Susan Armer remembers as a small girl feeling a sense of awe as she looked at the sweep of mountains that surrounded her family's Arizona ranch.
Something big, a great yet kindly power, had to be responsible for all of this, she sensed.The same sense flooded her when, at age 12, the family joined the Episcopal Church. This time, the feeling was anchored to a recognition of God.
Decades later the sense of being awed by the presence of God returned in the form of a quiet yet constant "little" urging.
"It was no Damascus Road experience that said this was not where I was supposed to be," Armer said.
But it was a steady nudging that she came to recognize as God calling her to service. In 1984 Armer, with the encouragement of a retired priest, entered an Episcopalian seminary.
Today, the Rev. Canon Susan Armer of the Cathedral Church of St. Mark in Salt Lake City is one of thousands of women priests in the Episcopal Church. The church marks a milestone on July 29 with the 20th anniversary of the unauthorized ordination of 11 women as priests.
Known as the "Philadelphia 11," the women created a storm of controversy, but the act is also credited by some as the catalyst that led the Episcopal Church two years later to formally approve ordination of women.
With that 1976 decision, the Episcopal Church joined a growing number of faiths that view representation of God as a matter of spirituality rather than gender.
Faiths that adhere to that view range from the American Baptist Churches to the Salvation Army. The churches' traditions of women clergy are as varied.
Some are newly born to the experience, such as the Church of England, which ordained its first group of women priests in March.
In some churches, such as the Congregational Church/United Church of Christ, men and women have always had equal access to the pulpit.
The change in roles has come gradually elsewhere. The Methodist Church voted to allow women clergy in 1956; the Presbyterian Church in the United States followed suit in 1964. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion ordained the first female rabbi in 1972.
Theologies aside, these denominations share a common view of the priestly role.
"It's the idea that Jesus represented God in human form - his humanity, not his maleness," Armer said.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches do not ordain women and, based on the prophetic and biblical teachings they adhere to, have expressed no intention of doing so.
An exact count of ordained women in the United States is difficult to determine, particularly because of differences in what ordination signifies from one faith to another. Also, many ordained women never actually serve as clergy, landing jobs instead in such positions as education directors.
According to Adair Lummis, research associate and faculty member at the Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, there were 21,000 women ordained clergy in 1986.
She estimates that the number of ordained women is now approaching 35,000 to 40,000.
"To be sure, that is still a lot less than the men, but still you can see the growth that is occurring," Lummis said.
The future trend is indicated by what's happening in seminaries. In 1992, women represented 31 percent of total enrollment at schools affiliated with the Association of Theological Schools.
At individual schools, the mix of women and men is approaching 50/50, Armer said.
Despite these gains in overall numbers, many ordained women say they encounter a "stained glass ceiling" when it comes to landing key leadership positions.
"There are fewer churches having two clergy, which is really hurting women," Lummis said. "For the available, full-time positions, the preference seems to be going to men."
The Rev. Caryl Marsh, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Salt Lake City, believes the progress within her denomination has been good. Of the 800 individuals serving as Episcopal bishops, the highest-ranking position within a diocese, five are women.
Because it takes 10 to 15 years for a priest to receive sufficient ranking to be considered for bishoprics, significant numbers of women are only now approaching eligibility for such status, Marsh said.
But data are coming in about how women fare at lower levels of leadership.
A study of women priests in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. found that in 1985, 45 percent of the women served as assistants or associates.
Similar statistics show up in studies conducted by other faiths that ordain women. Of 138 women ministers surveyed in the late '80s by the United Church of Christ, 61 percent reported they'd been turned down for jobs because of their gender.
"Where it continues to be difficult is for women to find positions as rectors in substantial parishes," Marsh said. "What is happening now is the church is continuing to perpetuate the stereotype of women in assisting roles rather than in power positions.
"That says women can only go so far and then the stained glass ceiling is there," Marsh said.