ViaMedia

Tag: Women’s ministry

  • The Cost of Calling: Then and Now

    by the Rev’d Chantal Noppen – National Coordinator of the Inclusive Church Network, North-East based Anglican Priest and member of General Synod for Durham Diocese

    Seventeen years ago, a woman priest was told she would receive zero maternity pay because she might “take the money and run.”

    The assumption was clear: motherhood made her suspect. Her vocation was conditional. At no point in her three years of training had anyone from her diocese spoken to her about maternity provision, even though she had given birth to a baby in her second year of training and was pregnant when she was ordained deacon.

    As she began her curacy: “The first thing the Diocesan Secretary told me was that I would receive my full stipend throughout my maternity leave. I was delighted by the simplicity and generosity of this which I felt reflected my own commitment and a relationship of trust between clergy and Diocese. However, the next day he called me back and said he was very sorry but having consulted with other Dioceses we did in fact have a standard maternity policy which had been adopted from ‘standard business practice’.

    “What this meant was that I received no maternity pay at all. The ‘standard policy’ he referred to (but had 24 hours earlier been completely unaware of) meant that as I had been an ’employee’ for less than 12 months at the time of the leave, I was not entitled to any maternity pay. A clause designed to stop people exploiting maternity pay in the business world perhaps – but a slap in the face when you’ve just given your whole life to God and the service of God’s church in ordination. I was not an employee. Did anyone really feel I was going to take the money and run?”

    Because she had been an actual employee while training part-time for ministry, she was fortunate enough to qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay. Those training full-time were not in this position.

    Two years ago, I co-authored an independent audit of diocesan maternity provision across the Church of England. The report documented inconsistency, opacity and, in some cases, failure to implement the national guidance issued four years earlier. Over 100 recommendations were made. Some dioceses have since improved their policies. That is genuinely welcome.

    But the deeper question remains: what does our system reveal about the actual value of women? The woman whose experience opens this story writes “I felt like as a woman my job was to do it all – to prove it could all be done. It never crossed my mind at the time to ask for more help, better provision or new ways of doing things.”

    At General Synod I asked about the financial provision behind our theological commitments. From 2019–2023 the Church Commissioners spent on average £497,000 per year on stipend and working costs for the four Provincial Episcopal Visitors, plus £67,500 annually in housing costs. The same body provides no funding specifically in support of the ministry of ordained women.

    The only national funding stream directed toward women’s development in 2023 was £73,000 from the Women’s Continuing Ministerial Education Trust, administered by the Archbishops’ Council, not the Commissioners, and available to lay, ordained or religious women, in both the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church. This Trust is independent, and the CofE’s direct involvement is purely through some MinDiv support administratively. So we’re actually looking at over £550,000 versus nothing.

    Budgets are theology with spreadsheets.

    For thirty years we have structurally underwritten dissent. We have not structurally underwritten parity. We safeguard the inequitable status quo and struggle to raise up The Other. Justice isn’t cushioned.

    The maternity audit showed similar asymmetry at diocesan level. National guidelines were issued in 2020, yet implementation varies widely. In some dioceses maternity provision is clearly communicated and proactively managed. In others it depends on local interpretation, overstretched individuals or informal knowledge. While I have not done a similar audit on menopause policies and support, I have heard anecdotally that the same is true there. With the added aspect of the menopause being a far more uncomfortable topic to discuss openly, whereas women having babies is a bit more ‘acceptable’ to acknowledge.

    Policies may exist on paper, but the support to implement them and accountability if they are not, is missing. When I transferred part of my maternity leave as shared parental leave to my partner, whose NHS employer processed it smoothly, my diocese nearly failed to implement its own policy. Papers were misfiled. Approval came ten days before the transition was due. This stress was entirely avoidable.

    These are not dramatic scandals. They are accumulations of inequitable cost. They create stress at moments when clergy are already stretched.

    There is also what we do not measure. We lack robust national data on how many women are steered towards self-supporting ministry, house-for-duty posts, or part-time roles that in practice require full-time emotional and pastoral labour. We know this pattern exists. We hear it repeatedly. But without data, the system remains conveniently deniable.

    Part-time pay rarely equates to part-time expectation.

    Culture compounds structure. Male clergy often receive visible parish care when they become parents (or just arrive in a parish). Women encounter suspicion about their commitment. During maternity leave, some are strongly discouraged from maintaining friendships within their congregations, creating isolation at precisely the moment community is most needed. Add neurodivergent literalism or rigid interpretations of “boundary,” and what might be intended as good practice becomes damaging exclusion.

    None of this is catastrophic in isolation. Together, it is exhausting. It impacts mental health and well-being, and constantly adds burden and cost to day-to-day existence.

    It would be easy to frame this as resentment. It is not. It is about reciprocity.

    When women were first ordained, significant institutional resource was provided for those who could not accept that development. Generous financial settlements were negotiated. Housing was provided. Pensions protected. Some left for Rome. Some later returned. The Church absorbed that cost and continues to do so.

    Women, meanwhile, continue to have to argue and negotiate for clarity around maternity provision diocese by diocese, to have to justify childcare, part-time ministry, and shared leave. Women have absorbed the cost. We’ve been constantly treated as second rate and have to prove ourselves continually in a way that men are not required to.

    If we believe women are equally called, then structural equity is not an aspirational extra. It is an ecclesiological necessity.

    The 2024 audit prompted some positive changes. Several dioceses revised policies before publication. Others have committed to clearer communication and better provision. Scrutiny can work. Transparency and accountability work.

    But transparency must go further. We need national data on patterns of deployment. We need honest examination of whether women are disproportionately steered into precarious or under-remunerated roles. We need systems that do not rely on personal resilience, goodwill, or quiet endurance.

    Motherhood is not a deviation from priesthood. Shared parenting is not radical. Women’s bodies are not a pastoral inconvenience. Gender is not a spiritual failing.

    The question is no longer whether change is possible. It is whether we have the will to pursue it beyond the minimum required to avoid embarrassment.

    We often speak of mutual flourishing. Mutuality requires reciprocity. Flourishing requires investment.

    If our financial structures still cushion objection more consistently than they sustain embodiment, what does that reveal about whose vocation we are most anxious to protect? Who do we more value?

    That is not a rhetorical question.

     

     

  • Equality, ‘headship’ and authority: drawing the line in schools and churches

    by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    It should go without saying that all schools in this country want to teach children that all people are equal and should have equal opportunity. And it is important that schools should do this, as young people may be picking up other messages in society, in their home lives and from religious leaders.

    A couple of weeks ago I was at a Church of England school giving a talk to a group of sixth formers, who were studying Religious Education for A level, about gender equality and how equality is at the heart of the Christian faith. The class was a mixed group of boys and girls, Christians, Muslims, and others of other faiths or none.

    After the talk, I opened the floor for questions and was a bit shocked when one boy put up his hand and said, ‘It’s God’s will that men should be in authority over women.’ A couple of boys sitting next to him smirked and a number of the young people shifted in their seats uncomfortably. I challenged what he was saying, arguing that scripture can be and has been interpreted this way, but it also can and should be interpreted differently. Christian or Muslim, I strongly believe that it is God’s will for us to all see each other as equal – that there is no one lesser or greater than ourselves.

    The boy pushed back, quoting scripture, and explained why he believed women need to be controlled by men. I saw the teacher give him a look, but I calmly responded to his questions, giving alternative interpretations to the scriptures he referred to. He and I could have continued back and forth all day, but I tried to involve others who might have different opinions.

    At the end of the class, when the young people had gone, I had a chat with the teacher. She said that it is a problem that some young people are being taught by faith communities that it is men’s role to lead and women’s role to submit to that leadership. She said that in RE, a few years ago, she would have given some input about the interpretation of different texts regarding gender in scripture and then allow the students to discuss in small groups. She says she can no longer do this, as it causes so much upset and abuse. Another RE teacher I later spoke to about the experience confirmed that, more and more, boys are goading girls at school that they are the superior sex.

    As Chair of WATCH, a campaign group for equality for women in the Church of England, and as a vicar in West London, I spend a lot of time arguing that equality is at the heart of the Gospel and that we shouldn’t be discriminating against people on grounds of sex or other protected characteristics. WATCH calls for an end to the institutional discrimination, whereby it is still permissible for parishes to advertise just for a male vicar or to refuse the authority of a female bishop. Personally, it troubles and upsets me that our church is divided and some priests won’t receive communion from others because they are female and some of my colleagues don’t believe women should be vicars or bishops, or even preach (other than to women and children.)

    Nonetheless, I had not realised that the theologies that underlie these positions, especially headship (or ‘complementarian’) theology, are having such an impact on young people – at least, as evidenced by my visit to that Church of England school.

    Recently there has been some discussion about whether schools, particularly Church of England schools, should be teaching children about the ‘white supremacy pyramid’ and systemic racism. Some dioceses already recommend using the ‘pyramid’; for example, Derby. Whether this is a good idea or not, we all accept that schools should be teaching that it is not right for anyone to consider themselves greater or lesser than anyone else on the grounds of skin colour. But what about gender? How should schools respond to young people who are being taught in mosques or churches that men need to have power over women? Not only is this situation unpleasant and offensive for girls to contend with in schools, it is also dangerous. There is much evidence that in cultures that teach and accept male privilege over women there are higher levels of violence against women and girls, than in cultures which promote equality between the sexes.

    The day before my school visit, I was in York at General Synod and had a number of conversations with Conservative Evangelical Christians while I was there. I was campaigning, along with the Student Christian Movement, for an ‘Honest Church’ where, if we are going to continue with institutional discrimination against women, then we should at least be transparent about this, and churches that limit women’s roles should be clear about their position. Talking to one man, he admitted that his church says nothing about its headship theology on its website, but he said that they do teach headship theology in the church at least once a month, so anyone going to the church for any length of time should soon realise this. When I heard this, I thought that this was probably a good thing so that at least people knew the situation and could choose whether this church was for them or not. But now, having gone into the school, I am not so sure.

    Religious leaders have a lot of power and influence, especially over younger people, and headship teaching is possibly being accepted without any critical analysis or any acknowledgement of alternative approaches. As a result, some men may be hearing that they need to control women; indeed, that it is their role to show authority over women. I’d like to see the Church of England give a clear edict to our schools that it is not God’s will that one sex should have authority over the other. But, given that we allow this teaching in our churches and that we state in recent legislation that we want such churches to flourish, then that currently seems impossible.

    And the goading, or worse, seems set to continue.

     

     

  • When is a Week not a Week?

    by the Rev Kat Campion-Spall, Associate Vicar at St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol and Dean of Women’s Ministry

     

    How long is a week? We all know that sometimes time seems to rush past and it is Saturday evening again with most of the jobs we had hoped to do still on a “to be done” list. Weeks during lockdown sometimes seemed to be endless, especially with active children desperate to get out and meet friends. But how many days are there in a week? The Church of England doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a consistent answer to that basic question.

    Seven? Apparently not. Try scanning the end pages of the Church Times, and looking at the part-time incumbencies advertised there. A post described as ‘two-thirds’ which turns out to mean Sunday + 3.5 days, with no mention of remuneration. Another advertised for 4 days including Sunday, for half a stipend plus a house. A ‘half-time’ post: Sunday + 3 other days. Other advertisements offering a 0.5 stipend don’t commit to a number of days, but the job description would be almost impossible even for a full-time incumbent. It’s not transparent, it’s not consistent, it’s often mathematically impossible, and it doesn’t seem to allow for any days off! The Church of England announces that more women than men are being selected for ordination training, but that is not the whole story: these “part-time” roles impact on women much more than on men.

    A House for Duty post which comes with nothing but that house, and which expects working on Sundays and two or three other days, may be useful for a priest entering retirement with a pension, but anyone under pensionable age will lose pension contributions in such a role. Women clergy are nearly twice as likely as men to be ordained as an SSM (Self Supporting Minister), roles which usually have no kind of remuneration. Two-thirds of women are over 40 when they begin training; nearly 40% who started last September were over 50. Whatever their experience, and whatever the reason for not offering, or being selected, for ordination when younger, this group will usually only be considered for SSM posts. Dioceses differ in the proportion of women who are in such posts; could this be to do with differing attitudes among senior staff towards enabling women to balance ministry with family commitments?

    But there is a growing need for properly paid part-time posts, particularly for the younger women who the Church of England says it wants to attract. Nationally, in the general workforce, in 2020 38% of women in employment were working part-time, many as a considered choice, compared with 13% of men. Yet in the Church of England, only around 15% of women and 6% of men are in part-time stipendiary roles. While examples of flexibility and good practice exist, it seems that the challenges of planning a fair and workable package, usually including housing, often mean that part-time is put in the “too complicated” box, so part-time roles are rare and, where they are offered, can lead to bad practice.

    In my role as Dean of Women’s Ministry, I have heard too many stories from my own diocese and further afield of women who went through discernment for ordination at a time in their lives when they didn’t want or couldn’t manage a full-time post, and so to enable them to have the part-time roles they need, have been pushed into self-supporting ministry which isn’t really what they want, and which does not always allow them to develop the ministry they have the potential to offer.

    There’s the half-time vicar who wasn’t told until she’d started that she had to pay the rent on half the vicarage. There’s the priest who took a half-time chaplaincy post and then looked into an additional half-time parish post to discover there literally were not enough days in the week for her to do both. There’s the vicar with a young family who moved from a full-time stipendiary role to a house for duty post as a way of working part-time, which means she misses out on potentially a decade’s worth of pension contributions despite being in work. And the vicar in her fifties whose peers in other professions were dropping down to 4-day weeks to enjoy a more balanced life, who simply didn’t see that option in the church and so left ministry.

    We know that there are going to be changes in how ministry, both stipendiary and SSM, will have to be organised in the coming years. We also know that a healthy church will need to attract and retain a diverse range of clergy. Until we have cracked a transparent, consistent and fair way of remunerating part-time roles, we won’t be attracting and retaining those clergy for whom full-time doesn’t work: many of them, women.