An Interview with Pam Chinnis

Episcopal News Service. January 25, 1990 [90024]

Reiheld. The biographical notes in the Convention Handbook say you were "raised not to make waves." What happened?

Chinnis. It was a long, slow, painful process. It started the year I was president of Episcopal Church Women of the Diocese of Washington. The ECW had always been very traditional; that is, we had the usual bake sales, bazaars, and teas. I felt we really needed to do more than that. With support from the bishops, who encouraged the ECW to become more active in promoting women's issues, we began to organize politically. At the time, many priests resented that, and some wrote some very critical letters. It was painful -- nobody likes to read unpleasant things about themselves. It was hard to buck authority figures, because I was raised in that generation when women were told to be quiet and listen to the men and let them take the lead, so it wasn't easy to speak up, especially to male priests. But I realized that simply because they were male and because they were priests, didn't mean they were necessarily right. I felt very good about having the courage to stand up for something I believed was right, and I think with each small step, it becomes easier to stand up for one's principles. There were a lot of little things that affirmed the fact that I didn't have to be what was expected in the good old days.

Reiheld. Your words must inspire women who would like to speak up, but feel too timid.

Chinnis. That's very interesting. The way women and men say things is very different, and men, because they say things differently, tend to dismiss women pretty much when they're talking.

Reiheld. Have you found that to be true?

Chinnis. Yes! There is a tendency to dismiss women, until you get to a certain point, that they think here's somebody who is powerful, or who is in a position to be powerful, so we've got to listen to what she has to say.

Reiheld. And now that you're in that position, are things easier?

Chinnis. No, not easier. There is that saying that women not only have to be twice as good, but they have to try twice as hard to be accepted, and I think that's certainly true. We've found that it's much, much harder for women priests to move from their first job into a second job, unless it's a lateral kind of move. To move up from the first job to the second is not easy for women.

I chaired during the last triennium a committee studying the full participation of women in the church, and we found some fascinating things. One of them was that women could easily get jobs like assistants, but then to go from assistant to rector was very hard. They either could move from assistant to assistant at another parish, or to a smaller parish, so that the smaller, less affluent parishes were the ones hiring the women. The interesting thing is that, as a result, some of the most creative work in the church is happening in some of the parishes and missions which are taking women.

I think that's true also of lay women, and we found in this particular study that there's a point in numbers beyond which an organization, if it gets more women, becomes devalued. In other words, if women on a committee or commission stay under about a third of the membership, then it's still considered an "important" committee. Once the number of women gets over a third, men begin to perceive that commission or a committee as not a very important one. And then they tend to devalue it. Even standing committees.

Reiheld. You've become quite a feminist.

Chinnis. Oh, right! You stay and fight where you think you can have some kind of impact. Why should I leave the church now, because I find discrimination against women in medicine, in law, in whatever field. At least now in the church, I'm in some kind of position where I can speak up against it or maybe have some kind of impact on it.

Reiheld. How would you encourage more women to get involved? It seems that the same few people, women and men too, remain in all the positions of influence?

Chinnis. That's a problem. One of the things the ECW did was to become a power base for women, and we made no apologies for that. Women have to have a power base of some kind, and you have to have women organized to do that, however you do it, whether it's an ad hoc group or an organized group. Also, and I don't want to sound apologetic about this, women have to use the help of men. When Dr. Charles Lawrence was president of the House of Deputies, he went out of his way to appoint women to legislative committees in the House of Deputies. If women had not had that opportunity, to be up there, to be seen, and to be heard, they would still have faded into the background, because they were so used to hearing men's voices in the House of Deputies, that suddenly they thought," Ha, here's a woman's voice, she's functioning well, and she knows what she is doing." You can be as able as sin, but if nobody has a chance to see that, you're not going to get anywhere.

Another thing which might encourage more women to get involved is to recognize that we often burn out good people. Once you get a few good women, we keep using them over and over and over again. And I think you have to keep going back to the people in charge, and say, Look, there are other people out there." And the same thing is true with men. We tend to overwork good people and burn them out in the process, and so a lot of other able people don't get used.

Also, I'm sorry to say, there are two other factors at work here. One is what I refer to as the Queen Bee syndrome: women who make it to the top, don't want any other women up there with them. The other is the Closet Matriarch, older women in a parish, with a male priest, and they hover around, taking care of him, making brownies, and they don't want any women clergy because they see that as a threat to themselves. We have to be careful to guard against both of those things.

Reiheld. In your speech you referred to heroes and heroines of the church. I wonder if you could talk about them.

Chinnis. I would be remiss not to start with the heroines who were just the women in the pew in my parish and in the Diocese of Washington, the women who went before me as presidents of the Episcopal Church Women. They were the women who did the traditional things, but they did a good job of it. I would not be vice-president of the House of Deputies if they had not gone before me and done the things they had done. They were role models for me and for a lot of women.

It's been wonderful knowing Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie and watch the way he's changed. I remember going to a meeting in Sheffield, England, sponsored by a commission of the World Council of Churches. Runcie was president of the British Council of Churches. In his welcome, he was talking about the ministry of women, and he said he didn't know why women wanted to be ordained, because they could be nurses and teachers. Well, you can imagine, this went over like a lead balloon. There was absolutely no applause. Then Philip Potter, who was secretary general of the WCC, got up and gave a real stemwinder, and he talked about women and participation in the church, ordination, and when he finished, not only because he was good, but I think because people were trying to send a message to Runcie, they stood and cheered. It was embarrassing. The contrast between where the archbishop was then and where he is now is remarkable. At a recent meeting in Cyprus, he came out very strongly in favor of the ordination of women. His growth, the change in his understanding of the role of women, has been wonderful.

Reiheld. I get the feeling that your recent experiences are feminist, women-oriented, that your perceptions are strongly colored by this. Do you think this is true?

Chinnis. I think so. David Collins, (currently president of the House of Deputies) and I have very different emphases in our ministries. His is more in renewal, mine has been in women's issues. We have gotten along very well with that, and when we were both elected, he said, "I know we have different emphases, I want you to feel free to go do what you want. So that was very nice of him. I would have anyway but he was gracious about it. Our divergent paths have not been a problem.

In recent years I've become more involved in ecumenical work I've just been appointed to the National Council of Churches, and I'm on the executive committee. It's taking me off in new directions, but even at that, you find that discrimination against women is happening in other denominations, so it's still possible to pursue that in that context.

And, of course, there is my involvement with the Anglican Communion through the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council]. The women's caucus asked me to head a fundraiser to fund a women's presence at the Lambeth Conference. We thought it was wrong to have all those bishops gathered together without seeing any women except their wives, and so we raised a great deal of money to have a presence in Canterbury. They invited the bishops to meetings to talk with them about issues; it was an off-campus presence, but it was felt.

Reiheld. Do you think you changed any minds?

Chinnis. That's hard to say; you really can't quantify it, but I think what we did see was that people who were open certainly were influenced by it. I think we did change some minds.

Reiheld. If you are elected to the presidency of the House of Deputies, what will be your agenda?

Chinnis. I suppose the same thing that's been my agenda all along.

Reiheld. The promotion of women's issues.

Chinnis. Very much, yes.

Reiheld. But the House of Deputies represents all Episcopalians. Do you see a...?

Chinnis. I certainly don't think the president of the House of Deputies can be a single-issue person, if that's what you're asking. If I were president, that would not be my only interest. It will always be an important issue. The issue, though, is larger than a justice issue, and it's the inclusion of all people, regardless of their race or class or gender, so I think sexism is only a symptom of a greater issue, which is injustice and oppression. That's one thing I've learned over the years. Where it may have started as discrimination, I've grown to see the connections between racism, classism, and sexism. You can't be against discrimination against women and be for discrimination against anything else.

Reiheld. What would your plan be if you're elected?

Chinnis. I suppose I'd continue doing the same things I've been doing. I've been lucky, in being the first woman vice-president, because there's been a sort of novelty as the token woman, and I'm sure I've been asked to do a lot of speaking I wouldn't have had the opportunity to do. Just the opportunity to speak a lot of places has given me a platform, and I would hope that if I were president, I would continue to be asked to speak. Also, there are more subtle ways that one can help, through the appointment of people to interim bodies and General Convention, and just through a personal support of things.

Reiheld. Do you act as a mentor to any particular people you see as being especially promising?

Chinnis. Yes, I think so. There have been a number of people who have said to me, "I'd like to write to you. I'd like to be where you are." I say yes, but what you can't say in just a few minutes is that you don't spring like Aphrodite from the sea, and become vice-president of the House of Deputies. You start in your parish as the UTO custodian, you work in the bazaar, you work on the Lenten luncheons. It's a slow process, climbing the ladder, step by dirty step. It would be unfortunate for women to think that you suddenly decide, "Aha, I want to be vice-president of the House of Deputies, and all I have to do is be out there." I've been at this a long time. I started 20 or 30 years ago, and I started in my parish, and I certainly had no long-range plan. When I started out, women couldn't even be seated in the House of Deputies. You start where you are, and you do Christ's mission there.