SPEAKING THROUGH THE STAINED GLASS CEILING: WOMEN BISHOPS’ RHETORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP by LELAND GENE SPENCER IV (Under the Direction of Thomas Lessl and Celeste Condit) ABSTRACT This dissertation considers the rhetorical leadership of three women bishops who are all “firsts” in important ways: Marjorie Matthews, the first woman bishop in any mainline Post- Reformation church, Leontine Kelly, the first woman bishop of color in any mainline church, and Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. The chapter about Marjorie Matthews argues that Matthews combines constitutive rhetoric and enactment in seeking identification with various audiences. The next chapter suggests that Kelly combines the ironic perspective with the prophetic rhetorical tradition in order to address racism in the church and society. Finally, the chapter about Jefferts Schori argues that Jefferts Schori uses a feminist progressive civility and transcends controversies— especially about human sexuality—to call the church toward her vision of social justice for the church and world. The conclusion addresses themes that connect the three case studies with special emphasis on the bishops’ indebtedness and contribution to the historical-rhetorical trajectory of (clergy)women public speakers, the relationship between these bishops and the question of women in leadership, and the particular significance of the religious nature of the bishops’ rhetoric. INDEX WORDS: Feminism, Religion, Leadership, Women, Bishops, Civility, Transcendence, Prophetic rhetoric, Irony, Race, Constitutive rhetoric, Enactment SPEAKING THROUGH THE STAINED GLASS CEILING: WOMEN BISHOPS’ RHETORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP by LELAND GENE SPENCER IV Bachelor of Arts, Mount Union College, 2007 Master of Arts, University of Cincinnati, 2009 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2013 © 2013 Leland Gene Spencer IV All Rights Reserved SPEAKING THROUGH THE STAINED GLASS CEILING: WOMEN BISHOPS’ RHETORICAL CONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH LEADERSHIP by LELAND GENE SPENCER IV Major Professors: Thomas Lessl & Celeste Condit Committee: Kelly Happe Belinda Stillion Southard Peggy Kreshel Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2013 PREFACE I was born on October 11, 1984. On that same day, astronaut Kathy Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space. Meanwhile, back on earth, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro debated Vice President George H. W. Bush, becoming the first woman to participate in a general election debate as a major party candidate. Had she been alive, Eleanor Roosevelt would have turned 100 that day.1 I have never put much stock in astrology, but I sometimes wonder if the events of my birthday somehow destined me for feminism. I began to call myself a feminist when I was about twelve years old, though I did not know precisely what I meant by that at the time. Fifteen years later, I still call myself a feminist, and while I have several ideas about what I might mean when I say that, I am not convinced it would be wise to settle on any one meaning for too long. What I can say with absolute clarity is how I came to my initial identification as a feminist. Accompanying my grandparents to various church conferences around that time in my life, I began meeting clergywomen. As I got to know them, I learned that they faced all sorts of discrimination that men with half their talent and experience never encountered. I learned that some parishioners leave congregations when they hear a woman pastor is being appointed— before they ever even meet her! Hearing those stories, I discovered for the first time what I now recognize as male privilege. I experienced what Jane O’Reilly famously called the “click,” that moment of truth where someone realizes she (or he!) is a feminist.2 That click moment developed into a deep commitment and an abiding academic interest for me. I took on one or two feminist projects in high school and quickly found support for such work in college. Throughout all my years of higher education, I have been fortunate to be iv surrounded by professors and classmates who have challenged and nurtured my work as my thinking has matured. In all this time, the significance of my click moment has fueled and inspired my work. It is no surprise, then, that I turn here to the question of women’s leadership in the church, a topic I seem in some sense born to study. In October 1984, while Sullivan walked in space and Ferraro ran for Vice President, Marjorie Swank Matthews, Chistendom’s first woman bishop, was in her second month of retirement. Bishops Leontine Turpeau Current Kelly and Judith Craig were busy in the second month of their new posts as the leaders of the United Methodists in Northern California and Michigan, respectively. Meanwhile, in the Episcopal Church the Reverend Barbara Harris was named the executive director of the church publishing company. In 1989, she would become the Episcopal Church’s first woman bishop.3 While Kelly and Craig began their ministry as bishops and Harris began hers as publishing executive, Katharine Jefferts Schori found her career as an oceanographer ending. Federal funds for science research were drying up, and Jefferts Schori began to consider entering the priesthood. This discernment process would eventually take her all the way to the top of the Episcopal Church, where in 2006 she became the first woman primate of a national church in four centuries of Anglican history.4 My training as a rhetorical critic situates me ideally to consider primarily these women’s sermons. I gravitate toward the contingencies and problems they addressed as leaders, with special attention to particular challenges of context and audience. Along the way, I identify strategies, and my overall assessment of those strategies is positive, though I acknowledge limitations and problems with the strategies as well. Lest I be accused of writing about figures I have a high regard for and so laud their strategies without appropriate critical distance, allow me v to admit up front that I do admire these women. I take solace in Bonnie Dow’s advice that critics should write about what we like. For feminists and rhetoricians, the notion of the detached and disinterested critic is an unnecessary fiction—neither possible nor desirable. With Dow, I believe that criticism need not be negative, and that it can highlight a rhetor’s or strategy’s liabilities without asperity when appropriate.5 I hope the reader will find that in any event I approach the critical task as more than epideictic. My goal, at least, is to explain and analyze more than to applaud or censure. Like any worthwhile undertaking, this project is not merely (or even mostly) a result of my own effort. I first owe a debt of gratitude to my major professors, Thomas Lessl and Celeste Condit. Their erudition is outmatched only by their patience and graciousness. Working with both of them has been a treat and a joy for me. Most of my friends in the academy looked at me sideways when I said I was going to work with co-advisors, but the process has been a gift far more often than it was ever a burden. For their willingness to do the extra work of co-advising, and for their warm collegiality with one another, I give thanks. For enduring my stubbornness and finding a way again and again to respond to yet another email from me, I am most grateful. My committee members, Kelly Happe, Belinda Stillion Southard, and Peggy Kreshel have been an enduring source of encouragement and support—from chance greetings in the hallway or the grocery store to sending relevant articles or books my way, I have appreciated their help and support throughout this process. I especially thank them for their close reading and thorough responses to early drafts of Chapters 1 and 2. When I visited the University of Georgia as a prospective student in 2009, the phrase I heard over and over again in describing the graduate community was “intellectual generosity.” Now I understand why. It has been a privilege to take classes and share offices and meaningful vi conversations with my colleagues both in Communication Studies and the Institute for Women’s Studies. I have especially benefited from conversations with Jamie Landau and Bethany Keeley- Jonker. In the wider academy, my network of support is vast, and thanking everyone would be impossible. I am profoundly grateful for MaryAlice Adams and Joshua Trey Barnett, who read chapter drafts and talked through ideas on a regular basis. My initial decision to pursue graduate education was nurtured by Mary Eicholtz and Jamie Capuzza, two professors from my undergraduate experience whose encouragement and advice has been a continual source of succor for me. Likewise, I was fortunate at the University of Cincinnati to benefit from the mentorship of John Lynch and Kris Galyen. I am grateful for funding from the Department of Communication at the University of Cincinnati, which defrayed the cost of copying archive materials about Marjorie Matthews. The graduate school at the University of Georgia provided generous support for Chapter 3 in the form of an Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant. Reference librarians and archivists around the country have been helpful in various ways large and small. Among them are Nadine Cohen and Amber Prentiss at the University of Georgia; Matthew Collins at the Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University; Wesley Wilson at the DePauw University Archives; Caryn Dalton at the United Theological Seminary; Sarah Dana at the Episcopal Archives; Jaeyeon “Lucy” Chung at the United Library, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary; Mark Shenise and Frances Lyons-Bristol at the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church; and Lynn Lubkeman at the Wisconsin Annual Conference Archives.