Charleston, USA - Leondra Stoney is a young black pastor training for ordination and now leading a small congregation on Daniel Island, St. James AME Wando.
Patricia Miller is a leader at Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston. She is one of 23 associate ministers, eight of whom are women.
Clarissa Walker Whaley is an elder at the historic St. James Presbyterian Church on James Island, and the recently appointed moderator for the Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery.
These women, and many others throughout the Lowcountry, are part of a trend in the black church. Increasingly, women are seeking ordination and assuming senior leadership positions in the region's AME, Presbyterian, Baptist and nondenominational churches.
The change is mostly welcomed by churchgoers, though some traditionalists have said they prefer male pastors. But even those who resist the tide note that women are just as likely as men to feel called to serve, and that they often bring welcomed attributes to the job, according to local church leaders.
What's more, the growing number of women leaders finally is helping churches achieve a certain gender equilibrium. About two-thirds of most congregations (black and white) consist of women, yet women have remained underrepresented in leadership positions, local observers have said.
Dreams and a calling
Stoney, 32, grew up attending Olive Branch AME Church in Mount Pleasant. The church has been her sanctuary, she said. At 14, a year after her father died, she was saved there. "Salvation came at a good time," Stoney said.
The Rev. Rose Goodwater, an associate pastor, had been Stoney's Sunday school teacher and an influential force, though Stoney did not immediately recognize those early experiences in church as the beginning of a process that would eventually make her a pastor.
During her teen years, Stoney had dreams of the pulpit, and in her early 20s she was called to the ministry, she said.
When Goodwater moved to Ebenezer Mount Zion AME Church on Rifle Range Road in 1994, Stoney followed her and settled in as church secretary.
There were just five members at the time, but Goodwater's efforts to repair and expand the building and develop ministries soon attracted more churchgoers, and after a dozen years, membership exceeded 100.
Stoney began delving into the business of the church, working on its finances and getting involved in the Young People's Division. She formed choirs and became engaged in the spiritual life of the congregation.
After a while, her efforts caught the attention of the Rev. Charles Graves, presiding elder of the Mount Pleasant District of the AME Church in South Carolina. Graves recommended her to the bishop, suggesting that she take the helm of St. James.
An uncle and an aunt also were pastors, and Stoney's family has provided her lots of support, she said. Now she is concentrating on improving her church's ministries and nurturing its small congregation.
Commitment
Data show that men still occupy the majority of senior leadership positions in churches, and that men generally continue to outnumber women at divinity schools. But women are gaining ground, according to recent statistics.
Thirty years ago, the AME Church in South Carolina had few female pastors, Graves said. When he became presiding elder of the Mount Pleasant District in 1997, overseeing 31 churches, only one female served as a presiding elder, he said. Today there are three, and of the church's 20 bishops, three are women.
"They are very sincere about it, they work very hard at it, they will go to school and get trained, and when they get trained, we're going to have to find somewhere to put them," he said.
The AME Church requires four years of divinity school for pastor ordination.
In the future, "there are going to be more women than men because they will be more educated. ... They are more committed about education and committed to their people," Graves said.
Today, nine of his 31 churches are led by women.
Graves, who often recommends AME pastors to his bishop, said many congregations still are not entirely comfortable with a woman in the pulpit, and some have made explicit requests for male leaders.
"We're going to have to do a little more work," Graves said.
But congregations often adjust quickly when women are appointed to leadership positions, and even learn to love their female pastors, he added.
"Men are just waking up to the fact that women are for real and they're getting things done," he said.
The Rev. Isaac Holt, pastor of Royal Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, said resistance to female leadership is generational.
"Cultural influence is a powerful thing," he said. "My grandmother never trusted a bank because she grew up during the Depression." At her death in the 1970s, she had never made a deposit.
Holt himself, who began preaching 25 years ago in Alabama, once thought women in the pulpit were an anathema.
"I was totally against it, it was totally unacceptable," he said. "I would not allow myself to be exposed to it. ... What persuaded me is, once I began to pastor, I could not have a solid enough argument against it," neither scriptural nor cultural, "because I began to see that some women were more effective."
School enrollment
Stan Hargraves, registrar at Union Presbyterian Seminary, which has campuses in Charlotte and Richmond, Va., said the proportion of women to men enrolling at Union, which has a mixed student population, is growing.
"What I can tell you is that in fall 2001 we had 184 women and 164 men; in fall 2010 there were 172 women and 121 men," he said.
At Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., Admissions Director Monica Wedlock said she has seen an increase in the number of enrolled women. Blacks represent about 10 percent of the total student body, half of which is female, she said.
Seminaries also are seeing an increase in the number of older people pursuing theology degrees, Wedlock said. Many are baby boomers starting a second career.
Eliza Smith Brown, communications director for the Association of Theological Schools, which tracks seminary statistics in the U.S. and Canada, said black women constitute about half of all blacks pursuing Master of Divinity degrees in the U.S., a figure significantly higher than all other racial and ethnic groups.
The number of black women in Master of Divinity programs in the U.S. is about equal to the number of black men, "while white women are still represented in lower numbers," Brown wrote in an email.
Though enrollment numbers for black women during the past five years have risen only slightly, from 7.5 percent in 2006 to 8 percent in 2010, they appear to be bucking an opposing trend.
"Keep in mind that these numbers must be considered in the context of steady decreases in overall head count enrollment since 2006," Brown wrote.
Holt noted that gains by women in Baptist churches can be partly attributed to changing seminary practices during the 1980s. The schools needed income, he said.
"Seminaries welcomed women out of necessity because the women were financing the schools." Churches subsequently began to take advantage of a dedicated, educated new resource pool.
Ministry and service
Whaley, the moderator of the Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery and an elder at St. James Presbyterian Church, said the ministry has long permeated her actions, in the church and in her professional life.
She has worked as a court administrator with the Charleston County Solicitor's Office and U.S. Attorney's Office. In recent years she has worked for the Department of Justice, coordinating services for victims of crimes recognized at the federal level (identity theft, human trafficking or investment fraud, for example).
Simultaneously, she has been active in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
"I believe that ministry starts within but expands outwardly," Whaley said, adding that "the inward part of ministry allows me to help folks heal when they've been aggrieved as crime victims."
She said she sees her church activity and career as a spiritual journey supported by a commitment to community service. And she has observed this drive in other women.
"I am just so thankful for the growing number of women who are taking on leadership within our denomination," at every level, and during challenging times, she said.
"I believe the increase ... is a response to women stepping up and answering God's call. It is very refreshing."
Resistance to the trend has been minimal, Whaley said.
Some have put walls up, she said, "but as soon as we allow the walls to come down and receive the Gospel, it doesn't really matter who it's coming from."
The spirit moves
Miller, of Royal Missionary Baptist Church, said she has been active in church since she was 6 years old and sings with the choir there.
Every Monday she presides over a noon prayer service that typically draws more than 100 worshippers, and her focus is on teaching the word of God.
Good sermons require coherent lessons that reflect what's been studied, she said. "The sheep is fed better when it can understand."
Miller also is an adviser to the Young Woman's Auxiliary, which meets regularly for Bible study and pursues a number of community outreach initiatives.
She said the growing number of women in leadership positions is not always welcomed by all.
"A pastor once said to me, 'You know, some people don't want a female pastor,' " Miller recounted. "But God told me not to defend Him, he could defend himself."
Preaching the Gospel is a "foolishness" not randomly pursued, she said.
"God puts a burning desire in you to do this," Miller said. "Trust me, this was not the path I thought I'd take. I thought I'd be happy singing in the choir."
But the spirit of God works through all people receptive to it, without regard to gender, she said.
"The spirit called the spirit," she said. "My body just happened to be female."