Last Friday, Rev. Dr. Eileen Campbell-Reed announced she has received two grants to update the 2018 State of Clergywomen Report. In the original 2018 report, Campbell-Reed sought to address a single question: How has the social location of ministers in the United States changed since women were first ordained in the 1960s?
The statistical data revealed in the report showed that much had changed. In 1960, women made up only 2.3% of clergy in the United States; by 2016, that number had grown to 20.7%. This finding was simply the tip of the iceberg of the data Campbell-Reed found.
The State of Clergywomen Report was the first report of its kind in over two decades. Since its publication, the 2018 report has been downloaded more than 120,000 times and used to support research in a plethora of books, journal articles, dissertations and other outlets.
In her recent announcement, Campbell-Reed indicated she felt the 2018 report needed an update. Much has happened in the last seven years since the publication of the initial report—most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID put us in a new era of ministry,” Campbell-Reed said in a phone interview earlier this week. That new era prompted her to ask: What happened to women in ministry during that time? The 2026 report will go even further than the 2022 report on Pandemic Pastoring went in answering that question. (Good Faith Media was a collaborator on the 2022 report.)
In addition to updating the previous data, the 2026 report will also expand its research sample to give more attention to the experiences of clergywomen of color and clergy who are LGBTQ+.
As necessary as diversifying this information is to gain a better understanding of the makeup of active clergy in the United States, not all institutions track this information or make it readily available. While the Association for Theological Schools (ATS) tracks gender on a male/female binary, it does not currently track data on students who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Campbell-Reed noted that finding data about queer clergy for the 2018 report proved challenging, as the information was “hard to find in 2016.”
Additionally, more than half of the historic black Baptist churches in the free church tradition do not keep any such records, particularly when it comes to who is serving as clergy. Campbell-Reed suggests this hesitancy is due, at least in part, to an understandable resistance to white structures that want to use that data to cause their communities harm.
“Anyone can take data and do with them whatever they want, for good or ill; numbers are numbers. You really have to earn trust.”
To navigate these challenges, Campbell-Reed plans to work with individual institutions—seminaries, churches, and denominations alike—that have been collecting this data themselves for some time.
With the aid of a $55,000 Grant for Researchers from the Louisville Institute for 2025-27, Campbell-Reed has already begun her research in partnership with Vanderbilt Divinity School, where she will serve one year as a Research Associate Professor. She also received a short-term writing residency and Killian McDonnell Fellowship at the Collegeville Institute in Collegeville, Minnesota.
For those who want to receive updates as Campbell-Reed conducts her research, she said, “The best thing they can do is download the 2018 report. They’ll be subscribed to an email list specifically for updates on the research.”
More information about Campbell-Reed’s work and how to contribute to the data can be found here.
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
