A Good ETS Story

Eight(?) years ago, I had a horrible, terrible, very bad, no good year. It was the year that proved how difficult it is to be a woman in Evangelical Christian Academia. I had gone through a 9-month hiring process with a well-known school. Everything was great until it wasn’t. It ended…badly. It ended because certain people in certain positions did not want a woman in the open position. But they waited until the final moment – the final vote – to make their true colors known; and they did so through very unjust and deceptive ways. (And, honestly, I have reason to believe that many at their school are still blind to their true colors.) It was a crash and burn moment for me. It made the rest of year exceedingly tough.

But I’m stubborn. So I showed up once again for ETS just eight months later, even though I felt as though it wasn’t worth the fight to survive in that world. I was very discouraged — adjuncting a little but having to work a non-academic job to feed myself, when just a few months prior I was led to believe that I would be a full-time professor making a decent living wage. Before I walked out of my hotel room that first morning, I prayed desperately – I needed encouragement to stick it out. God answered in spades through many kind people.

The first person I saw that day was Dr. Merrill who was as encouraging as always. Then I met a female professor. I wish I could remember who she was or what we talked about. But, I don’t. She knew nothing of my situation, she knew nothing about how a school with a great reputation treated me like crap because of my gender. But still she spoke words of encouragement that I desperately needed.  Then after that session, I walked to the exhibit hall. I saw a guy I knew from DTS and the next thing I knew I was in a conversation with him and several guys I did not know. The guys were all students at a certain Baptist Seminary that has a reputation for not looking kindly upon women. Yet they were all very welcoming and open to academic dialogue with me. I was in a daze – these were men that based on outward perceptions (which, obviously, can be quite wrong) would be in the same camp as the two guys who torpedoed me at the unnamed school. Then another scholar, a well-known male scholar, joined our dialogue huddle, then the original guys I was talking to left, and somehow I was walking the aisle of the exhibit hall talking to the remaining well-known male scholar. I don’t know what we talked about, but, again, that isn’t what mattered. What mattered was that I was accepted and included by both new (student) scholars and by established well-known scholars – even male scholars.

Those who made my life miserable that year have made a home for themselves at ETS. (I even ended up at the same table as the ring leader at an author’s lunch not long afterwards. Awkward!) But they do not control ETS. (Though, some in their camp are trying to.)

Today, I sometimes still question my decision to remain a part of ETS. I left the Baptist world – in part – because I could no longer endure the cost of fighting to survive in that world. But some from that particular thread of the Baptist world (and their allies) are fighting the same fight at ETS. Thus far I’ve remained in ETS because there is a strong contingent of men and women fighting for women to continue to be included. Unlike my previous church context, I do not fight alone; so I stay.

But I also stay because of that one ETS morning.