Sisters, We Need to Talk

May 2, 2020

This morning, a group called Anglican & Episcopal Young Clergy Women posted a video to YouTube and Facebook. It is a take on the #DontRushChallenge format that first emerged on TikTok in which people undergo seemingly magical instant transformations.

In this version, ordained women of a variety of ages start out in a state of seemingly normal attire. Then they wave a prayer book in front of the camera lens and POOF, the woman is suddenly transformed into a professional, polished cleric — collar and all. All the while, strains of the 1985 pop anthem Sisters are Doin’ It For Themselves play in the background.

This video made me deeply uncomfortable as a woman ordained in the Episcopal Church.

First and foremost, I want each and every one of my tirelessly faithful lay women friends to hear these words: you are my sisters. I’m going to say it again: you are my sisters. I entered the Christian sisterhood on the occasion of my baptism. End of story.

In the weeks before my ordination, I first started hearing well-meaning welcomes to the “sisterhood” of women clergy, and I learned quickly to politely explain that is not my understanding of the vocation I am entering into. I already have a Christian sisterhood. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

I also want you — my sisters without clerical collars — to know that I see you and your work in this period of isolation and quarantine. You may not be the one appearing on Facebook Live every day, but you’re doing the research on licensing and technology and liturgies, you’re sending out the newsletters, you’re getting your kids in front of the computer for virtual youth group, you’re delivering groceries to those in need, you’re checking in on those who are alone or otherwise compromised, you’re applying for the loans to keep the church afloat, you’re nursing sick loved ones.

You are doing the faithful work of the church. You are following Jesus through a plague. And, as always, it’s going largely uncelebrated, unrecognized and indeed unpaid. I am so sorry.

I believe in the Gospel call to make this world safer for all women everywhere — to, like Jesus, notice women and their work and their cries, and to listen and respond with love. This, to me, is the work of Christian feminism. This work involves noticing all types of women: all those who identify as women, of all ethnicities, socioeconomic groups, religions, abilities, education levels or nationalities. This work involves seeing them all as my sisters.

I do celebrate that this denomination I grew up in has ordained women since before I was born. I have never known anything else. Including women in all aspects of our church hierarchy is important. And of course I encountered and continue to encounter all manner of misogyny in this church. But I want to be clear that the experience of misogyny did not start when my ordination process began. And, fellow clergy women – I want us to remember that. I don’t want us to understand ourselves, as ordained women, to be in a separate fight for justice from those women who are not ordained. This thinking is not only unhelpful, it potentially places us in a power position that serves the very patriarchal structure we claim to protest and allows for the continued sidelining of women’s voices. 

I have been a leader in this church without a collar and, now, with one. I can report that walking around in a collar makes people of all genders talk to me and approach me in a different way. It’s a kind of armor, and one that often feels as though it separates me from the people I want to connect with.

And so, my ordained women friends, and particularly my white ordained women friends, here is my message to you: I do want you to be proud of your vocation and I don’t deny all the work and sacrifice that went into your getting where you are and doing what you do. I don’t want you to stop celebrating that our church does the right thing in including women in all orders of vocational life.

I do, however, want us all to remember the power inherent in our role as ordained people, and the way the ornaments that come along with it signal that power to others. I want us to remember that not all of our sisters in the church or indeed the world have these ornaments to lean on. I want us to celebrate the work and achievement of all women in our Episcopal Church. I want us to remember that ordination is a vocation, not a status.

And, finally, I want us to shift our focus from our own structures and hierarchies outward, to a world full of women Christ is calling us to notice, to help, and to love.

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