NASHVILLE (TN)
Baptist News Global
July 15, 2019
By Bob Allen
Riverside Church in New York City held a members-only meeting Sunday, following a week of sensational headlines in competing newspapers covering the departure of senior pastor Amy Butler.
The Washington Post reported July 15 that during the meeting 11 members of the historically significant congregation introduced a petition demanding that Butler, former pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., be reinstated as senior pastor.
Butler, who in the past wrote columns for Baptist News Global and its predecessor Associated Baptist Press, released a joint statement last Tuesday with the chair of the church council announcing that her five-year contract as pastor would not be renewed.
On Thursday the New York Times quoted unnamed sources who attribute her departure to sexism and the “stained-glass cliff” – the name given to an informal barrier faced by women in ministry. Unlike the so-called stained-glass ceiling, which keeps women from climbing up the ministerial ladder, the stained-glass cliff posits that women are actually more likely than men to get promoted if the organization is facing a crisis, increasing the odds that they will fail.
The New York Post followed up with a much different story about salary demands and possible conduct unbecoming a minister.
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