Women's role increasing in Churches

Washington: When it comes to Christianity, a new research has found that the future of the Church lies in the hands of women, whether or not they are ordained.

The study, carried out by researchers at the University of Manchester, found that without women, pulpits as well as the pews would start becoming deserted in the future.

A senior researcher at the university’s School of Social Sciences, Dr David Voas said that the research has found that the role of women has been steadily increasing in the Church. And nearly half of the people ordained in the past few years have been the fairer sex.

“Nearly half of all priests ordained in recent years have been women. Close to a quarter of male parish priests are 60 or older, and their average age is 54. Without women, the pulpits would become as de-populated as the pews in the years to come,” Dr Voas said.

The research is based on analysis of new statistics on women ministers from two sources: the Church of England itself, and the English Church Census 2005, conducted by the independent charity Christian Research, and substantially funded by the ESRC.

However, Dr Vaos also revealed that contrary to its stand and call for equality among the genders, the Church; Protestant and Catholic, was not an “equal opportunity employer”, and that it still treated women as “second class clergy”.

“The Church is far from being an equal opportunity employer. The glass ceiling is shatterproof: women are not yet allowed to become bishops, and they are far more likely to be ‘second class’ clergy,” he said.

“Most of the men who became priests in 2005 went into paid, ‘stipendiary’ ministry, while most of the women are in voluntary posts – ‘non-stipendiary or ‘ordained local ministers’,” said Dr Voas pointed out.

Churches are traditional institutions, and tradition gives women a raw deal, according to Dr Voas.

“Old-fashioned Anglo-Catholics don’t want women to be priests, and so the plum jobs mostly go to men. At the other end of the theological spectrum, evangelicals tend to be patriarchal, so the growing ethnic minority and Pentecostal churches typically have male leaders. Women are left with the dregs. Their congregations are often small, rural, old or liberal: the kind of churches that need nursing care,” he revealed.