Generational and Gender-Based Trauma in Protestant Church Culture

After ten years of serving as a solo pastor and head-of-staff for two Presbyterian congregations, I have seen both the blessings of faith-based community and the betrayal of a church system that imposes unhealthy expectations of servant leadership. Having left active ministry, I now support Gen-X/Millennial clergy women as a leadership coach and doctoral researcher, where I seek to unpack the harmful gender narratives and generational trauma within Protestant church culture.  
 
Generational trauma is often understood as the emotional stress of an event being passed down to future generations. However, trauma can also be experienced through prolonged exposure to oppressive realities, particularly for marginalized individuals and communities. Within congregational life, generational and gender-based trauma can be seen through the behaviors of toxic masculinity as well as the existence of a persistent mother-daughter wound between different generations of women. Both of these social dynamics create a precarious leadership space for Gen-X/Millennial clergy women as they seek to live out their individual calls to ministry. 
 
The following discussion is based on my PhD dissertation research on the psychological safety of Gen-X/Millennial clergy women and decisions to leave active ministry. The findings were drawn from 35 in-depth interviews and narrative surveys from clergy women representing eight different mainline Protestant denominations.  I am incredibly grateful for each of the women who trusted me with their experiences and made this research possible. 
 
Toxic Masculinity:
 
A common thread of generational trauma within Protestant church life is toxic masculinity, which can be expressed through a male senior pastor, co-pastor, lay-leader or church member, whose understanding of self requires the subjugation and silencing of younger clergy women colleagues. During the research interviews that I conducted, one clergy woman participant defined toxic masculinity as:
 
Using your maleness to exert power and control over people and situations within systems that have historically been in your favor. And exploiting that to gain more power and to oppress other people in some way.
 
Clergy women experience this exploitation of power in many ways, including feeling silenced during church board and committee meetings, being penalized for working collaboratively with others, questioning unilateral decision-making, feeling delegitimized when seeking pay equity, or being verbally attacked for setting healthy boundaries.
 
One participant described an overall lack of empathy and emotional intelligence from a male senior pastor, which reflected certain narcissistic behavior patterns:
 
An important part of my pastoral work is being attentive to the emotional sense in a room, paying attention to what is happening and being able to tell is the vibe is changing.  I don't know if that was his personality or if he had diagnosable realities in his encountering of the world. But he was not aware of those things. He would just walk all over people or ignore people's pain or not intentionally, and just could not understand the dynamics in the room.
 
Toxic masculinity can often be masked through charismatic leadership, which several clergy women noted as a primary element that prevented accountability within the church system.  One clergy woman described this lack of accountability, noting:
 
The male colleague that I was working with had terrible boundaries but he was such a charismatic personality that he was able to manipulate the congregation somehow into thinking that everything that he did was my fault.
 
Another clergy woman stated:
 
I experienced a lot of gaslighting, lying and manipulation, and financial issues within the church where it became very apparent that there was a history at the congregation of women taking the blame for things, for decisions that were being made by men in leadership. Not only were men in leadership blaming women for it, but the congregation was continuing to allow it happen because they thought they needed to protect their male leader. He was a young, handsome, charismatic man, whose family was wealthy and well-known in the community and who was married to a beloved public-school teacher.  There were a lot of layers of complicity.
 
Perceptions of Young Clergy Women as an “Emasculating Disruptor”:
 
In the face of strong narratives of masculine authority and emotional insecurity, younger clergy women who exhibit confidence, competence, agency, and intelligence can be perceived as an “emasculating disruptor.” One participant felt this in the following encounter:
 
Sunday morning, the senior pastor comes in and places his hands heavily on my shoulders in front of another deacon. He said, “Don't you ever undermine my authority again like that. You are not the senior pastor. I am.” I just looked at him and I said, “We will talk about this later.” When it's not five minutes before worship with a crowd watching and in front of staff. When we discussed it later, I said “I did not usurp your authority. You didn't show up for a meeting. You know darn well I am not trying to be the senior pastor here. So what is going on?”And he finally said, “Well, you're right. I just have to admit you intimidate me.” I said, “Well, that's a you problem, not a me problem.”
 
Young clergy women who are self-differentiated and unwilling to comply with social expectations of female subservience, are often penalized either publicly as illustrated in the above example, or instructed to behave in a more meek and conciliatory manner that reinforces the male pastor’s authority. One clergy woman described this process of conditioning and punishment after having requested a fair pay raise and cost-of-living adjustment so that she could afford to live in the same community as the church:  
 
The Session agreed to call a congregational meeting to increase my salary but the senior pastor informed me that, “It comes with the stipulation that you're not eligible for a pay increase next year.” I said that was disappointing and I got hounded for even saying that. Later at the congregational meeting, the congregation also thought it was disappointing and they changed it so that I could get a pay raise the next year. After the meeting, he was visibly angry that the associate had gotten that large of a salary increase and demanded I write apology letters to each of the members of Session.
 
Ingrained gender narratives such as male superiority and toxic masculinity are a form of generational trauma as they are behaviors and self-identities that are taught, absorbed, and then played out in relationships with others from one generational to another. While the individual male pastors described above may not personally understand this kind of projection as a form of trauma, it is often the case that aggressive and controlling behaviors overcompensate for feelings of inadequacy and emotional neglect in an individual’s own personal or family histories.[1] While this explanation by no means excuses these abusive behaviors, it illustrates how generational trauma is passed down and projected onto younger clergy women, whose very presence in the congregational system can be seen by some as an affront to the dominant male narrative.
 
Mother-Daughter Wound     
 
Ingrained gender narratives are not only seen between male church leaders and their younger clergy women colleagues, but also in the inter-generational dynamics between Gen-X/Millennial clergy women and certain older women congregants and denominational leaders. Each of the research participants noted that they experienced persistent criticism, judgement and blame by a handful of women parishioners and/or denominational leaders within the baby-boomer generation. Research participants ages 37-45 noted significantly adversarial relationships with certain women ages 60-75, roughly representing a mother-daughter dyad.
 
One clergy woman described an older female church staff member as undermining her ministry through “various levels of disrespect and high levels of expectation.”  She noted further:
 
I didn’t know about the concept of mother wound until very recently, maybe the last couple of years, and I'm pretty sure that's some of the dynamics there. This woman has sisters and her father died when she was very young. From what I gather, she would pit her sisters against each other to see who she could get on her side. I saw this in our work together, where there was a lot of gossip and slander.  She was constantly resisting and tearing people down. And if you weren't on her team, then you were against her.
 
Insights can be drawn from Rosjke Hasseldine’s work on the mother-daughter wound and her premise that when women’s voices are silenced and their needs are neglected in the multi-generational family system, culture, and wider society, mothers and daughters end up fighting over who gets to be heard and whose needs get to be met.[2]

The resentment that some older women parishioners project upon younger clergy women may be grounded in their own feelings of disappointment and lack of fulfillment in their own personal lives due to prevailing gender expectations of female self-sacrifice within their own generational experience. This dynamic is further reinforced by what has been recently termed the “human giver syndrome,” in which certain individuals and identities, namely women of childbearing age, are expected to “give to humanity through their time, attention, affection and bodies.”[3] In social systems that perpetuate this hetero-normative ethos, those who deviate from the gendered expectation of the female giver experience social rejection and punishment.[4]   

Perceptions of Young Clergy Women as a “Dissident Daughter:”

The ability of Gen-X/Millennial clergy women to exercise authority and establish clear boundaries around their personal and pastoral lives is extremely destabilizing for some older women parishioners who have internalized their own generation’s gendered expectations of female self-sacrifice. One clergy woman described this dynamic in the following way: 
 
The complication comes when I have to exert authority, as someone who is seen as a daughter. It becomes a cognitive dissonance, because children ‘aren’t supposed to speak out against their parents.’ At least in some contexts, right? So, when I would exert authority or set a boundary, that's when things would get mean and nasty. It’s a form of infantilizing. I'm a child to them. I'm not an adult and I'm not their pastor. I am the representation of their own children for them in their mind. And if I step out of line, then that's when there's going to be problems. Whatever that line is for them.
 
The idea of the dissident daughter points to the idea that young clergy women who set healthy boundaries, and who exert agency and pastoral authority, are seen by some as rebelling against established behavior norms absorbed by older women. One clergy woman described an exchange that she had with the female senior pastor who expected the younger colleague to take on additional responsibilities during her Sabbatical. 
 
A few weeks before the female senior pastor was supposed to take Sabbatical, she still hadn't found someone. And she again went to the personal committee and told them that I would do it. But then I got on a call with her and the church moderator where they were trying to convince me to do it. And I said, ‘No, I have made it clear that I cannot do that. It's not fair to the church and it's not possible for me.’ And she became verbally abusive with berating belittling rants, which for the first time someone else hearing it. And that was just a watershed moment because after that phone call ended, I had a one-on-one phone call with the moderator who validated for me that this was a form of abuse.

Re-Writing the Narrative:
 
The paradox of generational and gender-based trauma in today’s churches is that in many cases, young clergy women as well as non-binary clergy are offering alternative leadership models that can very much address these systemic inter-personal wounds. However, such inclusive and collaborative leadership approaches are often faced with intense opposition, resentment and criticism, among those who seek to perpetuate a single dominant narrative.  
 
Among the clergy women who have experienced both acute and chronic psychological abuse in their ministry settings, positive leadership traits they consistently exhibited included:

• Permission-giving and inclusive approaches to leadership
• Bringing more voices to the table
• Power-with instead of power-over
• Transparency and holding others accountable
• Relationality alongside healthy boundaries

 
In analyzing these leadership qualities and strengths within my research, it became clear that these approaches were most threatening to those who have benefited from patriarchal models of power, ego, and control of a single narrative.  Insecure men, whether denominational leaders, congregants, clergy, or church staff, may have felt their narratives of masculinity were threatened by these more expansive forms of collaborative leadership. Older women with internalized sexism may have felt threatened by these leadership qualities, as it often led to shifts in ministerial responsibilities over which certain older women had claimed ownership as an important part of their identity. 
 
Where the Healing Begins:
 
The testimonies gathered for this qualitative study on clergy women boundaries and psychological safety, are just a fraction of the growing number of Gen-X/Millennial women clergy who have experienced or are currently experiencing this form inter-generational and gender-based trauma. As new generations of clergy continue to learn and apply more expansive and inclusive approaches of leadership, it is up to the surrounding congregational and denominational systems to hold accountable those individuals and approaches to ministry that work to subjugate and silence the next generation of women and non-binary clergy. 
 
It is my hope that through this research, efforts will be made to

• Professionalize and adequately train church and denominational human resource entities to fully recognize these dynamics
• Expand seminary curriculum to address these social dynamics within Protestant church culture
• Increase denominational advocacy in cases where weak regional church governance re-victimizes clergy women who are seeking support
• Standardize severance negotiation practices including the elimination of non-disclosure agreements
• Require ongoing boundary training for congregations that is comparable to that which is required of ordained clergy and
• Build congregational awareness and the need for cultural change with regard to ingrained gender-identity narratives and their harmful impact on the psychological safety and inter-personal boundaries of younger clergy women.

[1] Frost, K. (2019). Exploring Girard's concerns about human proximity: Attachment and mimetic
   theory in conversation. Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture, 26(1):47-63.

[2] Hasseldine, R. (2017). The mother-daughter puzzle: A new generational understanding of the mother-daughter relationship. Women’s Bookshelf Publishing, 4.

[3] Nagoski, E. & Nagoski, A.  (2020). Burnout: The secret of unlocking the stress cycle. Ballatine, xiii.

[4] Eagly A.H., Karau S.J. (2002). Role congruity theory of prejudice toward female leaders.
Psychological Review, 109(3), 573-98.