Are former Catholic women over-represented among Protestant clergy?

Abstract

Have a disproportionate number of women converted from Catholicism and been ordained in other denominations? This paper compares the percentage of former Catholics among female and male clergy in ten Protestant denominations. Data are taken from the 1994 Ordained Women and Men Study and include 2,162 women and 1,807 men. When aggregating denominations, female clergy are indeed more likely than their male counterparts to have been raised Catholic: 5.0 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively. However, this may reflect a broader likelihood for female clergy to be converts. Within-denomination analyses reveal that women are significantly more likely to have been raised Catholic in just one of the ten denominations. From 1980 to 1994, 13.7 percent of women and 5.4 percent of men ordained to the Episcopal priesthood were former Catholics. Reprinted by permission of Association for the Sociology of Religion