More than Theology?
More than Theology? How Beliefs About Women’s Ordination are Socially Rooted
Published originally on ViaMedia.News
Part I: Why bother with the social sciences?
The Christian tradition has an extensive history of seeking wisdom wherever it may be found. Before science as we now know it emerged, natural philosophy was the attempt to understand the natural world. This was a task regularly taken up by Church leaders and theologians, underpinned by the conviction that the world was God’s and could tell us about Him. In fact, this is something Paul indicates in Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” (NIV). True enough, Paul writes immediately after that sin has darkened the minds of humans so that they reject God’s revelation in creation. However, for the Christian this is surely not true. They recognise that the world is created by God. Whilst that does not mean that they are sinless, they cannot be entirely blind to God’s revelation in creation if they believe, along with the Psalmist, that it reflects His glory (Psalm 19:1).
As historians will tell you, confidence that we can discover God in His world has, since the Reformation, led to the development of modern scientific inquiry. And this theological enterprise was the catalyst for many of our now taken-for-granted scientific discoveries. Believing that the world was created and explorable led to discoveries of order and rules within it. We call these regularities. This seems pre-empted in Genesis 1; God creates an orderly world, separating day and night as well as sky and sea. Commanding Adam to name the different animals in creation invites humanity to recognise and work with this order. Adam could categorise the different species because God created them with patterns that enabled Adam to distinguish between, say, a cow and a sheep.
The biblical vision of creation sees the entire created world as very good (Genesis 1:31). Hence all of creation, not merely human souls, is redeemed by God (Romans 8:22). In other words, Christians are not at liberty to fall into the trap of dualism, separating the created, ordered world from the spiritual reality of God. Such dualism is more Platonic or Aristotelian than Judaeo-Christian.
But what does any of this have to do with what Christians believe about women’s role in the Church? Well, human beings are a part of that creation, created with regularities. As with the rest of the created world, how humans think and behave – and why – is something that can be studied. So we can inquire where our beliefs about women’s ordination – a hotly contested and divisive topic – come from. How are they affected by our wider environment?
Recognising regularities and patterns does not mean reducing human beings to mere processes. Being made in the image of God includes a level of consciousness and free will which means that our thoughts and actions are not predetermined by the world around us. Rather, we are influenced by it. Nor should the establishment of regularities be used disingenuously, as a vehicle of oppression. This has happened historically when there has been a naivety about the social, cultural and political forces that influence scientific inquiry, leading to its distortion and misuse. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are, regrettably, clear windows into the implications of such distortion of the intellect. The Holocaust, slavery, and the subjugation of women as legal property are just three painful examples, believed at the time to be rooted in a natural order. Sometimes the Church has been caught up in these kinds of evils; there are hard lessons to be learnt if such sins are to be resisted in the future.
Academia is not perfect, because humans are not. There must be room left for evidence-based doubt and the humility to re-think previous conclusions when new data requires it. This is a prerequisite of any advancement in knowledge. Equally, healthy scepticism mustn’t give way to corrosive cynicism. The erosion of trust with society’s institutions (albeit sometimes understandably) can fuel conspiracy theories where the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Rationality demands that we follow the evidence, however inconvenient or contrary to our presumptions.
Social science in academia is a very broad area that consists of many evidence-based disciplines. There has been a heightened awareness of some of its branches with the public conversation often turning to disagreements over ‘identity politics’. Owing to the soundbite culture of much of our media, social scientific theories and concepts are often inadequately articulated and badly understood outside academia. There are many attacks on straw men as a result.
My own research on clergy attitudes to women spans sociology, social psychology and historical analysis. In what follows, I will unpack the theories and concepts I drew on from these disciplines and explain the light they shed on clergymen’s attitudes towards women’s ordination in the Church of England. Much of my argument rests on demonstrating how the attitudes of clergymen reflect regularities (or patterns) in human behaviour that we know a lot about because they have been evidenced and re-evidenced time and again. My participants’ characteristics, behaviours and thinking reflect several regularities that have been identified across decades and continents. Because these clergymen mirror with great consistency what we already know about human beings, studying these affinities allows me to speak meaningfully about the social causes of clergy gender attitudes.
Part II: What are clergymen’s attitudes towards women?
My recent book, Gender Inequality in the Ordained Ministry of the Church of England, explores the social origins of attitudes towards women’s ordination held by theologically conservative male clergy. By ‘attitudes’ I mean beliefs, emotions and behaviours towards something, in this case women priests and bishops. By ‘theologically conservative’ I mean clergymen in the evangelical and traditional Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church. My analysis also involved looking at participants’ broader gender attitudes to contextualise their theology on women’s ordination in light of their attitudes towards women more generally. I spoke with 13 Anglo-Catholics, 14 charismatic evangelicals and 14 conservative evangelicals. Participants were initially sought via their involvement with tradition-specific networks, including Forward in Faith (traditional Anglo-Catholic), New Wine (charismatic evangelical) and Reform (conservative evangelical), but I also interviewed those recommended to me by participants as being in their tradition-specific network of clergy.
All interviews took place with clergy serving in one specific diocese, chosen as a microcosm of the Church of England, including urban, suburban and rural areas, and large numbers of parishes reflecting each of the Church’s traditions (including those not explored in the book). I also kept interviewing clergy until I was getting the same answers from interview to interview within each tradition (otherwise known as data saturation). This is unsurprising given that clergy within each tradition tended to have similar educational backgrounds, went to the same theological colleges, and move in the same social and professional networks. One would anticipate a significant degree of similarity within a given network on a subject that has received much discussion and rehearsal of theology.
The microcosmic nature of the diocese and the data saturation are additional factors that allow me to make representative claims about clergymen from these traditions beyond the diocese in question. However, there are caveats, such as cases where the sharper, more reactionary elements of participants’ gender attitudes are curtailed, for example in dioceses where conservative traditions have a stronger presence. In other words, my findings are likely to be generally true across the Church of England but not necessarily in every minute way.
Of course, attitudes towards women’s ordination differed by tradition and, to a more limited extent, within each tradition. Overall, traditional Anglo-Catholics resisted the move because: the efficacy of women’s sacramental ministry was in question; the Roman Catholic Church is yet to ordain women; and the apostolic tradition has (supposedly) always been male. These clergymen are typically comfortable with women deacons but reject the validity of women priests and bishops. Conservative evangelicals have no issue with ordaining women per se but do not believe they should lead or teach men in church contexts, on the basis of passages like 1 Timothy 2: 11-15. Charismatic evangelicals, by way of contrast, tend not to oppose women’s ordination to any part of the Church’s ordained ministry, seeing evidence of women leading God’s people in the Bible as well as contextual factors explaining away any apparent gender conservatism in the New Testament.
Those amongst the traditional Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelicals who rejected the validity of women’s ordination as priests and their consecration as bishops regularly evidenced prejudicial attitudes. Here, I am using a well-tested psychological definition of prejudice rather than assuming that a conservative theology must, by definition, always be sexist.
This definition of prejudice begins with Gordon Allport’s work in The Nature of Prejudice from the 1950s (with roots going back to the 1930s). Over the decades it has been tested and refined with a collection of newer research celebrating its success. In essence, prejudice (or sexism when it is gender-related) has three components: rejection of and hostility towards others from ‘outgroups’; faulty generalisations (or caricatures) about these outgroups; and rejection of evidence that would undermine these faulty generalisations.
Since the 1990s a body of research has shown that this is only half the picture when it comes to women. The type of prejudice identified by Allport and verified by many others is a form of hostile sexism, but there is another type called ‘benevolent sexism’ (I prefer ‘indirect sexism’). Such sexism can appear positive on the surface but actually undermines conceptions of women’s competence (e.g., the belief that all women need a man’s protection as the allegedly weaker sex). Hostile sexism is present amongst traditional Anglo-Catholics and both forms of sexism amongst conservative evangelicals. Charismatic evangelicals often evidenced some elements of hostile sexism, but their attitudes fall short of meeting the full psychological definition.
In essence, my participants’ gender attitudes result from what I term intersecting social strata. This is the simple idea that a series of social factors converge to shape gender attitudes. What do these intersecting social strata look like for theologically conservative clergymen?
The term self-esteem gets used a lot in pop psychology, and we tend to assume we know what it is but can struggle to define it. Self-esteem is a sociometer; it helps us to understand the extent to which we feel valued. We all pursue self-esteem in various ways, sometimes healthily, sometimes not. Research shows that, when our self-esteem becomes threatened – when the sources of our positive evaluations are in question – we can react negatively towards the group perceived to be threatening our self-esteem.
The sources of our self-esteem are rooted in the social groups we most identify with. For my participants this was other male clergy in their particular Anglican tradition. Groups united by a shared identity also tend to seek reasons for bolstering the status of that group in the pursuit of self-esteem. This is especially true with groups of higher social status. This regularly leads to forms of discrimination towards and undue generalisations about those who do not share this identity. As I’ve already pointed out, faulty generalisations form prejudice.
Those I interviewed were typically: from middle-class families; well-educated at school level (e.g., possessing a private education); attended Russell Group universities, particularly Oxbridge (including prior to ordination training); white; and, of course, male. Whilst a small minority did not fit this description in its entirety, the groups as units clearly do. The dominant characteristics impact the group culture as one would expect. Crucially, group norms are adopted by those within it. This means that the values, expectations etc of that group are ‘owned’ by its individual members. In fact, the eminent historian Diarmaid MacCulloch has argued that male clergy reaction against increasing gender equality stems from the reduced hegemony that they have traditionally enjoyed or would expect to enjoy by virtue of belonging to a group endowed with the power of leadership.
I argue that the source of threatened self-esteem for conservative evangelicals and traditional Anglo-Catholics is the advent of women priests and bishops. Significant amounts of data show the roots of sexism – chiefly stereotyping – lie in self-esteem threats to one’s social group and, in these groups, there is the desire to maintain high levels of self-esteem via group belonging, with women – especially clergywomen – as the object of prejudice in this case. Most of those interviewed had also opted into networks established to oppose the ordination of women as priests, making it the cornerstone of their social group.
This alone goes a long way in explaining the origins of participants’ sexism, but other factors bolster it. One is the regularity and quality of contact with clergywomen. Limited contact with outgroups serves to reinforce prejudice because the stereotypes about them remain largely unchallenged. Research shows that, for contact to reduce prejudice, it must be willing and ongoing, with in and outgroups having equal status, and being supported in their contact by relevant authorities. The two groups must have some co-operative dependency upon each other and must seek common goals. Such contact rarely occurred amongst the Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals I interviewed.
Another factor is one’s gender schemata. These are mental frameworks that many of us develop in childhood to interpret any information we receive about gender throughout our lives, often leading us to neglect information that doesn’t correspond to the assumptions we pick up early in life. The conservative evangelicals interviewed possessed sex-typed schemata; these are more traditional and stereotypical beliefs about men and women. The traditional Anglo-Catholics did not provide much evidence of their schemata. This can be explained by the fact that heterosexuals are more likely to have such schemata and around half of the Anglo-Catholics I interviewed were gay.
But what about theological hermeneutics? There are multiple ways of approaching biblical texts and, even if we don’t realise it, we all make hermeneutical choices when interpreting the Bible. The conservative evangelicals interviewed were influenced by US evangelical writings, especially by Wayne Grudem and John Piper. This led to a hermeneutic that was neither entirely plain meaning (sometimes thought of as literalistic) nor entirely contextualised in light of the Bible’s historical and cultural contexts. This makes it much easier to read passages like 1 Timothy 2 and conclude that women should not lead men in the Church. Such hermeneutics are favourable to conservative evangelicals, aiding their pursuit of self-esteem and being congruent with their existing gender schemata. Similarly, Church tradition is handled selectively by the traditional Anglo-Catholics who tended to ignore insights from biblical scholarship and Church history indicating the presence of female apostles.
It should be noted that such processes are subconscious and so awareness of these factors influencing participants’ gender attitudes are unrecognised by them. Of course, by bringing them to light there is the possibility that this could change. Also worth bearing in mind is that reduced contact between these clergymen and women priests and bishops can be unhelpfully encouraged by those whose theology leads to rejecting them precisely because of their theology, making them retreat into the networks that reinforce their gender attitudes.
That leaves us with the charismatic evangelicals. Why have they not evidenced the full criteria for sexism? This can be explained via three means. First, their own gender schemata are androgynous, meaning that their assumptions about what it is to be a man or a woman are more flexible than traditional and stereotypical. Second, the quality of contact they have with clergywomen reflects the types of contact that undermine prejudice, noted above. Third, their gender attitudes can be explained by the fact that their particular Anglican tradition has an extended history of female leadership, even before the ordination of women, meaning that the presence of women priests and bishops was not a threat to their social group. They thus also feel more comfortable with hermeneutics that would allow for the conclusion that women may be ordained as priests and bishops.
Naturally, there are more theological questions to be asked and answered in light of all of this information and I cannot unpack them all here. Nevertheless, these will receive attention in a follow-up book I am writing for a specifically Christian audience, with the aim of helping church leaders and interested lay people reflect on all of this theologically and in practical ways.