THE GAYING OF THE CHURCH
Interesting op-ed piece from Mark Oppenheimer -- Link

Quotes:

...The women and gays affect not just the quantities but also the qualities of the clergy. True, straight men have no monopoly on deep voices or adamantine personas. Nor have they cornered the market on intellection; women and gays represent an increasing share of Bible scholars. But women and gays are more disposed to the "therapeutic" mode of ministry, emphasizing pastoral counseling and rule by consensus. They are more likely to resist hierarchicalism, shun clerical dress and ask to be called by their first names.

...Whether their preaching will reverse the slide of liberal Christianity is harder to say. Men have always gone to church much less than women have, and it seems unlikely that women and gays will pull them in when preachers who looked like them couldn't. Others worry that if the ministry becomes seen as "women's work," it will lose prestige. Already, campus chaplains at secular schools are nearly insignificant -- we will never see another William Sloane Coffin, because ministers are no longer granted that moral authority. And as the clergy becomes more female, will it become even more underpaid, like teaching? Will parishioners be more parsimonious in paying their female rectors?

...But women and homosexuals are truly the ministry's best hope. The ministry has for a long time faced a brain drain -- it is not a career of choice for the best and the brightest. An increased pool of interested candidates helps keeps standards high. When the Ivy League schools went co-ed, admission became much more competitive, and the average student became more, not less, intelligent. The future of the churches would look far worse but for the seminaries' educated, enthusiastic women and homosexuals.

Leon Podles responds on Mere Comments (see Aug. 12th). Oppenheimer doesn’t think that a clergy composed of women and homosexuals will change the church much, because it has long been feminized... Then Podles adds, Oppenheimer ignores the question of what will happen to the men who will keep a greater and greater distance from the churches that look like women’s clubs with a gay auxiliary. Will men join fundamentalist churches, or Islam (the preferred solution of American blacks), or some neo-fascist, Fight Club spiritual-renewal-through-violence movement? or just drift into a sensate fast cars, sports, and beer existence?