Research on Lay Church Members Attitudes toward Women Clergy: An Assessment

Abstract

This essay presents a review of empirical research into the receptivity lay church members display toward women clergy. The evidence to date indicates that receptivity to women in ministry has characteristics similar to attitudes toward other objects. Receptivity can be differentiated into at least three dimensions-perceptions, affect, and motivations to act. These dimensions vary widely among lay church members, although the overall tendency is to be more accepting than rejecting of clergywomen. These variations are associated with other member attributes, e.g., level of sexism in general, traditional religious involvement, type of church and community, and cultural localism. After contact with women ministers, especially contact in-role, the level of receptivity tends to increase, as does the cognitive complexity of the attitude structure. While these patterns appear to recur in various studies, there is yet much we do not know about certain denominational groups and from perspectives other than sociology. Women clergy have been on the religious scene for many decades (Carroll, et al: 1983, ch 2). The most cursory review of historical records shows them serving churches in pastoral roles at least back into the nineteenth century, especially in some areas of the Northeastern United States. Some of their number even attained national stature as evangelists as in the case of Amy McPherson. In this sense clergywomen are not really anything new. Nevertheless, in another sense they are quite new indeed, and that is in terms of their numbers, their broad distribution denominationally, and their generating some newsworthy controversy. They are new in a way that has made people sit up and take notice. I have been asked to review the social-science studies of the ways in which lay church members have responded to the proliferation of women in ministry. Over the last twenty years, there has been an increasing amount of such research, and from it one may glean a picture of the ways in which people in the pews have reacted to the women-in-ministry movement. What are their attitudes to these developments? The organization of my review is fairly simple. It begins with a brief statement of what is involved in "lay attitudes. " The object of the attitudes in question is limited to the ordained ministry, thus eliminating many other forms of work. The bulk of the paper is then divided into two main segments. The first one deals with patterns found among church members who have not experienced female pastoral leadership. The second part looks at ways in which attitudes change after having such encounters. I shall restrict my remarks mainly to observations made in the United States, although I shall also make a few references to patterns in the United Kingdom. I shall not deal with work done in other Western European countries, although some material is in fact available. The level of consensus on most issues is pretty high.