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Unitarian Church of Sharon
4 N. Main St.
Sharon, MA 02067
781-784-3652
E-mail UCS
A Day in the Life of Our Partner Minister
E-mail update Feb. 26, 2003
Dear Friends!
I'm very happy to inform you that on 21st of February, at ten o'clock
in the morning our family grove with one more person, whose name is Reka.
She has 3,05 kg and 50 cm. Erika and she are well and we almost can't
wait to bring them home. Erika and Reka need to be in the hospital 10
more days.
Best wishes from the happiest father in the world. Levente
From a talk by Beth McGregor, part of the Goodwill Alliance
service on “Women’s Work,” April 27, 2002
Ministry,
as I'm sure Deborah could tell you, is not an easy calling, though it's
a deeply rewarding and important one. Women have always ministered, and
have often found a place in churches to lead and share their best gifts
when the professional world offered them no place to do it. But women
have only recently gained full acceptance into the professional clergy,
even in liberal religions like ours, and they still face second-class
citizenship or outright exclusion in many religions. The first woman ministers
in any institution are true pioneers. I want to share a glimpse into the
life of one woman minister — Erika Demeter, the minister who serves
our partner church in Gyulakuta, Romania.
Amanda and I spent a weekend in her home and began to know this remarkable
young woman and how she has answered the call to ministry. Erika is 29;
her husband, Levente Lazar, also a minister, is 32, and their son, little
Leve, just turned three. Erika serves three congregations, Levente two,
and they live in the parsonage of Levente's larger church. Progressive,
feminist, savvy, Erika is part of the new wave in a ministry that barely
survived under Communist repression and that operates in a traditional,
male-dominated culture. She is one of eight young women currently ministering
in the 200-plus Unitarian churches in Transylvania, and 11 more will soon
graduate from the seminary. They, and their allies like Levente, gently
but resolutely challenge old boundaries and call for new visions.
It was Saturday, and Erika was cooking, taking care of Leve, and memorizing
her sermon while Levente showed us around. (In Transylvanian churches,
the ministers don't refer to notes when they preach.) She served a delicious
homemade soup made with eggs from their own chickens and cabbage from
their own garden; they need to grow a lot of their own food to help make
ends meet, and starter seedlings for vegetables covered the windowsills.
She had a cold and was worried about how her voice would hold up--her
church has no organ or piano and she has to lead the hymns herself. We
talked about her life as people came in and out of her kitchen. "They
told me in seminary that all the walls of the minister's house are made
of glass," she said, "but I didn't understand it until I lived
here."
In Transylvania, as it used to be in America 40 years ago, the unpaid
position of minister's wife is an important and expected role. "I
was called to be a minister, not a minister's wife," she insisted,
recounting her efforts to persuade the women of Levente's church that
she didn't need to be president of their women's group; she had finally
compromised and agreed to be a co-president. What was it like to be a
woman minister? Her internship was tough. She order to live with Levente,
she refused to stay in her church's parsonage, and thus had a long drive
over very rough dirt roads ("and they never offered to pay for gas,"
she noted.) This trek got even more uncomfortable when she was pregnant.
The old minister who supervised her didn't think much of women ministers
— much less pregnant ones — and made things difficult for her.
But it's better now, she says; her congregations really accept her as
their minister.
That in itself can be a problem, since in village cultures the minister
is traditionally given total authority and responsibility over all affairs
of the congregation — not the ideal from a feminist perspective.
She's working with her congregations to consciously share power and and
have them take on more responsibility.
There are a lot of changes she'd like to make. For instance, she'd like
to see reform of the traditional seminary curriculum, with its strong
academic orientation, which gave her too much Greek and Hebrew and not
enough psychology and practical training. Once another couple of classes
graduate from seminary and a few more old ministers retire, said her husband,
the balance of power will begin to shift our way.
She'd also like to have another child, though she had complications in
her first birth and her doctor advises against it. Both she and Levente
need to work to bring in enough income, and both are strongly committed
to their work. Trying to balance work and family life is a struggle which
they try to share. But Levente was tied up all Saturday evening hosting
a delegation from a Hungarian partner village, so she was left with two
guests to feed, entertain and bed down in her living room, and a cranky
child who didn't like sharing mom's attention and wouldn't go to sleep.
The milk she had fetched fresh from the neighbor's cow had to be boiled;
while she was distracted, the milk boiled over on the stove. Sunday morning
she had exchanged her sweat shirt and stretch pants for a business suit
and robe, and was gently dignified as she led worship and discussed business
with board members in her main congregation. Then a home-cooked lunch
and a full afternoon, including two hours of translating for our meeting
with the Gyulakuta congregation. When we returned home in the evening,
her first glance went to the piled-high kitchen sink. "Oh, the dishes,"
she sighed.
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