Why big churches aren’t led by women

Apr 8, 2017 by

by Madeleine Davies, Church Times:

CARE for their families is a key reason hardly any women are incumbents of the Church’s largest churches, a new research paper from Ministry Division has concluded.

The study states that women have faced “enormous institutional barriers to ministry specifically because of their gender, manifest in a number of ways”. One of the barriers it names is the “transparent discrimination within the Five Guiding Principles” that were formulated to protect traditionalists and conservative Evangelicals. Among the stories uncovered is that of a curate who was denied maternity pay when she had her second child, and asked to resign by her bishop when eight months pregnant.

But the care of their families is also named as the difference between female and male priests.

At the end of 2015, women made up only four of the 117 incumbents leading churches with a usual Sunday attendance of 350 or more.

The research, agreed by the College of Bishops in September 2014, was undertaken to identify factors inhibiting women from taking up such posts. A report, Vocational pathways: Clergy leading large churches, was published on Thursday. Its author is Dr Liz Graveling, research officer at the Ministry Division.

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