Church of the Savior member Heather Matthews recently released Confronting Sexism in the Church (InterVarsity Press, 2024). In the opening chapter she tells part of her journey.
I was one of those kids who was at church every time the doors were open, not because my parents forced me to attend but because I loved church. I came to faith in Jesus as a child, and when I was in high school, I sensed a call from God into ministry.
I was excited to follow and serve God, but I had no vision for what this looked like as a young woman. While my church affirmed that men and women could receive a call from God, there appeared to be no opportunities for a woman to follow and develop that call. Since I had never in my life seen a female pastor, I certainly couldn’t imagine myself as a pastor. It seemed obvious that God wanted me to be a missionary. …
Fast-forward a few years. … My fiancé and I were negotiating our future plans after graduation. I didn’t realize at the time how strong the messages were from the competing spheres of my life. As a female student at Northwestern University, I was surrounded by smart and talented women who were ready to take the world by storm. At the same time, I was part of a Christian group on campus [in which] leaders and students talked often about male headship and female submission, and that a woman’s highest calling was to be a wife and a mother.
I felt paralyzed. How could I follow my calling to be a missionary doctor while also supporting my husband in his career? It was clear from family and friends that my fiancé’s career was most important. I ended up giving up my dream of becoming a missionary doctor. I took the route of following my husband as a supportive wife. After college, I enrolled in seminary instead of medical school.
I noticed immediately that other students, mostly men, would not look at me in the eye or speak to me. I felt small and invisible. I could not be my full self, a confident and accomplished student with plans for my future in ministry. I was expected to fit into a traditional “pastor’s wife” role.
After three years of seminary, I graduated summa cum laude with two master’s degrees, but I had trouble finding internships and a ministry job because many churches only hired men. Although my degree required me to have “field education” credits for graduation, my church would not let me teach an adult Sunday school class without my husband coteaching with me. Even the job placement office at the seminary declined to assist me because they didn’t have any employers interested in interviewing women.
Attending seminary broke me like no experience in my life had. I realized something was wrong when I found myself crying on a regular basis, and I am not prone to crying. Christian institutions and Christian individuals were actively restricting the abundant life that I thought was available to me, and doing so in the name of Jesus.
—From Confronting Sexism in the Church. Reprinted by kind permission of InterVarsity Press
