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The Pastoral Mystique: a Feminist Ecclesiological Approach to Clergy Burnout

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The Pastoral Mystique: a Feminist Ecclesiological Approach to Clergy Burnout Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2020): 190-202 The Pastoral Mystique: A Feminist Ecclesiological Approach to Clergy Burnout David von Schlichten 500 PASTORS LEAVE THE MINISTRY FOR GOOD each month due to burnout or contention in their churches.”1 I first came across that statistic in J.R. Briggs’s Fail: “1 Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Fail- ure, which I read to help me recover from my own burnout after sev- enteen years in parish ministry. During my last six years as a parish pastor, I found myself wondering what was wrong with me. After all, should I not find serving God and the church challenging, yes, but also profoundly fulfilling? Besides, my parishioners were lovely people and my workload was not particularly demanding, so why did I feel extinguished? As I struggled to discern a diagnosis, treatment, and hopeful prog- nosis, I found myself making connections with Betty Friedan’s groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique (1963), in which she ex- amines the ennui afflicting many housewives. Society had told women that being a homemaker was fulfilling, and if they did not think so, then the problem lay with them. Friedan argued that, no, the problem lay with a patriarchal society selling a one-size-fits-all understanding of womanhood that demanded getting married, having children, and focusing on domestic responsibilities. In other words, the problem lay not with the discontent women but with patriarchy. It occurred to me, that, in some ways, parish ministry has a similar issue. As we will see, there are several reasons why clergy burn out, but one is that patriar- chy has contributed to a paradigm for parish ministry in the twenty- first century that significantly increases the likelihood of burnout. I examine the usual strategies for addressing clergy burnout and show that, while they have merit, they neglect key church dynamics. A feminist approach to the issue, particularly one drawing from femi- nist ecclesiology, provides a corrective by attending to those neglected dynamics. I conclude by suggesting changes among clergy and con- gregations that can help to decrease burnout. But before exploring the 1 J.R. Briggs, Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure (Down- ers Grove: IVP Press, 2014), 46. The Pastoral Mystique 191 value of a feminist ecclesiological approach to clergy burnout, I need to address some confusion about the matter. HOW PERVASIVE IS CLERGY BURNOUT? While clergy burnout is indeed a widespread and persistent prob- lem, how widespread and persistent is debatable. An exploration of the claims regarding the level of severity of clergy burnout helps to provide a more nuanced understanding of this issue. Clergy burnout has received much attention in recent years. Particularly well known is Duke Divinity School’s longitudinal study begun in 2008, the Clergy Health Initiative, which has identified many health issues among clergy and proposes that pastors need to improve self-care. This study, however, concluded that burnout is not particularly high among clergy.2 By contrast, in 2010, Paul Vitello wrote “Taking a Break from the Lord’s Work” for the New York Times, in which he suggests that clergy burnout is pervasive. He opens with this shocking paragraph: The findings have surfaced with ominous regularity over the last few years, and with little notice: Members of the clergy now suffer from obesity, hypertension and depression at rates higher than most Amer- icans. In the last decade, their use of antidepressants has risen, while their life expectancy has fallen. Many would change jobs if they could.3 Vitello states that these issues span denominations. He goes on to say that, while there are no simple explanations as to why clergy are strug- gling to such a high degree, it is clear that pastors need to take more time off. Clergy often feel a great sense of obligation to the church and thus see time-off as selfish, but it is essential to their well-being. While Vitello does not write about burnout per se, he intimates it in his state- ment that “[m]any would change jobs if they could.”4 Vitello and Robin Swift, the director of health programs for Duke’s Clergy Health Initiative, were interviewed together on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation in 2010 for a piece entitled, “Clergy Mem- bers Suffer from Burnout, Poor Health.”5 The essential message of the interview is that, across denominations and religions (Islam and Juda- ism are included, although the focus is on Christianity), parishioners 2 Duke Clergy Health Initiative, “2014 Statewide Survey of United Methodist Clergy in North Carolina,” divinity.duke.edu/initiatives/clergy-health-initiative/learning. 3 Paul Vitello, “Taking a Break from the Lord’s Work,” New York Times, August 2, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/nyregion/02burnout.html. 4 Vitello, “Taking a Break from the Lord’s Work.” 5 Tony Cox, “Clergy Members Suffer from Burnout, Poor Health,” Talk of the Nation, August 3, 2010, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128957149. 192 David Von Schlichten place too many demands on clergy, who, likewise, place too many de- mands on themselves. Again, clergy need to take more time-off, and parishioners need to support clergy doing so. The interview also sug- gests that loneliness is a significant issue for many clergy in that they cannot find much support and friendship from a congregation without there being a conflict of interest.6 Given that the above pieces were published in 2010, it is reasonable to consider whether some event at the time, such as the Great Reces- sion, which began in 2008, was contributing to the burnout and poor health among clergy. In fact, Tony Cox, the moderator for the Talk of the Nation interview, raises that very issue, but Vitello responds by saying that the research on clergy burnout was actually begun before 2008. Therefore, while the economic crisis may have played some role in clergy burnout, there were clearly other issues at play. In fact, there was no evidence that any event at the time was adding to clergy burn- out. While sources such as the New York Times and National Public Radio report that clergy burnout is pervasive and while many a pastor and parishioner would nod in agreement with such reports, other re- search agrees with the Duke study: burnout is not as widespread among clergy as these pieces suggest. Christopher J. Adams, Holly Hough, Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, Jia Yao, and Melanie Kolkin ap- plied to clergy the widely used Maslach Burnout Inventory, which measures three aspects of burnout: emotional exhaustion, depersonal- ization,7 and personal accomplishment. The results of eighty-four studies show that clergy experience “moderate levels of burnout” compared to people in other helping professions and that clergy gen- erally cope well with stress.8 Similarly, Stephen J. Rossetti and Colin J. Rhoades found that, while it “is commonly assumed that Catholic clergy experience high levels of burnout,” a study using the Maslach Burnout Inventory with 2,482 Catholic priests indicates that only 1.5- 2.3% of clergy scored in the “high burnout range” and that, on the whole, “priests scored markedly lower on burnout than comparable lay professions.”9 What of the oft-mentioned claim that 1500 clergy leave the minis- try each month either because of burnout or conflict with a congrega- tion? The number pops up readily in online searches about clergy 6 Cox, “Clergy Members Suffer from Burnout, Poor Health.” 7 Depersonalization is the act of not seeing the people one is ministering to as human and just seeing them as entities to work for. Cynicism often results. 8 Christopher J. Adams, Holly Hough, Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, Jia Yao, and Mela- nie Kolkin, “Clergy Burnout: A Comparison Study with Other Helping Professions,” Pastoral Psychology 66 (2017):147-175. 9 Stephen J. Rossetti and Colin J. Rhoades, “Burnout in Catholic Clergy: A Predictive Model Using Psychological and Spiritual Variables,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 5, no. 4 (2013): 341. The Pastoral Mystique 193 burnout. Even if we put aside for a moment the ambiguity of the fig- ure—what percentage of the 1500 are leaving because of burnout?— the number has a foggy origin. Lawrence W. Wilson claims that the figure comes from a statement by Family News by Dr. James Dobson from August, 1998: “We estimate that approximately 1,500 pastors leaves their assignments each month, due to moral failure, spiritual burnout or contention within their local congregations.”10 Wilson notes: the number is an estimate, one that arose out of an informal survey of clergy and not from a statistically valid survey; Dobson does not say that clergy left the ministry but that they left their assignments; and the 1998 statement is long out-of-date.11 Regarding this last point, an article by Dobson from 2007 makes the same claim with a footnote indicating that the figure is from a “compilation of surveys from Focus on the Family Pastors Gatherings,” with no date given.12 In any case, there is good reason to be suspicious of the 1500-a-month statistic. So then, why do some studies indicate a high level of burnout among clergy while others indicate that such claims are exaggerated? One reason is that people sometimes conflate poor self-care and high stress with burnout. The assumption is that the poor physical and men- tal health of many clergy is symptomatic of burnout, when, in reality, one could have significant health problems but not be burned out. Just because a pastor struggles with, for example, obesity and depression does not mean that the pastor is suffering from burnout.
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