2 Women Lead From the Pulpit : Northridge: It is apparently a first for Valley congregations. And it reflects the changing position of the United Church of Christ.

At the Congregational Church of Northridge, two women are doing more than just teaching Sunday school. They’re preaching from the pulpit.

The Rev. Jacqualine Brown has been the interim senior minister since March at the United Church of Christ congregation. (The church building may be familiar to motorists who have seen its distinctive pyramid-like roof as they passed by on Balboa Boulevard.)

Brown replaced the Rev. Riess Potterveld, who left the Northridge church to take a position as vice president for instructional advancement at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in December. The associate minister, the Rev. Anne Cohen, who has been with the Northridge church for four years, remained. It is apparently the first time, for any denomination in the Valley, that two women ministers have headed a church.

“I don’t know of any other churches in the Valley where this has happened,” said Barry Smedberg, executive director of San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council. “This is the first time.”

For Brown the presence of two--let alone one--female ministers at a church contrasts sharply with her memories of life in the mid-1950s, when she received a master’s degree in religious education from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

“At no time did any of my professors suggest that I become ordained,” she said. Brown added that the American Baptists, with whom Crozer was affiliated, did not welcome women ministers.

In the 1960s, Brown worked in the Michigan juvenile court system as a social worker. The experience reinforced her desire to become ordained. Brown achieved that goal in 1983 in Houston, where her husband was a minister. She was ordained in the United Church of Christ, the liberal mainline denomination of her husband.

Gordon Artz, chairman of the Congregational Church of Northridge’s search committee, said several candidates were interviewed for Brown’s post. The committee called about 65 members of the church for their thoughts.

“We asked them point blank, ‘How would you feel if we called an interim senior minister who was a woman?’ ” Artz said. The reaction was unanimously positive.

Caroline Wisegarver, moderator of the congregation, said that Brown’s theology and her experience as an interim minister in Texas made her the first choice for the interim senior minister position.

“Her sermons express the theology of our denomination’s more liberal, non-judgmental and loving emphasis,” Wisegarver said. “Our search was not directed toward finding a woman.”

The position of women in the United Church of Christ is changing rapidly, according to Potterveld. He said that at the Pacific School of Religion in 1972, only 10% of the students studying for the ministry were women.

“Last year it was 57%,” he said.

The Rev. Davida Foy Crabtree, the top executive in the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ, said that the church ordained its first woman minister in 1853. Crabtree added that, at present, the denomination has 1,807 ordained female ministers nationwide.

As common as it is in the United Church of Christ for women to be ordained, Cohen said, women are often relegated to associate minister status or are not hired by local churches. According to Cohen, who was ordained in 1986, among the 146 churches in the church’s Southern California conference, only five women are now full-time senior ministers.

Cohen, who received her Master of Divinity from the School of Theology at Claremont in 1984, said that, unlike pioneering women ministers, she had female role models.

“There was a group of women who went through the seminary right before me who did a lot of advance work educating professors about inclusive language,” she said.

Inclusive language, according to Brown, “speaks to all conditions of humankind.” Brown said it is not just using non-gender-specific terms for the deity, but saying things during the service such as, “All who are able, please stand.”

Not everyone in the Northridge congregation is happy with inclusive language, Cohen said.

“When you change words, in the eyes of some, you’re tampering with tradition.”

Consequently, the church lists inclusive and non-inclusive versions of readings and hymns in its bulletins. The person chooses the version he or she wishes to read or sing.

As a female interim minister, Brown hopes to break the ice at the church.

“Many churches I’ve preached in have never had a woman in the pulpit,” she said.

Brown, who has done interim ministry for about nine years, said her age is a plus.

“I’m a gray-haired woman. It makes me safe.”

This is not the case for young women, according to Brown, who has a 28-year-old daughter.

“A year ago, I fully expected my daughter to be in seminary. But I had to warn her.” Now Brown says her daughter is with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in Michigan.

“I didn’t want to see her in pain. Young women can’t get a call to a church. It makes me hurt. It makes me angry.”

Paradoxically, the recession may mean more opportunities for women ministers, Brown said.

“Our finances are changing radically. It may open more doors for women because there’s less money.” There will be a large retirement of ministers in the United Church of Christ in the next few years, Brown. “The hospitality to women will be interesting to see.”