The Present and Future of the ETS:
Women’s Involvement with the Society, the Journal, and Membership1 Cristina Richie
Presented to the Evangelical Theological Society 65th Annual Meeting, 2013, Baltimore, MD.
As the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) celebrates sixtyfive years of a blessed existence, we look back from where we came and look forward to where we shall go. But unless we can move forward with all evangelicals, our work will not survive. As women continue to make gains in academic leadership, those at Christian institutions are often left far behind. Seminaries and other institutions that operate under religious exemption from non-discrimination laws have a long tradition of male-only education that often perpetuates itself through sexist practices. As a result, women have trouble breaking into faculty positions and influencing scholarly journals that shape the minds of peers. In the evangelical world, women have a stronghold in the church as parishioners—but not in church leadership or in the academic world. One statistic notes that 57% of evangelicals in the pews are women.2 Unfortunately, these numbers do not translate into mature women earning degrees in divinity or theology, which would form the base of ETS membership and the ranks of academia. This is not the venue to argue for the fundamental value of diversity in scholarship. There is a wealth of research that has already done that.3 Suffice it to say, “Christian universities desperately need models of godly, evangelical, intellectual womanhood.”4 The Landscape of Evangelical Women Students at Seminaries Women make up about 34% of all graduate students in religious educational institutions5 (see Figure 1). This includes Catholic seminaries (where women are permitted to earn pontifical degrees but cannot be ordained), mainline Protestant seminaries, and many denominations in between. Evangelical seminaries, though many accept women’s ordination, lag woefully behind these numbers. By some accounts “the average percentage of female M.Div.’s at Evangelical seminaries is just 21%” (see Figure 2), nine percent lower than female enrollment at other mainline Protestant and Catholic institutions.6
Writing over twenty years ago, Catholic theologian Mary Hunt noted that when men control seminaries and women do not enter these institutions, women cannot gain access to the language of academic debate, and therefore can never enter into theological conversations. She writes, “There are still theological faculties in this country, and many places around the world, where women are not permitted to study or take advanced
Figure 2
degrees in theology. . . . This lack of knowledge. . . results in control by those who can manipulate the jargon and concepts of the discipline to keep women as permanent outsiders.”7 Unfortunately, not much has changed in the last two decades and Hunt’s words are as easily applicable to Catholic institutions as evangelical. For instance, the conservative Protestant Master’s Seminary motto is “we train men [sic] as if lives depended on it.”8 They do not accept women into degree programs. But even when women are “allowed” to earn theological degrees and work their way through masters and PhD programs, vocational opportunities are scarce. Women often remain a minority on faculty and can only find token employment in low-ranking positions. According to the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), which accredits religious institutions, only 18% of full professors at all seminaries, divinity schools and religious departments were women in 2011 (see Figure 3).9 The Landscape of Evangelical Women Academics in the ETS
Figure 1
Christians for Biblical Equality
Evangelicals suffer from a dearth of women in academia, and at every stage of the vocational academic progression more women drop out. This means that there are fewer women who identify as evangelical who might qualify and be interested in joining the ETS in the first place. The ETS is a main artery of evangelical scholarship and networking. They self-describe as “a professional, academic society of Biblical scholars, teachers, pastors, students.”10 It connects academic evangelicals to each other, with biblical Missing Voices • 35