Feature story
Founded in November 1919 at the YWCA in St Louis, for a time the group was known as the American Association of Women Ministers. Its present name was adopted in 1971.
Since WWII, two major activities of the association have been monitoring the opening up of the ordained ministry to women in countries around the world as well as supporting ordained and lay women in their ministries the world over.
For almost 50 years, the association has been enriched by the involvement of women from many different countries and continents. The association has also been enhanced by collaborations with the World Council of Churches (WCC), national councils of churches, Church Women United, and the Ecumenical Decade of Women.
“In many places it is still rare to find ordained women, and one of our goals is to raise the visibility of women pastors around the world,” said Rev. Liddy Barlow, a minister of the United Church of Christ who hosted the International Association of Women Ministers exhibit at the WCC 11th Assembly.
In April 2014, Barlow became the first woman to be installed as executive minister of Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania. She reports to the Council of Bishops and Judicatory Executives, who represent 28 Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox church bodies throughout greater Pittsburgh.
Although the ordination of women is an increasingly common practice among Protestant churches, they have also very different positions on this issue. And the ordination of women as bishops or heads of churches is still uncommon.
“Statistics say that men apply for a position when they meet 50 percent of the required qualifications. But women must meet 95 percent! In my own denomination, founded in 1957, there has never been a woman as general secretary,” said Barlow.
“Our women are eager to serve. In the International Association of Women Ministers, cultivating audacity among women is very important to gain spaces to serve in the church ministry,” she asserted.
In 2019, Barlow received the Antoinette Brown Award at the United Church of Christ’s General Synod in Milwaukee. The award is named for Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to be ordained a mainline Protestant minister in 1851.
Videos of the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany
