The statistics page for diocesan percentages of female clergy is available for 2007. Found here. In particular, for all the domestic dioceses, 31% of clergy are female and 25% of senior clergy are female.

Those dioceses with 50% or more:
Eastern Oregon 77%
Navajo Missions 66.7%
North Dakota 50%
Oregon 52%
Rochester 52%
Spokane 50%
Utah 60%
Vermont 50%

Albany’s numbers struck me. Also, the northwest is dominated by female clergy (Olympia has 42%, so they’re catching up.) I read a survey of CoE clergy a while back. Over half of the female clergy did not believe in the physical resurrection with male clergy much lower. Probably the new survey won’t address anything of that sort.

As Gene says: if you want acceptance of homosexuality, work for women’s ordination.

Off topic comment deleted by elf.

Oops, I was mixing up the upstate New York dioceses. Albany is 18% and Rochester is 52%.

Maybe our good Statmann could answer this: If we define a diocese to be “liberal” if it has a high female clergy ratio, then can we do an analysis of associating membership declines with liberality (the new membership stat page for 1997 to 2007 is also out)? For example South Carolina, the percent of female clergy is 4.9% and it has led the TEO. There are exceptions, Quincy which doesn’t have any female clergy has gotten clobbered.

I can remember when it was called “a calling”.  Today it is a career track…...sigh

Off topic.

I need to take exception to the line of thinking above.  You want to associate “liberal” with “women clergy.”  But robroy’s statistic don’t necessarily bear that out.  While some of the diocese mentioned might be liberal, a diocese like Eastern Oregon is not (at least in comparison to Massachusetts.  There is another dynamic at work.  Diocese like Eastern Oregon and Spokane are VERY rural dioceses and extremely spread out with little urban amenities.  I suspect the reason women end up there is because they are willing to settle for it.

The other exception I have to the thinking above is the supposed connection between the ordination of women and gays.  While the majority of women clergy may support the acceptance of practicing homosexuals, there are a significant number who do not, including my wife and others I know (and probably those in Albany).  Granted there are those of you who cannot accept either, but that does not mean that everyone who accepts one accepts both. 

Please be careful that you do not slip into rash generalizations nor jump to conclusion without examining the facts that are in front of you.  It is simply not helpful to learning from each other.

Doug Hale+

There are several female clergy who have served ECUSA parishes of which I have been a member, who are orthodox to the core, so at least in the case of ECUSA, female clergy does not necessarily equate with abject heresy.  OTOH, I was watching a piece on women who have been supposedly ordained as RC priests, and at least from the sample they showed, the overall theology appeared to devaite dramatically from Catholic orthodoxy.  The LCMS does not ordain women at all.

physican without health - there are no RC women priests. Any woman who claims she has been ordained is excommunicated by her actions.

Robroy: So good of you to refer to me. Thank you. Yes, you can do a regression analysis with MEM% as a function of FEM%. Of course, MEM data have the problem of a lag effect and also some downright misreporting. Thus, one could do the same but with ASA% as a function of FEM%. As you have noted before I also have more “faith” in ASA. The big problem with regression is defining the “function”, i.e., linear vs some curvilinear form. It may be helpful to put FEM% into “classes” and use ANOVA.  Statmann

Off topic comment deleted. This is not a thread about w/o.

hmmm… no women responding here.  I’ll bite.  I look forward to responding to the survey and seeing the results.  I suspect women are serving in a very wide range of ministry, perhaps wider than men.  Whether this is liberal or conservative, I don’t know.  For example, I am currently in the clinical psychology program at Wheaton College, after serving the Church as a priest for 25 years.  Stood next to a female colleague at Convention this year who asked me what it felt like for the two of us to represent the conservative end of the spectrum.  Hmmm….

Blessings

Doug Hale+, I said correlation for Pete’s sake. Correlation means correlation. I already pointed out a very glaring counterexample of Quincy.  Statistical correlation certainly doesn’t mean diddly for the individual. I merely think that it is a measure of liberality, albeit an imperfect one.

Robroy #12

I am sorry if I offended you.  That was not my intent. 

The problem with trying to do a “correlation” between women clergy/liberal dioceses is that there are multiple factors at work.  As I touched on before, there is the issue of a diocese being spread out over a vast piece of rural real estate.  More than 50% of the diocese you mention fit that definition.  You also note that the Northwest seems to be overly represented in the group.  What could that mean?  Decline of membership in places like Eastern Oregon can be attributed to several other factors. 

Even before we try to correlate a high ratio of female clergy and liberalism with membership decline, we would need to find out if there is a significant correlation between the female clergy ratio and the level of liberality of a diocese.  The first problem would be measuring the level of liberality with clarity.  What specific indicators would be used other than the acceptance of female clergy?

All I am asking is that we be careful about how we use statistics.  It is so easy to jump to unsupported conclusions. 

On the other hand, I could be wrong about this and there could be a solid correlation between women clergy, liberalism and membership decline.  Let me know what you find.

Doug Hale+

Off topic deleted by elf.

Three additional comments which were taking the thread off topic have been deleted by the elf.