Nuance 34

There have been women in the Canadian Anglican priesthood since the 1970's, and now we have women bishops. A very good and significant development, I'd say, as this has given free expression to the many women who have had a legitimate call to ministry, and now can bring it to full expression. I have often referred to myself as a feminist, and naturally I would welcome this development, and for the most part, I have. Which leads me to an awkward question. Why have most of my really acrimonious relationships with clergy been with women? I am certainly not a misogynist. I have also enjoyed excellent professional relationships with women in positions of authority, be they politicians, my own housing providers (the men have usually been absolute jerks!) bosses and supervisors, and I have also got on well with woman doctors and counsellors I have interacted with as a patient or client. As far as female clergy, there have been a couple of positive exceptions, but for the most part, it usually goes badly, and sometimes very badly. Right now, there is a woman priest in the parish church I am attending, and things between us are starting to go very badly, to the point where I am now wanting to quit attending, though this time I will probably try to white-knuckle it. She is not a bad person, and at first we got on very well. But I have been noticing certain traits that many of the female Anglican clergy in my experience seem to share in common. To me, they all seem very ambitious. And highly competitive. Their social orientation is very middle class, they seem to extol middle class values, and even conflate as the true collective Christian expression, those same middle class virtues. None of them, not one of them, have seemed interested, willing or able to communicate with me at my level. I have felt patronized and looked down upon for my poverty, my sense of social marginalization, my experience of disempowerment, and my inferior social status by each one of these women clergy. I feel pathologized. And when I mention this, they try to censor me, or make feeble excuses. I have always felt treated by these women as an inferior being, and that I am some invasive species from which they must protect their beloved middle class parishioners. I have come to understand that this is not merely my problem. I am sure there are some real systemic and structural issues in the Anglican Church that breeds this kind of phenomenon. I am going to suggest that a lot of women clergy do not know how to interact well or constructively with many of their male parishioners. They are going to be more comfortable around women, and their preference of ministry is going to weigh towards women. I think there are legitimate reasons for this. I will cite here, first of all, a radio interview I heard the other day with Monique Begin, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister with Trudeau senior during the seventies and eighties. She said very frankly and succinctly that the problem with modern feminism is that no one wants to dismantle the patriarchy, and this needs to happen if women are going to be completely free to come into full expression in their lives and potential. I couldn't agree more. This, I believe, is also why we have ended up with such walking and breathing nightmares as Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir, two woman leaders who really governed with all the toxic masculinity that can be concealed underneath a skirt. We have a similar issue with the Anglican Church, which still remains a distinctively patriarchal institution, regardless of their many trendy cosmetic adjustments. The Anglican Church of Canada is also, in my view and experience, a corrupt and secularized institution, very toxic and contaminated by secular and non-Christian values. Even if there are a lot of male Anglican priests who are going to have a lot to answer for, I have often noticed one particular feature that distinguishes some of them from many of their female colleagues. Many men are in the Anglican priesthood with the desire to serve. Because Christian ministry is not considered an ideal Alpha-male calling, there would be a tendency to attracting men who already have a spirit of humility and the desire, however imperfect, to serve God through serving others. While I completely agree that women priests are similarly motivated, there is one little complication here that no one seems to want to reckon with or recognize. I suspect that a lot of women, however legitimate their call to serve as priests and ministers in the church, are also motivated by the lust for power. This could be because the toxic masculinity that is embedded in the patriarchal structure of the church, with all its social, cultural and historical male-dominant baggage, has done much to hobble the spiritual effectiveness of the church, and precious little to really minister the Gospel of Christ. Women, coming from a middle class culture and frame of reference very much formed and informed by cultural toxic masculinity are equally vulnerable as their female counterparts in the political sphere. Add to this brew the contamination of secular feminism, and you wind up with women who want to be as powerful as or more powerful than men, climbing their way to the top, be it in church or politics or business or all of the above, and woe betide any poor miserable bastard who gets in their way. Especially if that poor miserable bastard should happen to be a male of the species. I think this is a real problem in the church, and I don't believe that it is shared by all women in ministry, but I still think it needs to be acknowledged and reckoned with. I am of the persuasion that had some of the women priests with whom I have had negative experiences been not so contaminated by the lust for power, that things would have gone differently, and rather better. It is really unfortunate that for a lot of women, feminism means becoming more like men. I would prefer a model of feminism in which men and women would be more inclined to become like each other, balancing the feminine and masculine forces, rooted in love, with the desire and motivation to serve well their communities, parishes, the world, and especially God. I am hoping that my current priest and I can have a constructive dialogue around this.