Clerics’ Spouses Discard Their Traditional Mold : She or He May Have Career of Her or His Own

The traditional role of the minister or rabbi’s wife is changing. Once she made a career of tending to her husband’s congregation. She was always there to play the organ, lead the choir, teach at the Sunday school and give comfort to those in need.

Today, the cleric’s spouse is not necessarily a wife, and he or she often has a profession of his or her own.

To alleviate the strains that can occur within such marriages, the Episcopal church has begun providing counseling specifically for clerical couples.

“Sometimes the non-clergy spouse finds it difficult to understand the demands made by the parishioners,” said Don Ellison Jr., chairman of the Los Angeles Diocese of the Episcopal Church’s Commission on Marriage and Family. Compounding the stress is the fact that “the clergy person can’t discuss problems he encounters through his work.”

‘Very Touchy Situation’

According to Robert Rome, a psychologist and former rabbi, “The biggest problem clergy couples have is where to go for help themselves. The same people you serve are the people who hire you. You are always in the public eye. It is a very touchy situation.”

A 24-hour national hot line helps rabbis and their spouses through difficulties. The Task Force for Rabbinic Families links 1,200 rabbis in a telephone network.

“I have a strong feeling about the strain of clergy marriages,” said Eileen Maronde, whose husband, Jim, is an Episcopal minister at St. Martins-in-the-Fields Church in Canoga Park. “The church is like a mistress, but I can’t think of a better place to be.”

Her views echo those of several spouses of clergymen and clergywomen in the Valley.

When Eileen Maronde, 39, met her husband at a friend’s wedding, he was a music major in college. It wasn’t until after they had been married a couple of years that he decided to enter the clergy and she became a clergy spouse.

“I was very young and open to new ideas. It was exciting to me. A new experience. I really didn’t know what to expect.”

Now, she said, “I’m happy about it. It is what he should be doing. I’m no longer nervous about being the rector’s wife.”

Maronde, who is studying for her doctorate in psychology, says her biggest problem with her husband’s job is the amount of time it consumes. “We have two children so it makes it hard. He carries church business home with him and that is a lot of stress.

“The minister symbolizes certain things, and he has to be very sure of who he is and what his commitments are. It can be rough on a marriage.”

Bella Goldstine and her husband, Melvin, were married two days after his graduation from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in the ‘40s. Immediately after the wedding, they were whisked off to Chicago, where he had his first position as an assistant rabbi. (He is now the principal rabbi at Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills.)

“I was very traditional for several years,” she said. “Once our children were in college, I struck out on my own. I’d had my fill of organizations, volunteer work and luncheons. I wanted to be unrelated to civic work and was tired of teaching.” So she went back to school and got a credential in library science.

If her husband hadn’t been as supportive as he was, Goldstine said, she would have been devastated by it all in those early years.

“Back then I had very dark hair,” she recalled. “One Saturday morning, I went to synagogue wearing a dark brown head covering that I guess didn’t show. I had a rude awakening. People criticized me for not dressing properly and said things that weren’t very nice. I went home in tears.

“Mel was wonderful. He told me to dress and do what I felt was right.”

Goldstine said things were tough then; being a rabbi’s wife was like living under a magnifying glass.

All that is changing now. “Being a rabbi’s wife is not nearly as restricted as it used to be,” Goldstine said. “Congregations don’t have the expectations they used to. A study done several years ago of wives in their 20s and 30s showed that most of them have their careers. There aren’t the guilt feelings of not being available. ‘After all, they didn’t hire me, they hired my husband’ is the attitude.”

Ken Aitchison is a rabbi’s husband.

“We get a lot of funny looks. People don’t know what to expect and constantly ask what to call me. After all, I’m not a rebbitzen,” he said.

Aitchison’s wife, Rabbi Leslie Alexander, 31, of Adat Ariel in North Hollywood, is one of the first women to be ordained a rabbi in the Conservative movement.

“I was a rabbi before I was married, so it was difficult being a single woman and a rabbi,” said Alexander. “Ken is one of the rare men who can handle this.”

Aitchison, 29, says being a rabbi’s husband is a lot different than being a rabbi’s wife. “I don’t fit into the traditional roles. I’m writing my own rules. I wouldn’t like to have to attend everything, but then I work in San Diego as a research scientist and I don’t think they expect me to go to everything.

“They don’t see me the same as they would a woman, an adjunct as a wife.”

After being married 27 years, Beverly Hanson’s life changed drastically. Her pediatric surgeon husband, Bruce, was called to be a bishop at the Woodland Hills ward of the Mormon Church.

There is no training or studying at a seminary in the Mormon Church. The ministers are lay persons who continue in their secular careers.

“I was pleased Bruce was asked, but it has added 20 to 30 hours to his week,” Hanson, 45, said.

As a result, she said, “I have taken over even more of the family responsibilities. Some of our roles have switched. I know I have given up a part of my husband.”

Kreig Larson says his role as a minister’s husband is as a listening post. His wife, pastor Barbara Bornemann, 33, of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church in North Hollywood, sometimes works seven days a week.

“I’m sort of the homemaker around here and it is OK,” said Larson, 37. “I’ve learned not to offer advice but just to listen to her get the frustrations out.

“Being the pastor’s husband is only difficult in that her pastoral duties are day and night.”

Loriene Chase, a Tarzana psychologist and wife of Clifton King of the Encino Community Church, says she is glad they married a little later in life.

“We have known each other for 20 years and didn’t have to raise each other as young people have to do,” she said.

Chase and King met when he was a guest on her local television show. She said she knew then they had a lot of the same values. “We have total compatibility and sometimes I speak in his stead at the church when he can’t be here. So I participate in an unusual way, different from what clergy wives are expected to do.”

Her concerns were much not different than other clergy wives might have, she said. “I thought I wasn’t low-key enough. I had the idea in my mind a clergy wife should be a certain way and to serve the people in the congregation. I wasn’t sure I was the person to fulfill that role.”

“Adoration of the clergyman is every wife’s main concern,” Chase said. “I counseled a clergy wife a while ago. There seems to be a little Sadie Thompson in every woman. They love to seduce the minister.

“The church attracts some people who are extraordinarily needful. The wife, as well as the clergyman, has to be pretty mature and understand those problems. We put a glass door on my husband’s office in order to avoid these problems. It has eliminated a lot of people who had fantasies going.”