In a 2019 essay for The Atlantic, Akiko Busch asks, “How might a woman’s identity evolve when she can go unrecognized, when she is no longer under the gaze of others?”
The essay asserts an ultimate freedom of choice: because women experience less public scrutiny as they age, they entertain even more choices about when and how they are seen. With age comes agency and responsibility, exactly because a “reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world.”
When The Atlantic ran the article again a couple of weeks ago, I was intrigued. As a woman firmly rooted in her mid-forties, I live in that place of in-between — in the middle of the old and the young, some might say, as close to death as I am to birth. I no longer make up the target demographic for long-lash mascara and beachy-waves hair tutorials. Advertisements now targeted at me instead are a combination of high-waisted jeans, night creams for mature skin, and peri-menopausal remedies.
Ask Busch, and she might nod her head approvingly: I, too, am becoming increasingly invisible to society as the clock ticks down, on toward that inevitable last day.
Make no mistake: I am not dismayed, for I see the many benefits that come with age. I know who I am; I do not offer apologies for the wisdom that is mine, for the most authentic human being I am becoming, day after day, after blessed day. But as a Christian, I can’t help but wonder if the same is true in the church.
As women age, do they, too, become increasingly invisible to the faith communities they’ve long called home, due in part to the strangled holds of complementarian theology that seek to silence the voices of women? Or do our aging matriarchs hold even greater agency than some might care to admit, even if their efforts fail to penny a profit or yield their picture on the “About” page of a church website?
“In many of our churches, aging women act as a sticky, embalming glue that holds the whole building together.”
The answer, it seems, is as complicated as the approximately 45,000 denominations that make up global Christianity. But in many of our churches, aging women act as a sticky, embalming glue that holds the whole building together. Without their guiding presence and faithful consistency, the church would fail — even as they grow increasingly invisible within her walls.
Perhaps we must start by asking who bakes the bread and washes the linens and opens the doors of our food pantries. Who serves on the committees and decorates the sanctuary with wreathes and garland and bunches of flowers alike? Who skins her knees, praying for those who have been forgotten, and holds the babies so Mama and Daddy can attend the 11 o’clock service?
Who, if not the women, and more specifically, the women who have chosen to devote their time to the cause and to the people, even as their shoulders carry a weighted cloak of invisibility?
It is she, the aging woman. She may not always be the face of the church, nor may she ever carry the title of pastor, but her power lies in her ability not to have to be seen and noticed in the first place. Her power, it turns out, comes from her uncanny ability to make herself invisible — yet still hold unspeakable impact on a people and a place.
Perhaps this comes as no surprise, given that “the average Southern Baptist adult was 55.2 years old in 2020, ranking the faith group the 13th oldest among 45 studied in the nation.” Among the oldest congregants in the U.S., another study found 32% of independent Baptists are between the ages of 50 and 64, and 19% are over the age of 65; likewise, 29% of American Baptists are between the ages of 50 and 64, and 19% are over the age of 65.
“Her power lies in her ability not to have to be seen and noticed in the first place.”
It’s not all that different for clergy as well. The 2024 National Congregations Study found the share of lead pastors ages 54 or younger has steadily been decreasing since the late 1990s. In 1998, 61% of evangelical Protestant pastors were 54 or younger, but the number dropped to 41% 20 years later. Black Protestant and Mainline Protestant denominations fared the same, with the under-54 clergy dropping from 62% to 30% and 69% to 41% respectively.
Of the aforementioned study, researchers ask whether denominations should sound an alarm with the reality that “clergy will increasingly be of an older generation than those in the population the church is trying to reach.” But for purposes of this conversation, when it comes to the inevitable invisibility of aging women in the church, the deed already has been done. The wheels already have been set in motion.
How, then, might we respond?
Perhaps it starts with recognition. Just as aging is normal, we must recognize how society tends to pin invisibility upon aging women. If those over the age of 50 make up the greatest demographic in our church, then we must embrace the reality of the present — that much of the work happening in the church right now happens because of these seemingly invisible women, and that perhaps part of the work moving forward is to remove the hidden, clouded cloak.
After all, these women often are the ones who remember. As blogger Michele Morin writes, “We remember past decisions that went well — and those that didn’t. We remember that it’s been 10 years since someone’s sweet son or daughter passed away, leaving a broken-hearted parent still grieving, so we send a card or make a call. We remember the time when a church potluck consisted of two lasagnas and a multitude of nothing but brownies, so we suggest a purposeful sign-up list.” For Morin and her peers, it is imperative that aging women not be made obsolete, not when there is a holiness to remembering and to preserving the legacy of faith.
But perhaps for all of us, we respond by saying thank you. “Thank you,” we say. “You hold this place together. You make us a people, a family, a community.” We recognize these women for the glue they are, for the many ways their leadership and service provide a place of belonging for the rest of us.
Because her choice, about when and how she would be seen, even as she became increasingly invisible, really did made a difference in our lives.
Cara Meredith
Cara Meredith was raised in the American Baptist Churches in the USA but currently worships as an Episcopalian. She is a freelance author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her books include The Color of Life and Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation.
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