Shweta Chaitanya, a brahmacharini in the Hindu dharma and Georgetown’s new director for Dharmic Life, has watched women break glass ceilings—and ancient rules.
In 2016, Chaitanya was in Mumbai, India, studying in an ashram, a Hindu spiritual sanctuary. Despite studying in the ashram, Chaitanya and many other women monastics were unable to enter the ashram’s sanctum because those trained in performing sanctum rituals are often men.
That is, until Chaitanya watched a woman monastic enter the sanctum, during a ritual typically reserved for men, and hold out her hand for a portion of the blessed food. The woman monastic drew attention across the ashram, including from Chaitanya, and made her feel like she wasn’t alone.
“For me, it was a signal. It was like, ‘Okay, people are daring to do this, I’m going to do the same,’” she said.
Now at Georgetown, Chaitanya is daring to break into a new role.
Over the summer, Georgetown Campus Ministry announced the hiring of Rabbi Ilana Zietman as the new director of Jewish Life and Chaitanya as director for Dharmic Life. These women, alongside Reverend Ebony Grisom, who is in her second year as director for Protestant Life, have made history: this is the first time that half of Georgetown’s chaplaincy directors are women. This historic moment also entails uncertainty, as not all denominations of Protestantism, branches of Judaism, or Dharmic traditions allow women to act as faith leaders.
Women involved in religious study have broken many barriers at Georgetown. In 1919, two sisters at the Georgetown Visitation Convent became the first women to earn bachelor’s degrees at Georgetown.
In 1973, Sister Laetitia Blain, R.J.M., became the first woman to serve as a chaplain on campus. Women have since served as chaplains in many capacities across Campus Ministry, but Chaitanya is the first woman to serve as director for Dharmic Life. Zietman and Grisom are the second women to serve in their respective positions.
Beyond serving as official leaders of chaplaincies, women have held important roles within faith traditions at Georgetown for years, whether as spiritual mentors without official leadership positions or as Campus Ministry staff.
“There is this really interesting tension of, ‘Yay, three women chaplaincy directors,’ and also realizing that there have been lots of women before, and there are still women who are here, who have been functioning as tremendous pastors and leaders and counselors and sojourners,” Grisom, who was at Georgetown for four years as a Protestant Chaplain before becoming director for Protestant Life, said.
This historic year for Campus Ministry comes amid the persistent exclusion of women leaders across a myriad of faiths and religious traditions. The 2019 National Congregations study, which included 5,300 congregations of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and other religions, found that while over half of the congregations involved in the study allow women to lead worship, only about 14% are actually led or co-led by a woman, representing an increase of just 3% since 1998.
Georgetown’s women spiritual leaders said they often face an uncomfortable tension between serving as a woman leader and the tenets of their religion. While some religious communities today may celebrate women in leadership, most religious traditions were historically dominated and retold by men.
“Judaism, being a very old religion, is inherently going to be patriarchal at times—you can’t avoid it,” Zietman said. “And there are moments where, whether it is in our stories, in our laws, in just community norms, [women] aren’t seen or understood the way we want to be seen and understood—and that’s painful, and that’s hard.”
However, Zietman emphasized that just because women aren’t necessarily mentioned in all the histories or traditions of the Jewish community doesn’t mean that they weren’t there.
“There have always been women in Jewish tradition. They’re there from the beginning,” Zietman said. “There is a whole era of women now lending their voices, their authority, their opinions, to Jewish tradition. Writing commentaries, writing our own new prayers, giving different models of leadership. We’re here now, and it is so inspiring to see that we’ve really recreated Judaism in a lot of ways with our own perspectives, our own needs, our own voices.”
Although formal rules have evolved, historical customs may still present challenges for women leaders to fully participate in rituals, traditions, and religious acts.
“How this tradition was stewarded over time, through generations, was predominantly males of an elite class,” Chaitanya said, referring to Hinduism. “If we’ve said that we’re ready to ordain women, we’re ready to ordain people of all backgrounds, what does that actually look like when you enter a space that has had a long history of male-centered interpretations of a tradition, male-centered practices and language?”
All three of Georgetown’s women chaplaincy directors lead departments of Campus Ministry that encompass a wide variety of faiths and denominations. Within Jewish Life, Zietman is rabbi for Jews of the Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative traditions, as well as many other ethnic and denominational traditions within Judaism. While many Jewish communities do have women who serve as rabbis, there are certain Jewish religious establishments that believe women should not be rabbis.
“Not all Jewish denominations or communities accept the ordination of women. And so how do you serve a community when it’s really diverse and you are one person?” Zietman said. “Rabbi essentially means a teacher at the end of the day. So even if someone is an Orthodox student who practices Judaism in a way that is not as egalitarian as the Judaism I practice, there’s no barrier for me to be their rabbi, as in having that relationship of being a guide, a mentor, an advisor, or a teacher.”
Zietman continued that even though she may not be able to make certain halachic decisions, or judgments pertaining to Jewish law, for some students who follow a different tradition, she can still connect students with another rabbi who can help them in their specific faith.
Grisom and Chaitanya deal with similar challenges. At Georgetown, Protestant Life encompasses any non-Catholic or non-Orthodox students who practice Christianity. Thus, Grisom is a reverend for students of hundreds of faiths, ranging from the Episcopal Church to the Pentecostal Church and Church of Latter-Day Saints. While she is ordained in the American Baptist church, many other Protestant denominations don’t ordain women.
As director for Dharmic Life, Chaitanya has four separate Dharmic traditions within her ministry: Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism. Within those four traditions include many different denominations and traditions, meaning that the students coming to Chaitanya for counseling may have a completely different faith, and also may have never had a woman spiritual leader. Chaitanya acknowledges this, and encourages students to embrace their differences as a way to collectively grow in faith.
“Please don’t see me as a random auntie who’s policing the way that you are exploring and understanding your own religious tradition,” Chaitanya said. “Rather, just see me as someone who wants to walk alongside you in that process.”
Dealing with these differences can still take an emotional toll on religious leaders as they attempt to serve as mentors while also navigating religious differences, Chaitanya acknowledged.
“It’s work to be in these roles that the three of us are in. It’s a lot of work because you’re not just presenting something new, you’re combating a lot of the resistance as well to what you’re presenting,” Chaitanya said.
Grisom has experienced this resistance and has sometimes felt unheard and disrespected, feeling as though she isn’t treated equally to other male chaplains despite her position at Campus Ministry.
“I have had many experiences where people won’t give me the same clerical respect that they give my male colleagues. I would say that this happens at Georgetown frequently. In big ways and small ways, whether in a room with others or just to me individually,” Grisom said. “I am aware of it, but I’m not consumed by it, because I realize that any of the angst around it is not my own.”
Today, some religious leaders don’t always listen to the concerns of women. Chaitanya described at times feeling unheard by her male teachers in her spiritual journey when she would try to explain that certain teachings in the Hindu faith didn’t resonate with her.
“When I have a question and I want to ask my teacher, ‘Hey, I have a question about this, I actually don’t find this relatable, can we rethink this?’” Chaitanya said. “You would think that that conversation will go somewhere. And I’m not saying everybody doesn’t let it go somewhere, but there are people who don’t want to let that conversation happen.”
According to the women, the conversation regarding female religious leadership at Georgetown has been joyful as of late, with Zietman, Grisom, and Chaitanya making university history. The three directors expressed excitement at the statistic—however, they all agreed that their work is far from done.
“I have a couple perspectives here. One is, three women directors, let us celebrate and bring out the fat cow—that’s one,” said Grisom, referring to Luke 15:23, where a fat cow is consumed in celebration of a son’s return home (The Parable of the Lost Son). “Another is lamentation and repentance that it has taken this long, and actions that accompany the celebration and lead to repair.”
Chaitanya celebrates the historic nature of her employment but noted that it highlights the exclusion of women from religious leadership on campus and beyond for years.
“That we have three women on the team now, and in the position of directors, it is fantastic. It’s awesome. At the same time, you can’t help but think this should have been the case always,” Chaitanya said. “We’re always late to the game. Had it been 20 years ago, had it been 100 years ago, had it been 500 years ago—it’s still late.”
Chaitanya also hopes that they serve as the first women to make up half of the chaplaincy directors, but are far from the last.
“The door has been opened. Now, how do we make sure this door stays open?” Chaitanya said.
Grisom, who is chaplain to many students who have never attended churches led by ordained women, hopes that her students can see her as an example of how they could lead in their own faiths.
“If this is a glimpse for someone, especially a young woman, or a not-young woman, who is wrestling with whether leadership in their faith community is possible, if they can look to us and see and interpret that as an answer, as a yes to their question or an invitation to come and seek. Then praise be to God,” she said.
Zietman is hopeful that students in Jewish Life and beyond can see the presence of her and her colleagues as an invitation—or even re-invitation—to get involved with their faith.
“Being a woman is inevitably part of what it is for me to be a rabbi and a Jewish leader and a mentor, that is the way in which I move through the world,” Zietman said. “And I think that for a lot of students to be able to see part of themselves in me is going to be so important. And being able to feel empowered to be a Jewish leader themselves, and that really matters to me.”
As Rabbi Ilana, Rev. Grisom, and Brachmacharini Shweta make their way through this historic year, they are excited to connect with students, practice their faith, and bring new and exciting events to Campus Ministry.
They’re also ready to face any doubts about their leadership head on—or, as Grisom said, if anyone has complaints or feels she shouldn’t be ordained, “those concerns are best taken up with God.”
