A lesbian who is divorced. A single mother who adopts a child of another race. A career-driven woman too busy working and traveling to settle down and start a family.
Behind the pulpits of the Unitarian Universalist Church, women such as these — who likely wouldn't be first choice to lead even prayer circles in fundamental congregations — are ministering to flocks nationwide.
Acceptance, the mantra of Unitarian Universalists, is drawing them to the pulpit in droves.
Since April, Unitarian Universalist female pastors have outnumbered their male counterparts 431 to 422 nationally. In Florida pulpits, where as recently as 1996 there were only five women Unitarian ministers, they now outnumber men 17 to 14.
Tolerance also is leading to radical change at the church's highest levels.
"It is likely I could be the last straight white male president for a while," said John Buehrens, outspoken leader of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Boston, who will soon step down after serving two four-year terms. "There are three candidates to succeed me — an African American, an openly gay minister and a woman."
Made up of about 216,000 mostly white, middle-class free-thinkers, the Unitarian Universalist Church has a flexible belief system: It encourages the search for truth and meaning in life and recognizes the worth of every being, every religion and every question about faith.
Such openness has helped the church flourish where most religious institutions and many secular corporations fall short — attracting, hiring and retaining women in high-profile jobs.
But the shift has been relatively recent. Though the church has ordained women since the 1800s, numbers plummeted during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce and men in the church began to oppose female ministers. By 1972, only 3 percent of Unitarian clergy were women.
The birth of modern feminism changed that.
The Rev. Gail Tapscott, 53, who dabbles in mythology and collects dream catchers, is among the leaders. A former Presbyterian who didn't enter the seminary until age 38, she was recently installed as the new minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Lauderdale.
As a 12-year-old, she asked a minister for advice on entering the clergy. "He looked at me like I said I wanted to be a lion tamer," Tapscott said. Then, in a righteous Mississippi twang, he told her, "I think you'd be a great religious educator one day."
As more women reach the pulpit, Unitarian congregations are learning to be more accommodating about family issues that their pastors face.
Like the thudding of the Rev. Harris Riordan's biological clock. Divorced and 56, the New Yorker was desperate to have a baby and felt confident enough in her congregation's support at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton to adopt.
"I wanted a family even if I didn't have a husband, and I felt my life wouldn't really be complete without it. I had some love to give."
On a recent day, members kept her baby daughter, Margaret, entertained as the Rev. Dorothy Emerson, a visiting community minister and one of the church's lesbian clergy, gave a sermon on the history of women in the church.
"The women have leaped from their spheres. And instead of fixed stars, shoot as comets along and are setting the world by the ears!" said Emerson,
quoting a poem by Unitarian "foremother" Maria Weston Chapman.
But it wasn't always so cozy. The Rev. Marni Harmony, 51, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Orlando, the state's oldest Unitarian Church founded by a woman in 1912, recalls feeling isolated after her ordination in 1974.
"Most of resistance came from women," said Harmony, also a lesbian, who had served as a minister in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Some women were intimidated by her youth and didn't want her working closely with their spouses. "Women were used to a 50-year-old man with a beard who was large and powerful. I was 5 foot 2 and small with long, straight hair. I looked like a '70s hippie."
Earning the respect of her peers in the community was just as hard.
"I would go to clergy gatherings and be the only woman there," she said. "The leader would not make eye contact with me. I pretty much got it that I wasn't welcome."
By 1988, when Harmony arrived in Florida, congregations had become less wary. Thanks to efforts by the Unitarian Universalist Association's Affirmative-Action for Women in Ministry committee, a group she joined, more Unitarians had been exposed to female ministers as guest speakers and job candidates.
At the same time, the church has made itself a national advocate of equal rights and equal pay, steps few churches — or businesses — dominated by a patriarchal hierarchy have taken.
In 1977, the church's General Assembly adopted a resolution to ban sexism and to make hymnals and religious literature inclusive of women — including references to the Creator, traditionally referred to as male in songs and prayers.
Ten years later, another resolution was passed to close the wage gap between men and women in the church, a disparity of 20 percent to 30 percent in some cases. It helped to raise the wages for undervalued jobs that had been held predominantly by women.
Salaries for ministers currently average about $45,000. Benefits and retirement packages are doled out by congregations that can afford them.
The choices are a testimony, says Buehrens, to the progress the North American church has made since it consolidated in 1961 in a marriage of faith and respect between the ideals of the Universalists, a church group organized in 1793 and the first denomination to ordain women in the late 1800s, and the Unitarians, who organized in 1825.
Landing jobs in large churches can be a formidable feat in many denominations.
The Roman Catholic Church does not ordain women as priests, a sore point for some Catholics.
Baptists in the South largely still frown on the idea of female pastors.
In the Episcopal Church, women, who have been accepted into the priesthood since 1974, say they still face a stained-glass ceiling, especially older women who choose the ministry as a second career.
"Women and racial ethnics still have barriers, just like they do in the secular world," said Ann Smith, director of women in mission and ministry for the Episcopal Church. "The most sought after is the white male who is married and has children."
But as clergy continue to retire and replacements grow scarce, doors are slowly opening for women, who comprise 21.2 percent or more than 1,600 of 7,776 active priests and deacons-in-training for the clergy, according to the Episcopal Church Center's deployment office. In the church's Southeast Florida Diocese there are 24 active women priests compared to about 100 men.
"I think they can always get jobs, but do they get high-paying jobs? No. Are they being called to the wealthy parishes? No. They can work as an assistant, or for a small parish or a mission," says Smith. "We still have dioceses that don't have clergywomen and are opposed to it."
The Rev. Priscilla Felisky Whitehead hoped to land a job in a large church after she finished seminary in 1984. Even with a background as speaker and researcher in international Christian missions, she spent a year trying to find the right match in the United Church of Christ, which has 7,919 clergymen and 2,374 clergywomen.
"The only feedback I got from anyone was that I would be too intimidating to certain senior pastors," Whitehead said. "Many senior pastors work more easily with pliable women whom they can mentor and who have less of an established ministerial presence."
Whitehead found her current job at The Church by the Sea in Bal Harbour 10 years ago. She is the first female associate pastor at the church of about 700 people. "There were people here who admitted to me that they were wary," she said.
As enrollment of Unitarian Universalist women in the seminary continues to surpass that of men, even some of the flock's open-minded followers are concerned that female ministers will come to wield too much influence. Two-thirds of the 500 students pursuing their master's degrees in Unitarian-affiliated schools are women.
"There are always pockets of resistance," said Ellen Brandenburg, ministerial education director. "There is a concern that we would suffer the feminization of the ministry, but by and large the entry of women into our ministry has been seen as a good thing. At this point, it's a fact of life."