Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Elaine Lindsay and Janet Scarfe (eds.), Preachers, Prophets and Heretics: Anglican Women’s Ministry. New South Publishing, Sydney, 2012, pp. 400, ISBN: 978-1-74223337-6 (pbk).

2016; Equinox Publishing; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1558/jasr.v28i3.26163

2047-7058

Tim Corfield,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

Australians watched in amazement as the Anglican Church tied itself in social, legal and theological knots over the ordination of women in the 1980s and early 1990s.The spectacle spilled out of Church synods into ecclesiastical tribunals and civil courts, and made media headlines.Many people wondered why the Church had not moved with the times.This book, a collection of nineteen essays, retells the story of the struggle for equality for women and their ordination in the Anglican Church.Key supporters, which included Church leaders and decision makers, campaigners and women at the centre of the debate, recount the history and their various stories of those times.Since 1992 more than 500 women have been ordained as priests and some have gone on to become bishops despite fierce opposition from the Diocese of Sydney.In fact only the Sydney diocese has to this day not recognised or ordained women; it is the only metropolitan diocese in Australia that still has this unenlightened stance, and this is to the shame of those men who fought and resisted the recognition and ordination of women in the Anglican Church.It is also galling to learn that women's ordination in the Sydney diocese was beaten by a scant three votes.This is the first book to describe and analyse the debate concerning women's ordination and the ensuing conflict that resulted from that debate.It would have been desirable to have included some essays from the opposition camp.This might have given some insight into the thought processes of the opponents of women's ordination and perhaps a more balanced view.There might have been more pertinent factors to such opposition beyond claims that it is scriptural, especially when one considers the controversial nature of those verses forbidding the recognition of women and their roles in the early Church.However, given that both the authors' and compilers' intent was to highlight the struggle, the omission is understandable.Fittingly, the first essay, 'The Ordination of Anglican Women: Challenging Tradition' by Jane Shaw, gives the account of the first ordained Anglican woman priest in modern history (p.14).This ordination, however, occurred not in England or Australia, but in China in 1944.Florence Li-Tim-Oi was working as a pastor in an isolated Chinese Anglican Church; due to the Japanese invasion, it was not possible for male priests to reach there, so Bishop Ronald Hall thought it appropriate to ordain Li-Tim-Oi as she already had a reputation as an extraordinary pastor in all but name only (p.18).Bishop Hall was privately chastised by the Archbishop of Canterbury and asked to suspend Li-Tim-Oi but he refused.She was pressured to resign with Bishop Hall's future in the balance (p.19).Hall's diocesan synod stated that they 'found the attitude of the Church in the west impossible to understand… The whole Church in South