- Collection:
- Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives
- Title:
- Adams talks about becoming pastor for a large congregation (2:30)
- Creator:
- Adams, Joanna Moseley, 1944-
- Contributor to Resource:
- De Catanzaro, Christine D.
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2004-05-12
- Subject:
- Feminism
Social movements
Women's studies - Location:
- United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
- Medium:
- audiocassettes
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1944, Adams spent much of her childhood in Meridian, Mississippi. She entered Emory University in 1962 and graduated with a degree in English in 1966. During her senior year at Emory she married her classmate Alfred B. Adams III. Her husband attended Emory Law School and the couple had two children (1968 and 1970). After a few years of teaching at Grady High School in Atlanta, Adams entered Columbia Theological Seminary, graduating with honors in 1979. In the same year, she became Associate Pastor and Minister at Central Presbyterian Church in downtown Atlanta. She held this position until 1986, when she took over as pastor of North Decatur Presbyterian Church in Decatur, GA. In 1991, Reverend Adams was appointed Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in northwest Atlanta, becoming the only women to hold this position in a parish of this size in the United States. She held the position for ten years. After serving as the Co-Pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, she returned to the Atlanta area in 2003. Author of numerous articles and sermons, Adams has served in leadership positions on several church and community boards, including Columbia Theological Seminary and Agnes Scott College.
The granddaughter and great granddaughter of ministers, Adams describes her love of God from a very early age, saying that one of her favorite childhood games was "preaching." She believed, however, "that one had to choose either motherhood and marriage, or service to God. You had to go one way or the other." Adams did go on to be both a wife and mother and also was a minister. She discusses the history of women in the Presbyterian Church, and how that has affected her expectations. She also talks about the Equal Rights Amendment and how natural it was for her, as a Christian, to support it. Adams describes the pivotal role her church (Central Presbyterian) played in establishing homeless shelters in downtown Atlanta during the 1987 crisis in homelessness. She goes on to describe how, in 1991, she took over as Senior Pastor for Trinity Presbyterian Church, becoming the first woman in the United States to be in charge of a church of that size. Adams talks about her experiences there, and the importance of women leading in large parishes, stating that although women have come a long way in the Presbyterian Church, there is still in fact a "stained glass ceiling." "And when I think how much simpler my life would have been if I had just belonged to the book club, but I did know that I had a purpose."
Transcript of this excerpt: JA: Women were not, and still are not in any significant number, leading large congregations. They just aren’t. There are many women, of course, who are pastors in churches, and size and quality do not necessarily equate. So I’m not using -- that only criteria of size to whether or not a church is important. But the truth is, there is a stained glass ceiling and it’s quite real, and very few women have the opportunity to lead churches of significant size. I really -- and I have kind of a – I’m kind of a change agent kind of person. I have a good bit of energy and a good bit of passion. I began to feel a genuine sense of call. It seemed to me that if anybody could pull off succeeding this long-founding pastor’s tenure, that the fact that I was a woman really might be an advantage. I’ve always found it an advantage to be a woman, just because it’s good to be a woman. But that you wouldn’t really be able to compare the two of us, because we would just -- you have an apple and you have an orange. Actually, that turned out to be true. I’m quite different from my predecessor. But that congregation – it’s very interesting that a southern church would break through this stained glass ceiling. There’s one other woman, on the west coast, who had served at -- I think Trinity was 12 or 13 hundred members when I went. And so, it was -- there might have been one church for about a year, the one with the woman who was there, at that church on the west coast -- left. So for virtually the whole time I was at Trinity, it was the largest church with a woman as its leader in North America. A southern church! That is a wonderful combination of the best of traditionalism, but a real openness to the new things that God is doing. Those are – that’s a marvelous combination. While I was at Trinity, that congregation doubled in size, tripled its budget and built 25 million dollars worth of new building. So I think that I’ve, in terms of those quantifiable aspects -- I think that it has been demonstrated that a woman can be effective in leading a large parish. And you know, I -- That is how I have lived out my own sense of commitment to women in the church, women in the world. My particular role has been to try to be as effective as I could be, as a Christian minister, administrator, pastor, and preacher. That’s my contribution, rather than becoming a spokesperson for feminist theology, although I am very influenced by it. I’ve been into serving. Sandra Day O’Connor doesn’t get up every day thinking about, “Now, here I am, a woman on the Supreme Court.” You know, she’s there to be an effective justice. That’s how I approach my work. CDC: I see. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/coles/id/2033
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/coles:2033/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Bibliographic Citation (Cite As):
- Cite as: Rev. Joanna Moseley Adams oral history interview, Georgia Women's Movement Oral History Project, W008, Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives, Special Collections and Archives, University Library, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Ga.
- Extent:
- 20 pages (two audio cassettes)
- Original Collection:
- Georgia Women's Movement Project Collection
Donna Novak Coles Georgia Women's Movement Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
