Editor’s Note: The following is the first in a five-day series about the advances and difficulties of women in Athens’ academic, professional and cultural scenes.
Bethany Fulton wanted to be a writer. She never thought she would become a Presbyterian pastor.
After graduating from Chatham College in Pittsburgh, Pa., with a bachelor of arts in English communication and media technology, Fulton said she had her life all planned out: “Poet laureate of the U.S. by 25.” But after a job writing commercials fell through, she began to get nervous. Clarity came when she found a flier about career opportunities in the Presbyterian church from a resource center. Something clicked, she said.
“I was sitting outside on the ground and I basically looked up and said ‘OK, I got it,’” Fulton said.
Fulton and other female religious leaders in Athens have similar stories on their road to becoming clergy members. They all felt as though they were called into positions of religious leadership — an opportunity that has opened for them only in the past 50 years.
Answering the call
After scrapping her earlier literary aspirations, Fulton enrolled at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and in 2003 she was ordained and became the associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church, 9 N. College St.
Mary Jo Yeakel, the pastor at Athens’ First United Methodist Church, 2 S. College St., grew up as a “PK,” or pastor’s kid. She wasn’t called by God in the same way her father — now a retired bishop — said he was, but even as a young child, Yeakel said it was evident to her family and teachers that she would go into church work.
“There is an element of choice, but there is a heightened sense of listening to God and receiving an invitation from God to move into this particular kind of work,” she said. For Danielle LeShaw, rabbi and director of Hillel at Ohio University, 21 Mill St., the call was, literally, a call. While sleeping one night 15 years ago, LeShaw dreamed she received a phone call from God. That dream inspired her to become a rabbi.
Although their religions are different, all female clergy membersact as writers of sermons and newsletters, teachers and leaders. But they’re also human, and Fulton said sometimes people forget.
“People assume that there is this wall between you and culture,” she said. “You get that seminary degree and (people assume) you don’t know what cuss words are or own high heels.”
As members of the clergy, the women said their own lives often are enriched by things that happen in others’ lives — births, weddings and deaths. “I am deeply humbled to get that phone call to say, ‘My mother died. Can you come?’” Yeakel said.
A drop in the pool
The ordination of women has only recently become commonplace. The first female pastor in both the Methodist and the Presbyterian churches was ordained in 1956, according to religion information Web site www.religioustolerance.org. Women also have been ordained in the Anglican, Episcopal and Baptist churches.
The first female rabbi in Reform Judaism was ordained in 1972. Reconstructionist Jews began ordaining females in 1974, and Conservative Jews followed in 1985.
Buddhism has a history of women being leaders and teachers, said the Rev. KC DaiKai WarEagle, an ordained Soto Zen priest in Athens. In some sects of the Buddhist religion, women can become ordained and have leadership positions; in other sects, they cannot.
While women can be ordained in many religions, a challenge for female clergy members, Yeakel said, is getting more women into clergy positions and “sling-shotting” them into high level positions.
“Fifty years (of the ordination of women) in the history of the (Presbyterian) church is a tiny drop in a pool,” Fulton said. “It’s a very sweet-tasting drop, but it’s a drop none the less.”
Embraced and welcomed
Although women still have a long way to go in positions of religious leadership, Athens residents are very comfortable with female religious leaders, LeShaw said.
“Athens has been served by two female rabbis before me,” she said. “I’ve been warmly embraced and welcomed.”
There were several female associate pastors at First United Methodist Church, but Yeakel was the first senior pastor. She was accepted by her Athens congregation, but faced some difficulties connecting with the congregation at her previous church. “Whenever you’re the first, there’s an opportunity to figure out what that means and move it to the point of being the pastor — not the woman pastor,” Yeakel said.
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