Inviting Ourselves to the Table’ – the Contributions of Feminist Ecclesiology and Feminist Theology
2.3. African Feminist Ecclesiology
2.3.4. Ministers’ Wives – Two for the Price of One
63 The question about being agents or victims is a delicate one. Women, especially some members within the women’s organisations, are very comfortable within their gilded cages. As Duncan (1991:389) mentions: “Being a victim can be quite a comfortable state of affairs”. She suggests that victims can lay blame elsewhere and complain about the lack of compassion extended to them. In the conclusion to her article, she calls all of us who care about the Church – women, men and children – to hang onto the dream of what we believe we, as church, can be. Finding alternative models of being church and working towards realising them are some goals for women in ministry, while at the same time, refusing to be victims of gender inequality.
The story of Victory Nomvete Mbanjwa is an example of an African woman who refused to be a victim of gender injustice. Even her English name is prophetic regarding the outcome of her call to the ordained ministry. Phiri (2002:119) writes about what happened to Mbanjwa in Her Stories – Hidden Histories of Women of Faith in Africa, relating how she was finally ordained at the age of seventy-three after receiving her call at twenty-seven. This woman’s story makes for sad and frustrating reading. Yet, we hear Mbanjwa’s words through Phiri’s (2002:119) writing: “The point I was trying to make was the desire of being accepted. I will not be accepted if I don’t do the things that the people I am staying with are doing. … I do not want to talk about sexism in the church. Men were men and women were women.” After deep disappointments and declining several of her applications, the United Congregational Church eventually ordained the patient and longsuffering Reverend Victory Nomvete Mbanjwa to Word and Sacrament in 2000. Her perseverance and tenacity during difficult years serve, on the one hand, as a splendid example for women in ministry to continue on the journey towards full inclusion. On the other hand, her experience bears witness to the marginalisation of women and the rampant sexism in the Church.
The next feature of African feminist ecclesiology, discussed here, is the plight of minister’s wives, which is closely linked to women in ministry.
64 made upon the lives of ministers’ wives in the wider African context. Longwe’s research focuses on Baptist pastors’ wives (as they are called in Malawi) but some of the issues they face are similar to the experiences of ministers’ wives in the MCSA. What seems to be one of the foremost concerns is that a minister’s wife has her identity in her clergy husband.
This position does afford the woman a certain status – usually it is signified in the uniform she wears. In the MCSA only ministers’ wives are allowed to wear an additional red cape over their red blouse – this sets them apart from the other women in the Women’s Manyano and it gives them elevated status in their local churches. A minister’s wife’s status does come with a price tag, though, as she is expected to assume the presidency of the branch of the Women’s Manyano where her husband is the minister and, if her husband is the Superintendent Minister of a Circuit (in the MCSA), she might have to assume the role of Circuit President as well. Some of the drawbacks of this system are that women, who do not have the kinds of leadership skills or the personality that such a position demands, are forced into a role, which often makes them deeply unhappy, for example, Thoko Mpumlwana (1991:371) writes that it “all became worse for me ... I resisted any involvement…” when her spouse was exploring a call into the ministry. When an African woman marries a minister, particularly in the Black African context, she already knows what demands will be made upon her. In the White Western context, it has become more acceptable for clergy spouses to follow their own careers and, in some cases, belong to a different denomination or even be part of a different faith tradition.
Mpumlwana (1991:369) also writes about her mother, who had trained to be a teacher, but who never actually taught because she married a minister in the United Congregational Church and “it was taboo for clergy wives to work. They were supposed to support their husbands in their ministry and be available when people called for them”. In their tradition, as it is also the custom in the MCSA tradition for Black African women, the clergy wives are expected to be the Branch President of the Women’s Manyano. This has caused some constitutional dilemmas for the Women’s Manyano in the MCSA since the ordination of women because a woman minister does not have a ‘wife’ to fulfil this duty.
Mpumlwana had moved away from the Church when she became involved in politics as a young adult but later, after her marriage, when her spouse was also called by God and she writes about how she “hated the idea of leaving [her] job in order to follow him”
65 (1991:371). She describes her spouse’s church as being of “The Order of Ethiopia with its Anglican style and African traditional background” (1991:371). Mpumlwana’s perspective on being a priest’s wife is a balanced one – she tells how it was both “exciting on one hand and unfair on the other” (1991:372). Like many ministers’ wives, she too was expected to be an unpaid assistant in the church. She was not allowed to wear pants and she always had to cover her head. She was not allowed to be demanding of her priest-husband’s time and had to arrange her routine around his. She, too, was expected to lead their Women’s Manyano and, as a clergy wife, if she dared refuse she would have been “regarded as deviant, a social misfit, who is a stumbling block in the ministry of [her] husband”
(1991:372).
It is unfair to expect a minister’s wife to be the full-time assistant of the minister, without any remuneration, to teach in the Sunday School, lead the women’s organisation, sing in the choir, organise church functions and prepare food for events. This is particularly relevant when a woman, like Mpumlwana’s mother, is denied her calling in another career. A minister’s widow is also at a grave disadvantage because when her husband dies she instantly loses her status and her role in the church. If she has been denied a career she can also become financially insecure. She may have to move out of the church manse, which has been her and her children’s home and find another place to live.
African women theologians stand in solidarity with women who are treated unfairly by the Church and every church would address gender injustice if it were to ensure that these considerations are on its agenda. This would assist both the Church and women in crisis in their quest to seek a way forward towards an inclusive church.
Fiedler (2002:181) tells the story of some pastors’ wives in the Baptist Convention in Malawi going “against the flow”. This relates specifically to them challenging the missionary policies regarding the gendered role of a pastor. Despite Baptist congregations usually having local autonomy, the “Southern Baptist Mission Board (SBM) in America”
(Fiedler 2002:181) attempted to enforce the rule that only men could become pastors. They might concede to tolerate older widows but were against the appointment of younger single women as pastors. One church ignored their directive and appointed a younger widow as their pastor but as soon as she remarried, this woman was forced to resign from her position
66 as a pastor. This was the case of Pastor Mellia Makina, of whom Fiedler (2002:184) writes as follows:
Mellia was pastor of the church for two years, until 1990, when she married an evangelist (mlaliki), Makina. The “dethronement” of Mellia as pastor of the church is a testimony as to how referring to centralised structures of the church in Baptist churches can encourage oppression of women.
What the local church believed to be their own decision, as an autonomous body, the hierarchy of the Baptist Church overruled. This experience is duplicated in many denominations and it serves as an example of ‘power-over’ by hierarchical leadership structures that are often removed from the local situation and have the power to withhold funding, rather than ‘power-with’ local congregations, in order to empower and educate their people.
Molly Longwe’s (Fiedler 2002:195-196)story is another example of a pastor’s wife in the Baptist Church receiving support from the hierarchy as long as it is apparent that she is supporting her clergy-husband. As soon as Longwe’s theological studies became her own independent feminist theological quest, and she was no longer studying theology alongside her husband, the financial support from the Southern Baptist Mission Board stopped. Longwe is the first Malawian woman to teach at the Baptist Theological Seminary and this in itself was a very difficult issue for some pastors. They found it difficult to be lectured to by a ‘pastor’s wife’.
Alternative models for being church will, hopefully, open up new ways of ministry and eliminate some of the unfair expectations, which are often placed on ministers’ wives and give lay people equal opportunities for ministry and service in the community within which they live, work and worship. It is to the feature of this ‘community’ to which I now turn.