"WHAT DOES A WOMAN DO WITH A PHI BETA KAPPA KEY?"

 “WHAT DOES A WOMAN DO WITH A PHI BETA KAPPA KEY”

This question was asked of our friend Joyce Tucker, as she appeared before the Committee on Examinations of Atlanta Presbytery for ordination as a pastor in the late 1970’s.  The inquisitor was a prominent male minister on the Committee.  Her dossier indicated that she had graduated from Duke and was welcomed into the Phi Beta Kappa Club there because of her outstanding academic work.  She could not respond as she would have liked to this question, because that committee had the power to determine whether or not she would be accepted for ordination.  She was eventually certified for ordination by the Committee.

That question was just one of thousands of questions and rejections of women as leaders and pastors in the Presbyterian Church.  This year marks the 60th anniversary of the ordination of women as pastors in the PCUS, the former southern Presbyterian Church.  The Presbyterian Church split over slavery in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, and we were the last mainline denomination to reunite, doing so at a special worship service in Atlanta in 1983.  The former “Northern” (but really-the-rest-of-the-country) UPCUSA church had voted to ordain women as pastors in 1956, and first woman ordained as a pastor was Margaret Towner that same year.

There had been many discussions and attempts to approve ordination for women in these branches of the Presbyterian church.  In 1916 the PCUS had approved ordination of women to be deacons, and the UPCUSA had done it in 1922.  The UPCUSA had approved ordaining women as ruling elders in 1930, but the PCUS would not take it that far.  In the 1950’s the southern Presbyterians began to work for allowing women to be ordained as pastors.  The PCUS governing body sent a recommendation to ordain women as pastors in 1956, but it failed to get a majority of presbyteries to approve it, losing 44-39.  In 1963, the governing body again recommended approval of women’s ordination, and in 1964, the presbyteries agreed by a vote 53-27.  It became church policy, and the shift became an article in  the New York Times.

The first woman to be ordained in the former PCUS was Dr. Rachel Henderlite, who was the daughter of a pastor and who had a PhD. In ethics from Yale, under H. Richard Niebuhr.  She had taught for a considerable amount of time at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, when she learned that her salary was not equal to that of the male faculty members. She worked hard for that equity, and her work became well known.  She was approached by some male ministers in Hanover Presbytery, where Richmond was located, asking her to seek to become the first woman to be ordained in the former PCUS.  She agreed, and after some struggles with the Presbytery, she was approved for ordination.  She was ordained at interracial All Souls Presbyterian Church in Richmond on December 12, 1965. She indicated that for many years she received a postcard annually from a male minister in South Carolina, reminding her that she had broken Biblical law by becoming a minister and that as a result, she would rot in hell.

There are many stories like Dr. Henderlite’s, including Caroline’s (she was ordained in 1973 by Atlanta Presbytery after many machinations).  A lot of southern churches paid no heed to the policy that allowed the ordination of women to church office of deacon, elder, or pastor.  My home church was one of those, and in the late 1970’s, the women members, including my mother, made a push for women to be ordained as elders.  The clerk of the Session and the pastor were opposed to the ordination of women, but at the congregational meeting, some women nominated the daughter of one of the wealthiest members of the church to be an elder.  When the pastor refused to accept the nomination, the wealthy father spoke up and indicated his displeasure at his daughter being rejected.  The pastor then allowed the daughter’s name to be placed in nomination, and as planned by the women, she then declined the nomination. But, the door had been opened for Maud Cain Howe to be nominated.  She was nominated and elected to be the first woman elder at the 125 year old church.  

    Maybe that’s what a woman does with a Phi Beta Kappa key does – she uses it to unlock doors for folk, doors that men have locked to keep people out.  We are grateful for the tenacity, creativity and determination of so many women and men, who have worked and cajoled and marched and sat in and testified to the fact that God shows no partiality.  May we find our place in this great cloud of witnesses.