The Women Ministers Marry

When a Roman Catholic priest marries, the woman for whom he is willing to leave mother church is likely to arouse curiosity.

When last summer’s Poor People’s Campaign kept Ralph David Abernathy in Washington, D.C., it was wife Juanita who took his Atlanta pulpit to say his absence was only temporary.

Perhaps the minister’s wife (MW) most prominent in recent months is Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who took up her assassinated husband’s concerns. Nearly as much a household word is the name of Catherine Marshall, wife of the late Senate chaplain, whose books are best sellers.

Few MWs find fame beyond their homes and congregations: those who do usually are known first because of the clergymen who married them.

What are they like, these women ministers marry? To describe them would take a book, and William Douglas of Boston University School of Theology has written it. Out of his experience as husband of a MW and from his survey of nearly 5,000 others, he has demonstrated in Ministers’ Wives (Harper & Row) that they are committed Christians happily involved in church activities despite the frustrations they frequently encounter.

Although Professor Douglas found similarities among the women he surveyed, their individuality was unmistakable and as variable as their personal situations. In fact, the more material he accumulated, the more variable MW’s situations appeared and the fewer generalizations about them seemed valid. Finally, he had to “focus … on how MWs (not the MW) perceived their own involvements in their husbands’ ministry and their satisfactions and frustration in these involvements.”

Twenty per cent of the MWs in his sample fit in varying degrees into a pattern as “teamworkers.” They serve independent Baptist or Pentecostal churches that rarely have more than 200 members, a fact that may help explain their involvement in as many as thirteen church activities. Team-worker MWs usually feel called to Christian service and find their busy lives very satisfying and fulfilling.

At the other end of the involvement spectrum, 20 per cent who are least likely to be from independent churches and most likely to be in urban churches call themselves “detached.” Douglas discovered that this group included the most individualistic MWs he encountered.

Between the poles are the majority who are very involved in their husband’s ministry, but less actively than the teamworker and more supportively than the detached. They are in medium sized (200–700 members) churches of several mainline denominations, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ. They may participate in five activities, but not as leaders; they feel more comfortable as disciples.

At the same time they work for a happy, secure, well-organized home that is a background of comfort and inspiration for their husbands. The fact that the minister’s schedule is irregular and his hours are long may force his wife to assume more responsibility for their children than she might otherwise take.

As the minister’s helpmate, Mrs. Stephen E. Smallman, of McLean, Virginia, “shares intensely in his triumphs and joys, his failures and discouragements.” And they “talk, talk, talk about everything, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning,” said that MW of three years. She added: “I try to be careful in what I say, knowing that he takes my opinion seriously.” A MW of twenty-one years, Mrs. John T. Holston, agreed: “Everything I say can affect him vitally.”

Sometimes they discuss his sermons. Once a week, the Rev. and Mrs. Raymond Ortlund of Pasadena, California, “escape together to a beach, park, or even hotel lobby in poor weather and he lets me share in his initial research on his sermon. Lucky me!” Mrs. Charles Ellis, of a Washington, D.C., suburb, offers “what I think are helpful comments for his future sermons.” And Mrs. James M. Boice of Philadelphia supplies “a word or two … to clarify a point.”

Some MWs help with counseling, usually on a rather informal basis. Others, like one San Francisco MW, “feel that should be very personal and confidential.” “His counseling is usually not discussed at home,” explained Mrs. Ellis, “but I guess he uses me for a sounding board sometimes.”

What motivates a MW’s involvement in her husband’s ministry? The answer Douglas found most frequently was the MW’s belief in the purpose of the church. A few were doing what was expected of them by their husbands, by the congregation, or by their own image of an ideal MW. For many, church activities contributed to personal spiritual growth. In general, Douglas found, if a MW’s motivation for her involvement is limited, frustration and conflict are particularly trying. But if her motivation is strong, she is usually able to cope even with heavy demands.

And MWs do face heavy demands. The minister’s income is rarely equivalent to that of an equally educated church member, but it must stretch as far. The MW may be able to economize by making her own and her children’s clothes, for example, but to do so probably means neglecting her housework. And if she does, the clerk of session and his wife will almost certainly drop by unexpectedly—sharpening (innocently enough) the MW’s conflict between trying to ease financial pressures and trying to be an efficient housekeeper and gracious hostess.

Another frustration stems from the fact that ministers and their families provide Sunday dinner conversation in many church members’ homes. If the preacher’s kid hits another child in the nursery, people talk about how he can’t control his own family. If the MW wears a new hat, people talk about how she squanders the money they give so sacrificially. If the sermon is particularly penetrating, people talk about a word the minister mispronounced or say he’s becoming too extreme. And the MW is sorely tried to remain an example of Christian love.

When church controversies involve others, the MW is likely to hear both sides. And she must walk a delicate diplomatic tightrope in order to avoid betraying confidences, creating cliques, or inspiring jealousies.

Perhaps hardest of all, MWs often have few close friends in whom they can confide despite those Mrs. Ellis described as “loving friends right there to help in any way they can.”

Yet most MWs would probably agree with Mrs. Stephen F. Olford of New York City that more money, leisure, privacy, and close friends “could never compare with the sense of achievement and soul satisfaction” of the ministry. “The demands on time, the problems and inconveniences go along with giving yourself to help others,” Mrs. Boice said, “and this one can do in a unique way in the ministry. I felt life was flatter and not as meaningful … when we were not in the pastorate.”

A large measure of their satisfaction comes, as Mrs. Robert Crew of Washington, D.C., said, “when you know you are in God’s will”; “anything short of it,” Mrs. Smallman agreed, “would make our lives incomplete and probably downright miserable!”

“More satisfaction?,” Mrs. Ortlund summarized. “Impossible. This is the sweetest, hardest, most demanding, most satisfying life I know.”

ADDISON LEITCH WEDS ELISABETH ELLIOT

On New Year’s Day, writer Elisabeth Elliot joined the ranks of ministers’ wives when she was married to the Rev. Dr. Addison H. Leitch. The ceremony was performed at New York City’s Brick Prebyterian Church by its minister, D. Reginald Thomas, and by the Rev. Richard K. Kennedy of Cheswick, Pennsylvania, a close friend of the groom. After the wedding, the guests—family members and close friends—gathered for the reception at the nearby home of the bride’s brother, author-teacher Thomas Howard.

Mrs. Leitch, widow of missionary Jim Elliot, who was killed by Auca Indians in 1956, was attended by her thirteen-year-old daughter Valerie. Best man was the groom’s brother, Robert, a Pittsburgh businessman.

One of evangelicalism’s few full-time woman writers, Mrs. Leitch, 43, is well known for her missionary books, including Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty, her controversial novel No Graven Image, and her biography of Kenneth Strachan, Who Shall Ascend. Scheduled for spring publication is her seventh book, reflections on a Holy Land visit.

The Leitches first met in 1966 when a mutual friend invited her to speak at Tarkio (Missouri) College, where Leitch has been distinguished professor of theology and religion and assistant to the president. Later, he invited her to lecture on the Book of Job.

Leitch, 60, whose wife of more than thirty years died last year after a long struggle with cancer, is presently on leave from Tarkio. The former president of Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary has been a frequent contributor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY, beginning with an article in its first issue and continuing as a columnist. For more than three years he was the anonymous scribe Eutychus II. In addition to teaching and lecturing, he has written five books and is working on a sixth.

Church Panorama

After seven years of talks, a joint committee from the American Baptist Convention and the Church of the Brethren says merger of the denominations is not a wise goal at present, though the ABC expressed concern for “ultimate union.”

Financial pressures may curtail admissions to Dr. Colin Williams’s program at the University of Chicago Divinity School which offers a professional Doctor of Ministry degree in place of the usual B.D. Dr. James Daane reports his similar post-B.D. program at Fuller Theological Seminary is “growing as fast as we care to see it grow.”

Florida Governor Claude Kirk announced the state’s biggest private land deal: the Mormon church plans to sell 260,000 acres of farmland near Orlando to General Acceptance Corporation for $100 million.

The Crusade of the Americas, with Southern Baptist evangelism funds, plans to show three TV shows in forty cities featuring Paul Harvey, Billy Graham, and Baptist musicians, coordinated with local crusades.

New Life Foundation of Houston plans to enlist 500 Baptists for a four-month evangelistic campaign in India this year. Meanwhile, India’s Methodists elected to life terms three new bishops who, with continuing American Bishop A. J. Shaw, will lead the church into the merged Church of North India if conferences approve later this year.

Eden Seminary Professor Allen Miller was chosen chairman of the North American council of the world Presbyterian-Reformed alliance this month. The alliance, which has been playing down denominational distinctives, is moving to re-emphasis on confessional families, perhaps to encourage Roman Catholic participation in world ecumenism.

President Robert V. Moss, Jr., 46, of Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Theological Seminary, is the unanimous nominating committee choice for new president of the United Church of Christ. A new president for the two-million-member denomination will be chosen at its General Synod in Boston June 25-July 2. Both Moss and current President Ben Mohr Herbster were clergymen in the former Evangelical and Reformed Church.

American Baptist chief executive Edwin Tuller, surprised at Minneapolis newsman Willmar Thorkelson’s prediction in Christian Herald that he’ll be the next president of the National Council of Churches, said he wants to see a Negro churchman in the job.

Father Vincent Capodanno, 38, a Catholic chaplain killed in Viet Nam in September, 1967, became the third chaplain from his communion to win the nation’s highest award, the Medal of Honor. He had voluntarily extended infantry duty and was killed when, severely wounded himself, he shielded a wounded man under attack by the Viet Cong.

Controversial Bishop Enrique Chavez, a member of the World Council of Churches Central Committee, was defeated for president of the Evangelical Council of Chile by the Rev. Francisco Anabalon, Jr., representing anti-Chavez forces. Anabalon pledged new cooperation and an end to secret meetings.

DEATHS

Canadian missionary pilot MENO VOTH; Mr. and Mrs. GENE NEWMAN, missionaries from Oregon, and three of their four children; in a Missionary Aviation Fellowship plane crash in the mountains of West Irian, Indonesia.

Pilot DONALD COLLINS, 33, nurse HANNA SCHMIDT, and student EDWARD WEAH of Worldwide Evangelization Crusade; in a veteran plane that crashed after takeoff from Monrovia, Liberia (a replacement aircraft had been held up by the dock strike).

VIRGILIO FILIPPO, 72, priest-politician who was known as former Argentine dictator Juan Peron’s “spiritual director”; in Buenos Aires.

LEONARD S. INGRAM, 92, British Plymouth Brethren bicycle-maker and missionary who distributed nearly two million books and pamphlets during six decades in Mexico and Latin lands; in Mexico City.

CHARLES M. WORTMAN, 76, missions obstetrician and later executive of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada for twenty-two years; of heart disease, in Toronto.

Miscellany

With a special U. S. government waiver, Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade plans a travel-study seminar in Rhodesia. And Hargis’s church in Tulsa, which he wants followers across the country to join, was granted tax exemption, though the Christian Crusade itself was not.

Despite efforts by nineteen religious and other groups, radio station WXUR in Media, Pennsylvania, owned by the American Council of Churches’ Faith Theological Seminary, won license renewal from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC examiner cited free-speech guarantees for the station’s right-wing broadcasts.

National Association of Evangelicals President Arnold Olson reports Roman Catholics have agreed to Bible society rules for joint work: the Apocrypha will be separated and placed between the testaments in Catholic editions, and explanatory notes will follow Bible society categories and not include doctrinal material. Church of England evangelicals this month warned against any change in the Bible societies’ nonotes policy.

World Vision, working through the Evangelical Church of Laos (Christian and Missionary Alliance), won government permission to begin a relief program there.

Intercristo tried a new method for informing missions-minded college students. It got them to fill out sheets on their background and interests before a conference, then matched them with 1,250 job openings filed by participating missions.

A note in Martin Luther’s own handwriting went on sale in Germany for $5,000.

More than 100 leaders from most of Thailand’s evangelical groups met in Bangkok and announced a 1970 national follow-up conference to the recent Asia-South Pacific Congress on Evangelism. The tense meeting showed a new sense of national unity, a reaction against the social gospel promoted by Western missionaries, and sensitivity to the place of the American dollar in evangelism.

The Haitian Coalition reports the Duvalier regime it opposes has hired Florida Pentecostal preacher Jack Walker as a roving “consul.” A major Duvalier newspaper says Walker’s friendship with Oral Roberts “is only the first step to Billy Graham, who in turn will present the problems of Haiti to his friend, President Richard Nixon.”

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