Pastor's Wife or Clergy Spouse???

I often get distracted when hunting down (free) clipart from the Internet. While researching this article I came across some really quite remarkable images, particularly when digging through “Christian” sites. Now I'm trying hard to resist the temptation to keep playing with graphics and just write this blog. While I'm at it, maybe I'll write a couple.

First: fair warning. If anyone is suffering from a delicate sense of humor, I won't mind if you go do something else. We're going to be poking fun at stereotypes, including Pastor's Wives, Clergy Spouses, White-gloved Church Ladies, and overly-intense Presbyterians in general.

When I googled the words "Pastor's Wife," an abundance of web pages appeared. OH, my gosh! A time warp, right there on the Internet! We're transported back to 1948 when our post-WWII society assumed that every woman wanted to be a stay-at-home Mom, the only career goals were those of the Head of the Family, i.e., the husband, and a wife's aspirations all focused on her husband's success. I probably shouldn't have been surprised that most of these sites also talked about home-schooling their children. Just one more item on the list of the Pastor's Wife's duties.
Most of these sites were very well designed, with flowered or lacy backgrounds, lots of roses and little angels and tinkling melodies. Without exception, the Pastor's Wife way portrayed as called by God to share her husband's ministry, to be a worthy role model for women in the congregation, and to faithfully develop disciplined, modest, Bible-centered lives.
Okay, those aren't bad goals. But I can't get the image of Dana Carvey's Church Lady, from Saturday Night Live, out of my head.

I thought I'd found an exception in a website referring to "The Rebellious Pastor's Wife," but I was mistaken. That dear soul admitted to feeling restless in her role, but was determined to repent of her foolish independent tendencies and to conform to God's plan for her as a Pastor's Wife.

Words are important. I started by searching out "Pastor's Wife." I decided to try googling "Clergy Spouse."

Wow! Talk about contrast! Suddenly pages came up referring not only to Christian spouses but to the husbands and wives of Rabbis, along with the wives of Buddhist priests and Muslim Imams. People were chatting about living in glass houses, about the effects of divorce, about mental and emotional health and how to deal with difficult bishops and diocesan councils.

Now, here's the bone to chew on: both of these self-defining and starkly contrasting groups include Presbyterians. Deeply, devoutly, fully committed Presbyterians. Take one Presbyterian "Pastor's Wife" and one Presbyterian "Clergy Spouse," and you might have two women so different that they would have trouble sharing a polite lunch together. Yet they are far more alike than either might realize.

Back to the images. Let's consider two.

One image would be the “church lady” with hair in a bun with a fluffy bow, long home-sewn dress, loves Toby Keith, thinks Dick Cheney is sexy, and drives a Hummer. She home-schools all of her 9 children. The cartoon here doesn't have the requisite fluffy bow in the hair, and the skirt needs to be longer, but it's pretty close.

The contrasting image would be a latter-day hippie, also with long hair though not in a bun, also with long skirts, but tie-died with an embroidered blouse from Peru and Birkenstock's, loves John Stewart, thinks Al Gore is sexy, and drives a solar-converted VW Beetle, and sends all (1) of her children to an early-academic magnet school. This cartoon of the professional mom with briefcase & baby will have to do.

No wonder Presbyterians have trouble agreeing on anything! We're coming from completely separate cultures! Notice: Cultures, not religions. Whether our prayers begin with, "Dear Lord Jesus, we just want to . . ." or "Father/Mother God, creator of all that breathes . . ." has much more to do with community and habits than with theology or faith. Do we raise our hands in praise of our Lord or do we sit quietly with bowed heads? Do we sing chorus after chorus of praise songs or verse after verse of Reformation hymns? Do we applaud after the choir sings or not? Do we have high church with formal liturgy or low church with spontaneous worship? Do we hug everyone or just shake hands?

For Presbyterians, the answer is "Yes, to all of the above." We might add, "just do it decently and in order!"

Scroll down to the next article to find out how we manage to do all this stuff decently and in order.