Black Women Trying to Reach Pulpits Face Resistance : Clergy: Number of seminary students is on the rise, but some find the ministry in African-American culture remains a bastion for men.

ATLANTA —  Black women are flocking to seminaries across the country, but when they graduate they face a harsh reality. Ministry in the African-American culture remains a bastion for men.

Some, such as the Rev. Gloria Bennett, have horror stories to tell.

Bennett recalls that a middle-aged man politely accepted a church flyer from her last month at a shopping center in Stockbridge, Ga. But when she extended her hand and introduced herself, using her title, he snatched his hand back and screamed: “Don’t touch me. You’re a demon. God doesn’t want women in the pulpit. A woman can never be over a man.”

Tamara Potter, 28, a student at Interdenominational Theological Seminary here, tells of being shunned when, at her family’s request, she wore a clerical collar to her grandfather’s funeral. A deacon at the church, a man she had known all her life, took note of the collar, a symbol of her desire to enter the ministry, and refused to greet her.

Such resistance notwithstanding, black women are entering seminaries at a faster rate than women overall. Twenty years ago less than one in 10 black seminarians were women, but today they make up 35% of female seminary enrollment.

Despite their call to enter the Christian ministry, many African-American women experience rejection when they seek out a pulpit, particularly in the historic black Baptist churches where more than a third of all black Americans worship.

“Many churches would rather have a third-class male than a first-class female,” said the Rev. James Costen, president of Atlanta’s predominantly black Interdenominational Theological Center, where a third of the 383 students are women.

Costen, a minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), sees a growing backlog of black women ministers as “the precursor of a major revolution in the church.”

In some cases, black women have been literally blocked by deacons from entering the pulpit area in congregations of the historic black denominations.

Because of that kind of opposition, many black women are turning for ordination to mainline predominantly white denominations, such as the United Methodist Church or Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Although they often encounter racism as well as sexism there, they believe being a “double minority” is worth it if they can land a pulpit.

The Rev. Cheryl Battice, associate pastor of Warren Memorial United Methodist Church in Atlanta, grew up black Baptist and became a United Methodist. “I had to move where I knew I could be used,” she said.

But Rev. Deborah Timmons, a United Methodist from childhood, said that, from her perspective, the record in that denomination is spotty. She is pastor of a black Methodist congregation in Sheffield, Ala., but she recalls with displeasure her ordination examination by an all-white male panel.

According to a study of 380 black women in seminaries cited by scholars C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya in their book “The Black Church in the African-American Experience,” half of those women turned to predominantly white denominations for ordination.

“The rule, the tradition against women in the ministry is not relaxing much in the historic black church,” Lincoln said.

Costen, expressing concern about the plight of black women in seminary, said two of the six denominations at the theological center--the National Baptist Convention and Church of God in Christ--are “quite ‘anti’ when it comes to ordination of women.”

“The other denominations here--African Methodist Episcopal, Christian Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist--while they do in fact ordain women, have records that are none too exciting.

“I must admit to you that I am very concerned about the future,” Costen said. At the seminary, officials see the conflict “in its starkest form” between women who feel called by God and churches that won’t call them to be pastors.

Jacquelyn Grant, a professor at the seminary and a theologian in the field of women’s issues, said: “Black women think black men, as the victims of oppression themselves, should be sensitive to other people who are being treated inequitably.

“The truth is, we come into contact with men all the time who don’t have that sensibility,” she said.

“It’s sociological and cultural,” said the Rev. Claudia Copeland, a 1977 graduate of the theological center and co-pastor with her husband of an independent congregation in San Antonio, Tex. “On one hand, there is affirmation of the strength of the black woman.”

On the other hand, she said, black male preachers guard their pulpits because the church “has been the one place of authentic ownership for the black male.”

According to Grant, black women ministers also report rejection from black women.

“The fact is, we’ve all been socialized to think women do not belong in leadership positions,” she said.

For some black women, a male pastor “is the only loving, encouraging, steady male image in their lives,” said the Rev. Christine Small of Akron, Ohio, a black Baptist and 1990 graduate of Interdenominational Theological Center.