It was 1988 and I was in Mitchells Plain, a so-called ‘coloured’ (mixed raced) township in apartheid South Africa, where I had recently moved to live, as a newly ordained deacon in the diocese of Cape Town, the first ordained woman in the diocese. I was standing in line at the corner café, waiting to buy a loaf of bread. I heard someone say, ‘Good morning father’ and suddenly realized the woman was talking to me. Somewhat taken aback, as this had not
happened to me before, I stammered back a reply. Reflecting later, I realized that while it silenced me in surprise, this made complete sense to the woman. I was wearing a white clerical collar just like the other male priests she had seen before. She called other priests ‘father’ so why not this woman priest also? By doing so she gave me an equality that I could have missed if I’d got upset or angry about it. (Actually I thought it was funny and dined out on the story quite a few times). Clearly I was the same as the other ‘fathers’ she knew. She did not call me sister, though many since her have done so.
In those first two years while I was the only woman deacon in the diocese, still awaiting church legislation to be passed that would allow me to proceed towards ordination as a priest, this was not the last time I was called ‘father’, sometimes in a poking, unkind joking sort of way. Actually I was called many things. I gave this a lot of thought, and certainly my risk-taking parishioners who loved me to death, talked about it a lot. My rector Chris Davids, a rough and ready, down to earth, practical priest, always answered the phone by saying ‘It’s father here.’ He asked me what I wanted to be called. I said I preferred using just my first name, and he explained that culturally most township people would prefer to call me by a title, that for them it was showing a sign of respect. Wanting to be culturally sensitive, we agreed that people could call me ‘Reverend Wilma’, and definitely not Rev!
In the remarkable twenty months I spent in that parish, we went through challenging times, in those last dying months of apartheid ending. The bonds between us were close. As time went by, I was called ‘Reverend’, ‘Rev’ and by the daring, ‘Wilma.’ One said to me, “I’ll call you by your name but I still respect you ok?!” In the activist circles of Mitchells Plain I was sometimes called ‘Comrade Rev’ and sometimes on street corners just ‘hey whitey’.
A few years and many jubilations later, I had been ordained priest and was rector of the parish of Hopefield, a semi-rural parish where cultural sensitivities were even stronger than in Mitchells Plain and life was lived in Afrikaans, my second language. Here I became ‘Moeder’ (meaning mother) and perhaps because it is not my primary language, that somehow felt ok. Though I do not have children of my own, and though back then I was still young, it was not and is not a form of address that works for me. Best for me in that season, was the elderly woman from a nearby farm who came to see me, her beautiful face lined from the years of wear. She decided to call me ‘Moedertjie’ which is the diminutive form of mother, perhaps ‘little mother’ or ‘baby mother’ and that touched me deeply and I decided I quite liked it!
Why does it matter? It matters because language matters, the words and titles we choose reflect our theology of ministry, leadership and power. To call someone father or mother opens the door to all sorts of projections of parenthood, depending on the health or dysfunction of our own particular family systems. It can seduce a priest to an implicit paternalism, or encourage relationships of dependency or co-dependency, depending on a parishioner’s successful or unsuccessful process of individuation from their own parents. It can impart a power on a priest that is not the kind of kenotic power that we see in Jesus’ ministry in Phil 2:5-8, the one who gave up equality with God in order to serve the people of God.
We have so many titles in our Anglican church tradition! To every level of ministry, a title is assigned, showing one’s partcular place in the hierarchy of leadership and power. From the English parliamentarian tradition of ‘my lord bishop’ to ‘Most Revd’of bishops, to the ‘Very Revd’ for dean.
In the end, I still prefer to use just my name, though I recognize there are times when titles impart an equality in professional settings that is important to communicate. If all the male priests are ‘father’ and all the women priests are called by their first names, it can communicate an aspect of difference that can imply inequality.
Francis Cull, no longer alive, former spiritual director to Archbishop Desmond Tutu said this “I was baptized Francis. If it was good enough at my baptism it is good enough for everyone else.” I liked it then, I still like it now. If we have to use titles then as far as possible, let’s use functional titles such as ‘bishop’ or ‘dean’ rather than ‘Most Revd’ or ‘Very Revd’, which remind us of the hierarchy of the church rather than our equality in Christ.
