal group that include sending out of memphis women also in the commission has membership from both there's just thought well we'd bit of time left and you both invasion women truly taking their place more and more within within the church oh i think so and i think i think the momentum is here i think they're women who really want a chance and to have a vacation that i've gone onto them to to give the ntsb her own specialty of spam in those gifts that they hold in common with a lot of people and contribute goes to church i think women are our time of baking cookies and m and keaton the author flower straight not that those are bad things i think they are extremely important things but not the only things that women of taylor bean and then i think more and more women will be will

be working in the church and an important and decisionmaking ways to do it this survey i didn't have to be working in the caucus faith and hope is well it's it's combination of the two before that you know in order to keep on working strenuously well thank you both for her for being with us and we hope that you're just next week for women today in he was tied with another conversation about women today he was guests were john askew a associate minister at the university methodist church in austin and susan spruce a second year law student and member of the commission on the status of role of women in the united methodist church join us again next week for another program about the increasing consciousness of women in today's society this series is produced

and distributed by communication center the university of texas at austin in association with the editors of the texan woman comments and suggestions about the program and maybe sent to po box twelve sixty seven austin seven eight seven six box twelve sixty seven austin seven eight seven six seven a production for women today is coordinated by frida were executive producer stewart wilbur this is the longhorn radio network