| Abstract | This pastoral theological project explores how clergy women construct and exercise agency to unsuffer themselves in situations in the church where their agency has been denied or minimized. A qualitative research interview method is utilized to pay attention to the voices and experiences of eight ELCA clergy women who identify as having experienced suffering and transformational movement toward unsuffering, particularly from silence to voice or diminished agency to increased agency. Using the pastoral theological method of revised critical correlation, these clergy women's experiences are brought into dialogue with feminist theory informed by poststructuralism, narrative counseling theory informed by social constructionism, and historical, feminist Lutheran, and pastoral theological perspectives of a theology of the cross. From this dialogue, a co-construction of agency from a feminist Lutheran pastoral theological perspective emerges, as does the surprising discovery that a theology of baptism is more influential than a theology of the cross in shaping these Lutheran clergy women's agency. These findings suggest that, by joining the theologies of the cross and baptism, constructive possibilities can be generated for pastoral theological practice that invites agency and contributes to the unsuffering of all people. |
