Joshua Saint Germain

Elizabeth von Uhl

ENGL 21002

October 4, 2018

 

The Unpermitted Female

For many years my parents forced me to go to their Haitian Church, and during those years I’ve been skeptical of the beliefs and behaviors within their institution. These beliefs may include the nature of reality and existence, sexual relations, and perceptions on women in which I will be discussing for this paper. The goal of this paper is to show how this church contains, within its social construct, a separation or an unequal distinction between men and women.

FIELDSITE OBSERVATION

It’s a small church located in a quiet neighborhood of Canarsie, Brooklyn. The church is owned by my father and it operates on the first floor of a two story building; and I live on the second floor. The entire front of the building is covered by a smooth beige color with brown outlines on the windows and doors. The title of the church read: “L’EGLISE DE DIEU EN CHRIST DE LA RÉDEMPTION” in large brown font, which is displayed right above the entrance to the church and below the windows of the second floor. As I reached for the brown double front doors to access the inside, I could hear the french dialect of a pastor from outside as he’s teaching about the life of a biblical character named “Job”.

Upon entry, you would find yourself standing in a room which precedes the actual room where the church services are held. It was a room of white walls which appeared to be about ten feet wide and seven feet long, and the entire floor was covered with a generic blue carpet. Directly to my left was a white door which led to the church’s small public bathroom with the usual essentials of toilet, sink, mirror, soap pump bottle, and tissue. Directly to my right were two black plastic folding chairs with blue cushioned seats, which were were tucked into the folding table covered with golden sheets. Parallel to the entrance inside the building, was a blue door that led to the church.

As I opened the door, you’d notice the same brand of blue carpet continues into and covers the entire floor of the church. The chairs of the church weren’t like the black folding chairs before, but they were almost entirely covered in the same blue cushioning with the addition of gold legs. The seating arrangement is of eight columns divided between the fourth and fifth columns for space for people to move vertically up and down the church. There were ten rows for the right column side and seven for the left. As the morning teachings were going on, I counted about thirty people within the church; and more people entered soon after.

The walls of the church where white with blue smooth blue outlines. There were signs placed on the walls adjacent to both of the grouped columns indicating which person was allowed to sit where. The sign located on the wall near the front row of the left column read, “LES DAMES “, which means “The Women” in french. At the wall of the front right column is a sign reading, “LES HOMMES”, meaning “The Men”. At the mid right column was another sign that “LES JEUNESSE”, meaning “The Youth”. And at the far back of the right column was a sign at the wall which read, “LES ENFANTS”, which means “The Kids”. Most of the people were seated at the designated areas, with the only exception being that you had a husband then you were allowed to sit next to him. There is an unspoken section of the right column that I’d like to call the pastor’s corner. This section consists of the first two to three rows of the men’s section where only pastors are allowed to sit.

Of the people entering the church, I noticed a couple regular faces, a couple old ones, and a couple new ones as well. Members of the church appeared to be middle aged or older with the exception of me, my brother, and two other men as the outliers. As expected all of the men wore their generic suits and ties while the women were almost completely dresses, most wearing skirts that covered past the knees. Every woman’s shirt was covering up the chest area for no chance of cleavage and almost every woman wore a very wonderfully designed fedora for which I assume is part of the trendy fashion in church wear. After taking a couple of notes, I chose to sit at the last row at the right side corner  in the back. This would allow me to have a better field of vision to take more notes with.

Now I take my focus on the pastor teaching the congregation, and his lesson on the biblical character of Job. My understanding of Haitian-creole is limited, so while he was teaching I was only able to catch a couple of words such as, “Bondye ap bay”, which means “God will provide” ; the phrase, “Touye madanm li ak pitit li yo”, meaning “someone killed someone’s wife and children”; and the word “lafwa”, which means faith. After a while I got tired of listening and understanding only bits and pieces of words from the teaching. I decided that I’d go to speak to one of the other youth that I was acquainted with and ask him for an interpretation. His name was Jean Achille and has problems speaking and understanding english himself, but he was able to tell me what the moral of the pastor’s lesson was about. He said, “Don’t cling on the past… God will give new life and riches”. The pastor himself spoke with a french dialect, with a very smooth-sounding and very educated voice. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and was happy to share it with everyone else. During his teachings, when he would emphasize a point or a word, he would shout out the last word of the sentence. For example he said something along the lines of, “You have what you have because of… GOD!” When people knew what was the last word he is going to emphasize, they’d shout the word out with him or say “Amen” after the exclamation altogether.

Behind the chairs and the pastor teaching the lesson, were all of the instruments that are somewhat used by the church. First off is the drum set that I play, and I despise doing now more than ever because kids from other churches came and messed with the drums and the symbol gears while I wasn’t around. Sad part is, my dad’s being to cheap to fix it, so any time someone tries to play it sounds like complete trash, but no one really seems to care. The drum set is placed perpendicular ten feet away from the women column, behind the preaching pastor. Parallel to the drums is the piano, the flat screen tv and the video camera recorder which are placed a couple feet perpendicular to the right column. Surrounding both the drums and the piano are multiple speaker sets and microphone cords, about two to three feet in length, width, and height, in which I’m not even sure we use. Further back than that are some guitars purchased years ago on some stands, but almost no one plays any one of them unless a very skilled gospel musician comes in and decides he wants to play bass guitar, which didn’t happen that day. Only men are allowed to play instruments, are at least that was it seems to me. I’ve never seen a woman play an instrument in this church before, ever.

Now all the way at the back of the church, at the complete opposite end parallel of the blue doors I previously passed through to get inside the church, exists what I call, “the stage”. It is very reminiscent of a stacked pyramid of steps in which you would walk up to reach the top platform. On the corners of each step are large flowers that aren’t real but are there for decoration. At the top platform exists the master podium; it is usually taller and wider than a conventional podium, and it’s used for those who are leading a service, preaching, really long excruciating prayers, or when my father decides to go on long rants about how he wants the people in the church to “do better”. Three white chairs white chairs are always set behind the master podium and are used for anyone leading the service or preaching to sit down and relax while someone else has the floor at the master or lesser podiums.

DISTINCTIONS OF THE SEXES

Through the observations of my fieldsite, I was able to notice certain things that I can’t believe I haven’t noticed through my years of attending churches. For one, I can’t really remember a time during the service, or during my past experiences, where a pastor hasn’t sat in those first two to three rows unless there were no more space for those rows. Which in that case, that pastor would of just sat in the fourth or try to squeeze his way into that row and so on. Very rarely would I see women sitting in the third and fourth row, but for the most part, women never sat at the pastor’s corner. Now at first glance it makes sense because women can’t become pastors, but that’s the thing. Women can’t become pastors in this church because they are intentionally not trained to, why, because the Christian religion simply does not allow it. In the Bible it states, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.” (New International Version, 1 Timothy. 2.12). A situation like this definitely leads to misogyny that I’d see constantly whenever women would try to figure out something that she’d read in a bible or that she heard in a sermon. These women are given almost no other option besides to take the perspective of either their husbands of one of the male pastors of my church. And because women are rarely ever trained in the understanding of the bible, they are usually viewed as incompetent when it comes to speak with pastors on matter of faith and “God’s will”. This may be a flaw on my part, but because I’m so accustomed to seeing male pastors, I’d feel weird walking into any church and seeing a woman sit at a pastor’s corner or preach.

Another problem that I viewed was the physical separation of men and women, not only amongst the pastor’s corner but among the entire church congregation. Looking back at many churches I grew up in before my father owned his own, I would always see signs and posters indicating where women would sit, where the men would sit, and where the youth would sit. And they’d always sit on those respective places, and see it and never question it because I thought it was normal. Did growing up in the church of a majority of my life cause me to overlook such a thing, and how many other forms of inequality between men and women are also displayed in the church?

A research done by the Religious Research Organization concluded that the best way for women to become involved with pastoral duties is to quietly install well-educated and capable women wherever possible (Dudley 139). This may be the case for large or more “mega” churches, but for my relatively small church community, there isn’t much space for subtle positioning, unless the women can convince my father. But I doubt that is possible since most people in the church are deeply rooted in their beliefs and I doubt much questioning and reform goes on between them. Young and more highly educated people of North America tend to be more open to the idea of females in pastoral positions (139), which make sense since almost all of the attendees of my church are middle aged and up. Dudley states that the youth desire counseling and that young women need need roles models to help boost their confidence in uptaking pastoral positions for future generations (136).

The Religious Research organization published another study on the differences of perceptions of a male pastor in comparison to a female pastor. Among ethnic groups they stated,

“There is a strong association between sex of pastor and perceptions of the use of power over congregations, much stronger than that observed among white members. Male clergy were perceived as using power more often than female clergy.”(Lehman 220)

It sounds similar to men asserting their dominance within an area, or ruling with an iron fist. It would make sense for such things to occur, since the Bible, in my opinion, contains many beliefs in which blatantly give power towards men and belittles women.

IN CONCLUSION

It seems that through this culture of Haitian Christianity, there are incentives for male exert pastoral dominance. But it would be nice to have a woman as a pastor so we could hear more of a woman’s perspective and interpretation on the Bible. One problem that I believe female pastors could introduce is tension through a more arguments with the male demographic of the church. If women become more educated in the BIble, they may start to reinterpret biblical verses as I’ve seen men in my church when it came to matters of homosexuality and sexual freedom. In all honesty, these views and behaviors towards women are expected when you subscribe to that religious lifestyle.

Works Cited

“BibleGateway.” 1 Timothy 2:12 NIV – – Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 Timothy 2:12&version=NIV.

Dudley, Roger L. “How Seventh-Day Adventist Lay Members View Women Pastors.” Review of Religious Research, vol. 38, no. 2, 1996, pp. 133–141. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3512337.

Lehman, Edward C. “Correlates of Lay Perceptions of Clergy Ministry Style.” Review of Religious Research, vol. 38, no. 3, 1997, pp. 211–230. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3512084.