|
|---|
|
As mentioned previously, the religious fervour which was a feature of first wave feminism in the Church of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century inspired the creation of diverse new churchwomen’s organisations. In 1908, at the Pan-Anglican Congress convened in London immediately prior to the Fifth Lambeth Conference, the Church of England established a body named the Central Committee for Women’s Church Work to examine the whole area of women’s ministry. Its first President was Mrs. Davidson, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and its Chairwoman was Mrs. Creighton, widow of a former Bishop of London. With such influential women as leaders, this Committee managed to exert considerable pressure on church affairs on behalf of women. The Australian Church, which tended to follow the “Mother Church” slavishly, did not set up a similar body to deal with women’s ministry. The senior Australian bishops had no desire to raise the status or expand the formal roles of women. They preferred to keep churchwomen working voluntarily on their parochial chores, children’s education and fund-raising duties.
The Central Committee for Women’s Work in England requested of the Bishops that “the whole question of women’s service and status in the Church should be seriously reconsidered”. In response, a special committee was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, its Report being made public in 1919, and then brought before the Sixth Lambeth Conference in 1920. 1920 was a year when English feminists were in the ascendancy. They had finally gained suffrage and, in terms of higher education opportunities, Oxford University had agreed to allow women full student membership.
The 1920 Lambeth Conference adopted a number of resolutions on the ministry of women, including Resolution No. 46 which recommended that “women should be admitted to those Councils of the Church to which laymen are admitted, and on equal terms”.Lambeth Conferences had no legislative powers; their role was mainly advisory. Thus, a resolution passed was not binding unless adopted by individual provinces of the Anglican Communion. Nevertheless Lambeth Conference resolutions were supposed to be accorded serious consideration and act as guidelines for all provinces.
Lambeth Conference Resolution No. 46 was raised by the Bishop of Goulburn at the 1921 General Synod of the Australian Anglican Church together with other resolutions on women’s ministry. A Churchwomen’s Conference was held in Sydney at the same time as the General Synod was sitting, its participants drawing up and submitting a statement to General Synod urging it, in the interests of the Australian Church, to adopt the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference in relation to the position of women in the Councils and Ministrations of the Church.The General Synod of 1921 accepted Resolution 46 but its implementation at the parish level depended on the willingness of each individual diocese to accept it. Sydney Diocese, for example, agreed that women could sit on parish councils. However, theoretically because of the “headship” principle, but more likely because of cultural bias, Sydney Diocese barred women from synods and from holding the position of churchwarden.
Taking the Australian Anglican Church as a whole, the majority of dioceses did not endorse Resolution No. 46 of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, a concern to which Bishop G. H. Cranswick of Gippsland drew attention at the Ninth Australian Church of England Congress held in Melbourne from 3 to 13 May 1925. In a paper entitled “Ministries of the Church”, under a sub-heading “The Ministry of Women”. Bishop Cranswick re-iterated the Lambeth Conference’s directive that “Women should be admitted to those Councils of the Church to which laymen are admitted, and on equal terms”.He urged that “the time is ripe for the extension of this right and privilege to Christian Womanhood throughout the Church in the Commonwealth”.
Bishop Cranswick conceded that if Resolution 46 were implemented, it might mean “the withdrawal from the Councils of the Church of some men”.This indicated that Bishop Cranswick was aware of the extent of Australian male antagonism to sharing power with women and how rigidly gender stereotypes were adhered to. Bishop Cranswick pointed out that there were men on councils whose contribution was inadequate and minimal: “If among these there be some who to-day are not much more than figureheads, sitting on vestries and councils simply because they have been pressed into the service, then, I say that their loss will not be felt, nor will the Church’s efficiency deteriorate because of their absence”. Clearly Cranswick was also conscious that there was a tendency for “maleness”, especially publicly elite maleness, to take precedence over quality of faith and Christian service .
The Bishop of Gippsland believed that a more balanced gender representation would enhance church councils. He contended that “the new power and witness produced by the incoming of a few devoted churchwomen will inevitably draw to the standard the men who really care for the Church”. In other words, Cranswick was advising the Church to replace “deadwood” males with women of spiritual worth. Bishop Cranswick made clear that his support for the admission of lay women to church councils was not only related to equity or social justice but was an attempt to redress sexual “hang-ups” which existed in the Church. It was “not merely because women to-day are doing by far the major part of the work of the laity” and so “in common justice” ought to be welcomed on “all assemblies local or general, which claim to express the mind of the Church” but also because women’s greater participation in church affairs at the decision-making level would be “a contribution to the solution of the sex problem in general”. The Bishop expanded on his viewpoint:
Social life is obsessed to-day with one element of that problem.... It is not enough to fight this evil. We may run the risk of seeing in sex but the thing we are fighting. The salvation of society lies rather in trying to see how much more there is in sex than the intimate relation of one man and one woman... and the more freedom and scope and expression is given to womanly and manly service in conjunction, the richer will society and the Church be and the more will the physical fact of sex recede to its rightful place and rise to its rightful dignity. If society is to be saved from the subtle or flagrant plague of wrong relations between individual men and women, it will only be by placing women generally in their right relation to men generally as equal partners in the social and religious work of the world.
The Bishop of Gippsland was acknowledging that negative attitudes to women’s sexuality were a stumbling block to balanced relations between churchmen and churchwomen. He acknowledged that women were inhibited by their socialisation in the Church from accepting roles traditionally played by men, commenting that “the most womanly women - and therefore the women who really have the women’s contribution to give, and who alone are consequently likely to find a big opportunity of scope awaiting them - will only come forward when men refuse to do the Church’s work”. Devout churchwomen, those most heavily involved in church work, would be invaluable members of councils but these women were so trapped in the traditions which had evolved in Australian Anglicanism that they did not dare to step out of line and seek a place in what was regarded as a male sphere.
Bishop Cranswick confirmed the force of the “motherhood” dogma in the Australian Anglican Church, which he admitted narrowed a woman’s range of activities. “The second reason for believing that few will avail themselves of a larger scope is that women’s first and most honoured work is, and always must be, that of wife and mother.”
Bishop Cranswick’s observations applied to Australian life in general, an indication of how closely Church and society were linked in upholding patriarchal values. Ronald Conway, in his study of Australian society, found that “this exaggerated demarcation of social spheres has had serious ill-effects upon the relationship between the sexes”. Conway was convinced that the over-emphasis on woman’s role as zealous mother created psychological problems in family life. Robert Taft, commenting on Australian women in 1962, stated that “there is probably no other industrialised nation in which married women are subject to so many bars, both formal and informal, against their employment or their elevation to executive or professional positions”.
In Australian Anglicanism, churchwomen were not only excluded from decision-making bodies. Bishop Cranswick also drew attention to the denial to laywomen of the right to read the lesson or to preach, although laymen were allowed to do so. He argued:
If it be urged that in the case of a woman reader or preacher sex-attraction would detract from the proper edification of the male members of the congregation, a possible threefold reply may be given. First, it is six for one and half-a-dozen for the other, seeing that if this is true at all, there is probably the same risk for women-listeners when men are reading and preaching. But, secondly, for those who are normally sexed, this danger does not exist; and the Church, like any other public body, can only legislate for the normal. And, thirdly, the Student Movement and other religious groups have experimented in this thing, and they have experimented successfully.
Although the Bishop belittled suggestions that women readers or preachers would distract a normal congregation, it will be seen in later chapters that there were other Anglican bishops who did claim that women playing more visible roles in Sunday services would be sexually arousing for men and so interrupt their worship. Strangely, only when playing the roles reserved for males was female participation in church affairs deemed to have an erotic effect.
From the record of general discussion at the Ninth Congress it would appear that Bishop Cranswick’s paper evoked a bland response. The discourse centred around male interests, vindicating the claim of a Miss Gilman Jones, one of the few women attending the Congress, that “men were apt to forget that women were human beings as well as themselves”.
An examination of Australian diocesan records and synod proceedings reveals how strong was male resistance to the entry of women to parish councils and synods. In the case of Brisbane Synod, on 10 June 1921 it was moved and seconded that “seeing that one of the resolutions of the Lambeth Conference reads ‘Women should be admitted to those Councils of the Church to which laymen are admitted and on equal terms’, the Parishes Regulation Canon and the Synod Canon be appropriately amended to allow women on these governing bodies.This motion, if passed, would have allowed the admission of laywomen in Brisbane Diocese to parish councils and would have made them eligible for synod representation. It was not to be. An amendment was passed requesting the Archbishop to appoint a Committee to review the matter, which delayed voting on the motion for one year.
In 1922, the review committee recommended that women be admitted to Parochial Councils, but drew attention to the fact that “some organisations which pronounced in favour of admitting women to Parish Councils added a rider that they were against the admission of women to Synod”. The rider provided a loophole. Because of it, no decisions were taken at the 1922 Synod on women’s representation nor did the issue come up again in 1923.
Women had sat on parish councils in Brisbane in the early establishment years of Anglican churches. Even more strange, the Constitution of the Diocese allowed women to be churchwardens, a position carrying more authority and responsibility than a parish councillor. A Mrs.Carr had been appointed churchwarden of Zillmere parish in 1907 and Miss Parminter of Nundah-cum-Clayfield resigned from her duties as a Churchwarden in 1910. The Parochial Council of Lutwyche in 1895-6 was unique in that four women, Mesdames Drew, Lord, Morgan and Bishop were members. But as the twentieth century progressed, parishes became increasingly ordered by regulations drawn up by males. As a result, women ceased to hold office or sit on councils.
In 1927, a motion was again put before Brisbane Synod to admit women to parochial councils. A report on the Synod in The Church Chronicle of July 1927 was critical of the fact that the motion was trivialised, reminding its readers that “the matter is really a serious one”:
Women take a very large share in Church work. No one gets excited about it, nor is there any cry that the work should be left to men. Our Canons permit women to be Churchwardens, and as a Parochial Council can only have the powers that Churchwardens grant, any Parochial Council composed entirely of men might act only as women Churchwardens permitted. Yet Synod gaily refused women permission to be members of Parochial Councils, being afraid, apparently, of surrendering men’s last ditch.
Several interesting points emerge from this report. First, no one suggested amending the Brisbane Constitution to close the office of Churchwarden to women. Perhaps the men saw this as too provocative, likely to raise women’s consciousness to the whole issue , even incite a feminist reaction which they could not handle. Secondly, the report omitted to mention that in 1927 there were no female churchwardens in Brisbane Diocese because it was impossible for churchwardens to operate effectively if they were excluded from parish councils. Female churchwardens were not to reappear for over forty years. The final sentence in the report indicated that synodsmen saw the entry of women to Synod in gender conflict terms.
The absence of females from the major governing bodies of Anglican dioceses resulted in a tendency to overlook the contribution of women. For example, Archbishop Wand of Brisbane’s address at the opening of the 1935 diocesan synod made no mention of women but was fulsome in its praise of laymen:
To me it has been a most exhilarating experience to find how ready are our laymen to give their personal services to the work of the Church. I have never known so large a proportion of men in all walks of life who were ready to devote long hours of unremitting toil to the Church’s business....Men will still give of their best ...even when they seem to have lost their zeal for the worship of the Church.
Wand’s address indicated that Australian men preferred working on church boards and committees to attending regular worship. Filling the pews was a responsibility assigned to churchwomen.
In an article on “The Church in Australia” in The Church Chronicle of January 1938, the following comment on the membership of General Synod by the Bishop Moyes of Armidale indicated satisfaction with its elitist male membership:
There can be few bodies in Australia which gather together such a wealth of fine manhood, of brains, ability and variety of outlook as the General Synod of the Church of England. Taking the Bishops and Clergy for granted as probably some of the cream of the community, a survey of the lay membership provides great interest. There were members of Parliament, magistrates, and Justices of the Peace, lawyers of various ranks and in large numbers, several doctors and one chemist at least, a headmaster, a number of accountants, engineers, architects, soldiers, graziers, orchardists, a miner from the coalfields. Degrees, diplomas, distinctions of various kinds marked the calibre of these representatives, who came from all parts of Australia.
But even distinguished male laity were not categorised as the “cream of the community”, an indication that Bishop Moyes regarded clergy as being automatically in a class above even the most illustrious layman. Women, despite their special religious nature, were still regarded as unworthy of General Synod election.
In 1938 at Brisbane Synod, Frederick Cross, described as “one of the most able members who has ever graced this Synod”, a lawyer who would in later years become Chancellor of the Diocese, moved a Canon to allow women to sit on councils and synods. Cross argued that, if a woman could become a barrister or a solicitor, there was nothing to prevent her becoming a judge, and if a woman became a judge, she could become a Chief Justice, and, conceivably, Lieutenant-Governor, a remark which was greeted with laughter., Debates on women’s issues were often occasions for banter and amusement. Cross asserted that he refused to believe that it was a fundamental fact of church government that man only was fitted to do business.
The Rev. M. E. De B. Griffith supported the Canon, contending that “the recognition of the rights of women in the Church was overdue”. The motion was treated to the delaying tactics used in the past. The Rev. S. Atherton moved that the Bill be postponed for twelve months as there was no evidence that women wanted this recognition. Atherton’s amendment was seconded by the Rev. H. F. Wilkins. The amendment was accepted and the Canon was struck off the business paper.
But some women did want representation, as a letter from Cross’s daughter May, of Virginia Avenue, Hawthorn, dated 13 July 1938, indicated. This letter was one of the strongest and most impassioned pleas for women’s recognition to appear in Anglican church newspapers within the period 1900 to 1960. It read as follows:
The women of the Church have no reason to congratulate Synod on its attitude to the recent proposed measure to allow women greater participation in Church affairs. If the measure had been lost after a fair-minded debate, I would have no quarrel with Synod, although I would still affirm that Synod had made a blunder and missed an opportunity. But the manner in which the proposed Canon was treated as of no consequence whatsoever cannot but cause deep hurt to all those women who are sufficiently interested in the Church to want to serve it. Synod had “more interesting” and “more important" matters to discuss, and a debate on such a subject as the position of women in the Church would have been too “academic” for the minds of its members. But the matter is interesting, important, and not in the slightist degree “academic” to all women who are concerned with advancing the Kingdom of God (not just supplying sandwiches for social suppers or collecting cash for curates, but also playing an active part in the more serious aspects of advancing the Kingdom of God). The present method of local Church organisation is inefficient, and all too often makes the work of the women in the Church difficult and even ineffective. Moreover, the present system is based on an attititude of mind which is contrary to the teaching and spirit of Christ. The fact that the Bishops of the world at Lambeth in 1920 stated after serious consideration that there was no reason why women should be excluded from lay office in the Church was totally ignored by Synod. The sole reason advanced against the Canon was that the women had not asked for it. The weakness of the reason may be overlooked, but the pity of it is that Synod conveniently forgot how much more Christ-like it would have been to have invited the co-operation of Churchwomen than to force them to beg for it - or worse still, to fight for it. The women of the Church are now faced with the alternatives of accepting the Church’s refusal to allow them to work more fully in Christ’s service or of organising an “agitation”. (I take the word from a copy of certain Parish Notes I have in hand, in which the writer seems to think Synod was right in its action because the women did not “agitate” for the measure.) “Agitation” on this subject would be a pity, but if it did something towards overcoming prejudice and convention it might serve a useful purpose. I know that I speak for a great number of women in this matter. The Church does not hear them raise their voice against the present unsatisfactory system because few women would wish to join in an organised protest against the leaders of the Church. It is a pity that Synod should use the faithfulness of women as a tool against them. They would greatly appreciate the Church’s invitation to further service as a recognition of the service they have already rendered. The fact that they have not asked for this recognition does not prove that they would not appreciate it. The intelligence of women and their ability in organising has long been recognised in the secular world, where their work is valued and appreciated. A woman who is a Communist can throw herself with zeal into work for the cause of Communism. But some women happen to be Christians and the Church needs to realise how stupid is the situation which denies them the right to work in the one place where it seems obvious they should work- the Christian Church. The situation is unjust, but the injustice the Church is doing to scores of women is not so great as the injustice the Church is doing to itself and its Master. The Church has a right to use its total resources in the fight it has to wage against the forces of secularism and materialism which seem to be gaining ground with increasing rapidity. It is to be hoped that before long prejudice will be cast aside and the Church will make effective the power and energy it now forces to remain potential.
May Cross had exposed the insidious trap in which laywomen were enmeshed. If churchwomen sought more recognition, they were branded as “agitators”. Rebelliousness ran contrary to the Anglican stereotype of the meek, subordinate, nicely behaved woman, thus providing opportunities for churchmen to engage in outraged condemnation of such unholy behaviour. But if women waited quietly and patiently for men to recognise their worth, their silence was construed as evidence that they had no desire to share in the activites assigned to males, such as participation in church government. As May Cross argued, “it is a pity that Synod should use the faithfulness of women as a tool against them”. Her letter forecast the future direction of feminism in the Australian Anglican Church. Forty years later churchwomen finally realised that, without “agitation”,women’s issues were conveniently ignored.
The reaction to May Cross’s letter was sufficient for it to be reproduced in the Australia-wide Church Standard, but the response in Brisbane, published in the following edition of The Church Chronicle, was low-key and there was no overt support from churchwomen. The Rev. H. F. Wilkins, who had seconded the deferment of the Canon to admit women to councils, wrote an evasive letter, dated 15 August 1938, in which he accused the mover and seconder of the Bill of “simply trying to prove that the mentality of women was equal to men’s and the refusal to remove the bar to those positions an injustice to women”. Wilkins argued that as women could be churchwardens, where “the highest ability and energy are needed”, to base the debate on women’s ability “appeared to be absurd”. Yet Rev. Wilkins did not explain in his letter why he had supported the deferral of the Canon, thus weakening his argument, nor did he point out the impracticability of being a female Churchwarden working with a parish council from which women were excluded.
In June 1939, Brisbane Synod scheduled that the motion on a Canon to authorise the admission of women to councils be considered at its closing session, a time when Synod representatives tended to be wearied and ready for proceedings to end. As Frederick Cross was absent through illness, again the issue was shelved. The wording in a Synod report in the Church Chronicle of July 1939 is interesting as it identified the proposed Canon as a “Woman’s Movement motion”, although it was a period when first wave feminism was dormant and second wave feminism had not yet surfaced. A final comment in the report of the Synod also indicated that the spectre of “feminism” was in the writer’s mind: “One last question occurs to us: How soon will a suffragette movement bestir itself among the Church women of our Diocese?”
The wartime situation drew attention away from women’s representation on councils but, once peace had come, the issue re-emerged. At the 1946 Brisbane Synod the question of women serving on Parish Councils was again discussed. Although their participation in the war effort had enhanced the status of women in society generally, this reality was not reflected in Brisbane Synod. The motion to give women a seat on parish councils was defeated by a large majority.
At the 1957 Brisbane Synod, eleven years later, the Rev. W. A. J. Brown brought forward a similar motion, drawing attention to “the obvious importance of women in the life and worship of the Church”, and referring to the presence of women on parochial councils in England and other Australian dioceses, such as Newcastle and North Queensland. In spite of further pleas from the mover of the motion to “lay aside prejudice - especially male prejudice”, the motion was again defeated.
It was at the 1963 synod that Brisbane diocese finally accepted the right of women to sit in Synod. A year later, at the 1964 Brisbane Synod, where women first sat as representatives, legislation was passed to allow women to become parish councillors. Also at this Synod, one of the women representatives, Miss Hilda Beaumont, the Diocesan Christian Education Officer, became the first woman to be elected to the Diocesan Council. The report announcing Miss Beaumont’s election was followed by this sentence: “So far male supremacy has little to fear but the dyke has been breached”. These asides appearing in reports of synods indicate how aware churchmen were that they had been deliberately blocking gender equity.
In an article in the same edition of The Church Chronicleentitled “Synod from the Sidelines”, compliments were paid to the women representatives: “Looking at the meetings as a whole, most people would agree that the women members of Synod certainly made a fine contribution to its debates. The most lucid and compelling contributions were made by women.” At the 1969 Brisbane synod, attention was drawn to its Wednesday evening “Home Mission Hour” when Miss Angela Simmons, Matron of the Women’s Shelter, “held Synod spellbound by her vivid, and at times disturbing, account of the tragic problems with which she has to deal”. The writer added: “Her insistence that for every problem of an unmarried mother there is also a problem of an unmarried father highlighted an aspect which many people never realise”. The entry of women like Angela Simmons to Synod meant not only that women could report directly on their various forms of Church ministry but they could present the women’s perspective, so lacking when women were barred from church councils. Angela Simmons’ report was reproduced in The Church Chronicle, a very unusual occurrence. Normally the Archbishop’s address to Synod was the only speech the paper published.
The Brisbane experience was, of course, not unique to Australian Anglican dioceses. There were across Australia similar instances of male synodsmen stalling the entry of women to church councils. Even more outrageous in a religious institution proclaiming righteousness, the existence of diocesan Canons which sanctioned women’s representation on local synods did not ensure that women could attend, demonstrating that churchmen were prepared to subvert the Church’s legal system to exclude women. For instance, in 1932, Port Lincoln Parish in the Diocese of Willochra elected a woman, Mrs. A. G. Davies, as one of its representatives to Synod, but the male synodsmen refused to accept her presence. The following statement was made on the incident:
In spite of the fact that Canons state quite definitely that a woman may sit in Synod and also that the Bishop voted in favour together with an overwhelming majority of the clergy, the laity by an equally overwhelming majority refused to allow the Port Lincoln representative to sit.
The article concluded with the remark that “usually the clergy are charged with being a reactionary lot, but the amazing spectacle was presented at Quorn of the Bishop and a majority of the clergy moving in a progressive direction, but the laity still being swayed into reaction by an appeal to prejudice and bias”. The report had a final despairing note: “no wonder that Democracy to-day stands at the cross-roads and that many of us have lost all faith in the slogan ‘vox populi vox Dei’”.
This reporting, one suspects, represents a glossing over of the actual situation. To move “in a progressive direction” would have entailed that the Bishop and the majority of clergy insist that the Synod adhere to its Canons. In yielding to the demands of the male laity and a minority of clergy, the Bishop was condoning a breach of diocesan law. He was in fact sanctioning male hegemony rather than upholding the rules of the kind of democracy he advocated, which must adhere to constitutionally correct behaviour.
Undoubtedly there were also laywomen who preferred councils to be men-only affairs. In a letter to the Church Standard of 21 July 1944 signed “A Tasmanian Churchwoman”, unease was expressed about the decision of the Bishop of Tasmania, G. F. Cranswick, to sanction the admission to synods of women in his diocese. “Tasmanian Churchwoman” put forward two reasons for her disapproval: (1) “Might there not be a risk of Synod becoming more and more feminine, and the men saying ”Leave it to the women"?; (2) “Rightly or wrongly, there seems to be an unwritten law that the rector’s wife be given all the leading positions in a parish....If we had as well as the priest his wife as our Synod member, surely this would be giving the rector too much power in diocesan affairs”. There was no suggestion that the rector’s wife might have an individual viewpoint. Again there was an awareness of male reluctance about participating in an overly female institution. Undoubtedly, the price laymen demanded in return for their church allegiance was that women be excluded from the areas where males preferred to work. It was a bargain which clergy found easy to accept since it made the Church appear less positioned in the private, domestic sphere and more in the world of men.
In a series of articles on “Democracy in the Church: An Analysis and a Plan” in the Church Standard of February l943, the Rev. W. G. Coughlan urged the Australian Church to admit women to General Synod, contending that “surely it is high time our ‘Parliament of the Church’ had the benefit of the experience and Christian character of women”, querying: “Would it not be a good thing to make it possible for each parish to elect at least one adult woman communicant to represent it?” He argued:
Increasingly as days go by Synods will deal with questions in the approach to which the contribution of Christian women would be of incalculable value. If the door were opened, the right kind of female representative would be found, and special training in parish circles would in time give the necessary skill in self-expression. The degree of real “representation” of the parishioners’ views would also be increased".
At the Australia-wide General Synod meeting in November 1950, the admittance of women to Synods and councils was raised. Bishop C. E. Storrs of Grafton, “in a forceful and amusing speech”, moved “that Sex should no longer be a barrier to membership of Synods and councils” and that “all legal obstacles and early-Victorian prejudices should be speedily removed, which isolate synods and councils from the refining influences and refreshing common-sense of lay women”. His motion was supported by the Bishop of Adelaide. After considerable debate and comment on the wording, General Synod agreed to an amendment which read “That women should not be debarred from membership of Synod or council and all legal obstacles should be removed”. The door had been opened at the national level. However, another twelve years would pass before a woman would actually sit in General Synod.
There were dioceses which had been more willing, under wartime pressures, to admit women to their decision-making bodies. In April 1942, the Church Standard recorded in its report on the Diocese of Newcastle that “a long-established custom has been broken at Martindale in the Parish of Denman. Martindale parishioners have elected two ladies to the vestry”. But a year later, when the Rev. K. J. Clements introduced a motion to the Synod of the Diocese of Goulburn to permit the election of women to Synods, his motion was unsuccessful. Women in Canberra/Goulburn diocese were not permitted to be elected to Synod until 1975.
In November 1958, Francis James, the Managing Director of The Anglican (the paper which had succeeded the Church Standard) and also the synod representative for Leura Parish, initiated a “breezy debate” with a resolution calling on Sydney Synod to approve of identical rights and privileges as laymen for women in the councils and government of the Church. Francis James argued that “there had been a change of attitude to women since 1858":
This state of affairs is absolutely absurd. More than half the average Church congregation are women but women are denied the right to enter synod. All the professions are now open to women. Women are prominent in journalism, medicine and at the Bar. Some women in England even sit on the Bench.
The arguments against Francis James’ motion were remarkably untheological and flimsy. For example the Rector of West Ryde, the Rev. G. T. Rees, conceded that women had a place to serve in the life of the Church and that they already did so much work in the Church because the spiritual life of the Church was not appealing to the men". He concluded: “if we have enough men, let us get on with the job as men”. Here was a reiteration of the irrational theme that the gender categorised as “less spiritual” should predominate in the ritual and decision-making of the Anglican Church.
The role assigned to women at synods was as caterers. Taking as an example the notes on the 1941 Brisbane Synod, it can be seen that an “Upstairs/Downstairs, master/servant” relationship operated between males and females in the Australian Anglican Church. The notes read:
While we are in the Synod Hall, the chairs seem to be getting harder and the speeches less interesting as the afternoon session draws to its close. But as we descend to the regions beneath, all is changed. A magnificent sight is presented to our eyes. Rows of tables are set out tastefully, and really laden with good things .... All around us smiling ladies are doing their utmost to see that we do justice to the feast which they have obviously spent much time in preparing for us....Very often at the end of the table is seated the incumbent of the parish from which the serving ladies have been recruited - they may well be proud of their busy and cheerful workers.
In Synod, the division of labour was very clearly demarcated. Men deliberated while laywomen prepared and served vast quantities of food for them. The Synod Teas in Brisbane for years drew enthusiastic comment from the editors of The Church Chronicle.
To ensure that Synod teas maintained a high standard of culinary achievement, parish women were encouraged to outdo each other for the benefit of the male participants, as an article on “Synod Teas” suggests:
Parish vies with parish in friendly rivalry, and the result, as far as the members of Synod are concerned, is more than gratifying.... The duck, the fowl, the ox, the pig, the lettuce, the fruit tree and the wheat field, all are placed under tribute for our repast.... Socially, the Synod Tea makes the Synod. Geniality is not always to be noticed on the floor of the House....The moment that Synod goes downstairs, the gloom is lifted and the mist dispersed...High sits with Low and Broad with Narrow, acerbity melts at the touch of food.
The writer sounded a note of warning that, due to the threat of feminism, this gratifying situation might not last for ever:
One cloud, as yet a tiny one, is rising above the horizon. What if when the new Constitution comes into force, the fair providers of the Synod Teas all become Synodswomen? The prospect is too terrible to contemplate, away with it!
Subservience of this kind was slow to lose credibility among churchwomen, although the need for general change was pressed home more strongly in the post-war period. In an article in The Anglican of 30 September 1965 under the heading “Church and Nation”, the writer confirmed that an overwhelming number of women “are content to allow men to fill high political, professional and business posts and are themselves content to preside (with some authority) over the domestic scene”, adding:
Yet in part of one realm we must admit that men do debar women - in church government. Women are eligible for parish councils and even for synods in some dioceses of Australia but not everywhere. Perhaps acceptance of the idea of a woman judge so enterprisingly appointed by South Australia, will help to banish any notion that women would be out of place in our synods. Surely, for instance, a few women among the four hundred lay representatives of Sydney Synod would give that body a more representative character.
By the nineteen-seventies, Anglican churchwomen were slowly gaining acceptance as lay leaders. For example, in Bunbury, Bishop Ralph Hawkins nominated seven women as honorary lay canons of St. Boniface Cathedral in September 1975. In 1978 in the diocese of Gippsland, Mrs. Shirley Ferguson was elected the first woman lay canon in the diocese and in 1980 Miss Dora Beadle was appointed the first female chapter clerk of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sale. In the Diocese of Riverina, Mrs. Mary Hooper, who began as the office secretary in 1965, went on to become the Diocesan Registrar.
The two following quotations from North American Anglicans applied equally well to the Australian situation. At a sermon preached at Christ Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts on 8 September 1963, the Rev. Gardiner M. Day pointed out that civil rights were not just concerned with racism :
We Episcopalians should be particularly sensitive to the fact that, while we work against discrimination in one area, we in the Episcopal Church, and indeed in most of the churches which I have just named [Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran] participate in a deliberate discrimination against women. We too easily forget that St. Paul said, “not only Jew and Greek, slave and free, but male and female are one in Christ Jesus". We do not allow women to be ordained, we do not allow women to be deputies in our General Convention, the governing body of our Church. Many dioceses do not allow women to represent parishes in the Diocesan Convention, and many dioceses do not allow women even to serve on vestries. At the same time the women do a lion’s share of the work of the Church, though segregated in guilds and celibate orders.
In similar vein, the Rev. Terence Grosthwaith of Canada, in an address to the Toronto Synod of 1951, made the following comments:
You may be blind and halt if you are a man and you may be admitted here. If you have a criminal record you may sit here. If you are feeble-minded you can sit here. If you are addicted to narcotics and alcoholic, it is still possible for you to stagger down here. But if you are a woman, you are deemed lower than the feeble-minded, the addict or the criminal.
| Contents of Book | Support our campaign | Sitemap | Contemporary theologians | Join Campaign activities | Go back to home page |
|
|
|---|
Please, credit this document
as published by www.womenpriests.org!
