Gender and Ministry Style: Things Not What They Seem

This article reports an attempt to validate assertions of religious feminists that men approach the work of the pastoral ministry using a “masculine” ministry style, while women perform the same work using a “feminine” approach. The study utilized telephone survey data from 517 women and men comprising a national sample of pastors in four “mainline” Protestant denominations in the United States. The analysis indicated that the emergence of male-female differences in ministry style depended on which of nine dimensions of approach to ministry was under consideration. Support for the argument of male-female “difference” in ministry style was also contingent on the effects of other variables — race and ethnicity, seminary cohort, and type of placement. Discussion of those outcomes focuses on the fact that the argument for sex differences in ministry style is largely a legitimation of women's claim for acceptance in the ordained pastoral ministry. That observation, then, has implications for how one approaches the argument conceptually and analytically.