BOSTON (MA)
The Conversation
November 6, 2017
The Church of England is the latest institution to be swept up in the #MeToo wave of disclosures about sexual abuse and harassment. As Rachel Trewick, the bishop of Gloucester told the Guardian, it’s dangerous to imagine that the “church is somehow an elite group of people” immune from the issue of harassment. In an interview with Channel 4 News, Jayne Ozanne, a senior lay member of the church, said she thought sexual harassment and abuse was widespread within the church.
My ongoing research into how women clergy negotiate their belonging in the Church of England suggests that the institution has a uniquely problematic relationship with sex and gender. The stories I’m hearing from women priests about everyday unhealthy and humiliating practices based on perceptions of gender are in many ways no different to the stories lots of other women might tell.
Yet, women clergy must also negotiate a system whose symbolism is dominated by men in their bid to belong within the institution – and access power. Life has not been easy for women in the church: a male saviour, sent by God with masculine names, a traditionally male priesthood, a male-oriented history, a creation myth that casts the woman as temptress, and the battles required to read Biblical text in a non-sexist way. The legacy of Christian culture is that men and women are constructed as different, in ways that hand power to men.
Women clergy are awake to the ways in which this plays out. As priests, they must slay the demons attached to the myth of being different-but-equal. Roles and attitudes expected of women that are hidden in “feminine” traits undermine their leadership and authority in subtle ways. For example, the way they look is constantly judged and evaluated. One woman recounted that she was told the feminine timbre of her voice made her inaudible.
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