Tokenism can be defined as, “a show of concession to a demand.”
This past triennium, I had my first experience of being a token. It wasn’t intentional and it was an isolated and partial experience.
Nevertheless it was a novel experience that taught me something both amusing and painful about myself and others. It all started out rather innocently. I was asked to serve on an interim committee of General Convention having to do with women’s participation in the Church. At that time the committee had no name. The formal invitation did not come to me until after the committee had met once.
It was only after accepting the invitation to serve that I discovered that I was a token in two ways: as one of two men on a sixteen member committee; and as the perfunctory “we ought to have a bishop” member of the committee. At least it felt that way at the time.
As the time for my first meeting of the Committee for Full Participation of Women in the Church drew near, my feelings changed from curiosity to apprehension to anxiety.
Why had I really been asked? What would my contribution or role be within the group? Why was I feeling a bit threatened while at the same time pleased that I had been asked to serve?
I tried to dismiss the mounting anxiety with a swipe of masculine confidence and assurance. After all, wasn’t I a secure, healthy, middle-aged man? Aha, I thought; this must have been the very reason I was asked to serve on this committee.
Now I was going to be the brunt and focus of the repressed anger of fourteen women who wanted to unload on me as symbol of repressive and destructive patriarchy!!
Anxiety gave way to sheer fear. The inner dialogue continued.
Not me, I am a committed feminist, I said, committed as a husband, father and bishop. Didn’t they know that? How could I share that without sounding defensive? Why did I feel a need to share it? Why was I feeling intimidated? Why was I being defensive.?
Intimidated token
The first meeting dispelled the fears and reduced the anxiety. Some of the feeling of intimidation, however, remained: intimidation born of simply being a man surrounded by a group of powerful, committed and competent women.
I suspect that I hardly need to share the “aha”, the insight that this is how a token woman must feel in Church groups largely dominated by men.
A second and more subtle insight came to me on the airplane after the meeting. I realized that I had behaved differently than I normally do during a meeting. I wasn’t vocal. I felt hesitant in participating and tentative in offering the few suggestions that I did share with the group.
I tried to dismiss this as a dynamic in being a new member of any group. But I knew that it was more. It was the lack of assurance and support that comes with being in a minority. More particularly, the lack of an assumed male frame of reference.
No locker-room lingo
Upon further reflection I became aware that there was more passion, compassion, energy, activity in this particular group than more male-dominated groups. Perhaps an inclusivity born of shared anger, hurt and hope, A bonding of care, without the macho locker room rituals of vocabulary.
The language itself was instructive. In place of military and sports language, phrases such as “game plan,” “war on,” “touch base,” etc. different images were used: the language of family and relationship disclosing a different reality. “Onward Christian solders was replaced by “gathered Christian sisters”.
Tokenism is not unity
Tokenism, as accommodation or concession, is not inclusion. It does not foster the integrity and sharing called for in our praying and working toward unity. The intimidation born of tokenism inhibits participation.
Full participation of women in the Church means equal representation. Tokenism is destructive of full sharing because it masks this fact. The recent gains of women’s fuller participation in the Church should not detract us from the hard work of full participation in the months and years ahead.
To call for unity without justice is accommodation and concession (tokenism) of the worst sort. Full participation, not tokenism, is the basis for unity. Tokenism maintains exclusivity while feigning inclusivity.
Restoring the Church
Integrity within the Church will be restored when we recover models, methods and theologies of ministry and the Church that retrieve and restore the circle, family and relationship as central for not only understanding the Church but the created order itself.
The present state of our environment and created order signal the need for such a corrective. Women have a special role in guiding such a corrective.
Within the Church, an image that helps me to discern that role better is the image of the full participation of women enabling the recovery and building of “structures of grace” which would nurture and support reconciliation, wellness and a new sense of wholeness and holiness that we call salvation.