WOMEN IN CLERGY; ATTITUDES ARE CHANGING IN U.S. CHURCHES

Last week, the Church of England announced it will begin ordaining women priests. On Wednesday, Roman Catholic bishops rejected a pastoral letter that would have affirmed the ban on women priests.

Placed side by side, the two events suggest a new attitude of openness toward a practice already accepted by some denominations.

When the Episcopal Church in England decided last week to begin ordaining women priests, the Rev. Patricia Williams' reaction was predictable.

"(I was) delighted, of course."

Williams, the former interim rector at Christ Episcopal Church in Cape Girardeau, says women clergy are important to the well-being of churches.

When a church denies women full representation in the ministry, she said, "It denies half of its people full membership."

Women members of the clergy in the Cape Girardeau area, who number fewer than 10, say they have encountered resistance to the idea of female ministers through most of their lives, sometimes even within themselves.

As a teenager, the Rev. Mary Elise Earley found herself doing all her research papers at school on religious issues. A teacher suggested she go into the ministry.

"I said, `I don't know what I believe, and I'm a girl,'" Earley recalls.

Earley, now the interim associ~ate minister at the First Christian Church, became a social worker, married and raised a family. In 1987, her marriage crumbling and recognizing the need for a professional degree, she chose to pursue her first love, the ministry.

She met her current husband Leigh, who is the interim senior minister at the same church, while interning elsewhere. Their three-year marriage extends to their occupation.

"There are some things we have more gifts for than others," she said. "We feel our gifts complement each other."

A number of local women clergy head congregations affiliated with the United Methodist Church, which has been ordaining women during the better part of the 20th century and whose district superintendent is the Rev. Mary Ellen Meyer.

Nancy Woods, a pastor at the New McKendree Methodist Church in Jackson, enrolled in a seminary in St. Louis with her husband after studying accounting in college.

She describes the decision as "a pulling, you know ... A thing you need to do."

After graduation, she came directly to the Jackson church. Her husband, from whom she is separated, is pastor for a circuit of four local churches.

She said people who are opposed to women ministers generally quote a biblical admonition for women to remain silent in church. She responds with a verse from Galatians: "In Christ there's no difference between Jew and Greek, slave or free, male or female," she quotes. "In Christ we are all one."

For Pamela Brakhage, pastor the Illmo United Methodist Church, becoming a minister was the fulfillment of a dream that dated back to the age of 12.

Like Earley and Woods, Brakhage said, "I felt this was something I was called to do."

Also like Earley, Brakhage was dissuaded by the fact that her denomination had no women ministers. "I (thought I) must have interpreted it wrong..." she said.

She taught school for 22 years instead. Brakhage earned a doctorate and still teaches Spanish at Southeast Missouri State University, but for the past five years she has had a dual life as a pastor and professor.

Brakhage thinks she's had an easier time of it than most women who decide to enter the ministry. "I already had some respect since I already have a doctorate," she said.

When Brakhage decided to enter a seminary, everyone in her family was supportive except her 15-year-old son. "He was very much neutral," she said.

"I couldn't expect him to hear me preach when he heard me preach at him all day anyway."

The Rev. Eloise Marx, pastor of the Broadway United Methodist Church in Scott City, is the veteran of local women clergy, dating her ministry back to 1943. She and her then-husband were in the Salvation Army, whose ministries are founded upon the ideal of husband and wife pastoral teams.

Because of that, she encountered many other women involved in ministries. "We were accepted by the public," she said.

In 1955, she switched her ordination to the United Methodist Church. When her husband left her and their 12 children in 1969 "to find his identity," she became a full-time school teacher and part-time minister.

Marx, who came to the Scott City church only this year, returned to working as a full-time pastor in 1977. Some of the licensed ministers wanted her to return to school.

"That's the only trouble I've had with people who were less trained," she said.

Patricia Williams became a priest in the Episcopal Church two years ago after 22 years as an academic librarian at Southeast Missouri State University.

The decision to become a priest "very slowly came to me," she said. "I wanted to do something more intentional for the church."

Over a period of months, Williams decided to become ordained. She attended a seminary in Evanston, Ill., for two years.

She is trained to do interim work, but now works for the diocese in St. Louis.

The 2.5-million member Episcopal Church in the United States began ordaining women priests in 1976. It has one ordained woman bishop in Massachusetts and another woman bishop recently was elected in Washington, D.C.

In Missouri, 14 of the 65 priests in the diocese are women.

Williams has encountered people who would not receive communion from her because she is a woman. "I figure it's their problem," she said, adding that the resistance to women priests is not restricted to males.

Earley said she understands the confusion some people feel when they encounter a woman pastor. "It always hit me as a real surprise," she said. "It took a while even to focus on the words a woman was saying."

That shows "how much it takes to overcome what we've grown up to expect," she said.

Earley ascertains a gender difference in the way women and men approach their ministries.

"There's a real richness of imagery we can draw on from the experience of being mothers that's slightly different from being a father," she said.

Williams concurs. Referring to the categories of a standard personality test, Williams said, "There are a lot more women who are the feeling type.

"They are better pastorally and better at networking."

While women remain barred from the clergy by some of the nation's largest religious groups, seminaries run by the Disciples of Christ and the United Methodist Church currently average 50 percent or more enrollment by women.