Debate on the Ordination of Women

from Freedom From Sanctified Sexism - Women Transforming the Church by Mavis Rose, pp. 201-225.

Allira Publications, 17 Cervantes Street, MacGregor, Queensland 4109, Australia.
Copyright: Mavis Rose 1996.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

In Australia, from 1970 to 1990, debate on the ordination of women to the threefold order of ministry became a major issue in Anglicanism, peaking in the mid-eighties. Church of England reports and surveys carried out in the nineteen sixties and seventies provided a basis from which Australian Anglicans, especially clergy, formulated their arguments. An initial examination of the points raised by the Church of England will therefore provide an indication of the extent to which the Australian Anglican debate developed a unique pattern and perspective.

Church of England Official Commentary on the Ordination of Women.

In a Report entitled Women and Holy Orders, commissioned by the Church of England Church Assembly in 1962, arguments for the admission of women to the threefold order of ministry were summarised as follows:

(a) the “emancipation” of women and their admission to professions formerly reserved for men; (b) “new insights awakened by the spirit of the times”, with an admission that “the inferiority of women, accepted as axiomatic almost up to our own day, and justified by now discredited biological and psychological assumptions, is seen to be no longer self-evident”; (c) the failure of the Church to provide an adequate ministry for women; and (d) the shortage of clergy.

The Report contained several essays, one entitled “Why the Christian Priesthood is Male” by Rev. Professor V. A. Demant, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford, who strongly opposed the ordination of women. A second essay, “The Case for the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood” was submitted by Kay M. Baxter, a member of the Central Advisory Council for the Ministry and a past Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge.

According to Professor Demant, “the maleness of priesthood” was an inherent characteristic of the Christian Church and its religion". “Female priesthood” was associated with heretical groups such as the Montanists in the second century and the Collyridians in the fourth century. Also, in the history of the faiths, monotheistic religions had male priesthoods, while female priesthoods belonged mainly to the nature religions associated with the earth mother. “Woman can be regarded as nature’s priest while man is a priest of the Church”. For Professor Demant, a priesthood of women was inappropriate to monotheism; it was heretical and pagan rather than Christian. He did not mention that pagan religions also had male priests and nature gods.

Professor Demant regarded Christianity as a “Logos religion”. The Logos was a male principle - the “active, manifesting, creative-destructive, redemptive power of the Godhead”, regarded as a “masculine power”. Having strongly argued for the masculinity of divinity in Christianity, Demant denied that “the Deity has sex or maleness”, explaining that the first person of the Trinity was “Father only in virtue of his begetting the Son”. He asserted that “moves to describe the Holy Ghost as feminine belong to the early Gnostic movement”, a statement which again associated the female nature of divinity as unorthodox Christian. Demant did not refer to the scriptures where divine Wisdom (Sophia), associated with the Holy Spirit, is depicted as feminine.

Demant claimed that “a woman develops her sexuality through love of a man”, there is a natural dependence of the woman on the man. Women who were priests would be in a position to exercise spiritual jurisdiction over men and this would create a relationship contrary to that which is natural to the life of the household. Here Demant was re-iterating patristic concepts of female sexual inadequacy, influenced by philosophies of Aristotle, together with a leaning towards male headship.

Demant admitted that relationships between male and female priests might increase existing clerical tensions - “there is latent jealousy and rivalry in the male clergy which breaks out on occasion.” He felt such tensions would be exacerbated if sex differences were introduced. “Sex differences have erotic effects which differ according to whether men or women are in public positions”, “the pastoral office brings a closeness of spiritual intimacy”. Male clergy concern about coping with women’s sexuality and its potential to corrupt and distract them, evident in earlier reports, re-surfaced in Demant’s essay.

In Demant’s view, although the ordination of women was regarded as the logical outcome of “a steadily growing recognition of women’s full humanity and of their expanding place in the public life of society”, it would not be in the “interests of women themselves”. No clear explanation was given for this assumption. Demant linked ordination of women with the secular feminist movement, claiming that those who contest for a female ministry believe “the Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist) is identical with the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeist)”. In his opinion, women’s ministry was best carried out “loosely, spontaneously and in freedom from organised commitment”, in other words in the informal, traditional way which did not threaten the patriarchal power structure.

Kay Baxter pleaded for a new approach to women, arguing that it was the duty of the Church to “keep itself free in relation to what is obsolescent and merely transitory”, and “to strip itself of dying attitudes that have become attached to it through the accidents of historical process”. “Feminine emancipation has now opened to women many professions that were once rigidly closed to them and were regarded as a male citadel.” Baxter, like many Australian churchwomen, was quick to disclaim secular feminist influences, which she clearly dissociated from “feminine emancipation” without defining the differences. Baxter referred to theological and scriptural arguments used against women, rejecting Thomas Aquinas’ conclusion that, because a woman is basically deficient, “the ordination of a highly qualified and saintly woman would be invalid, while that of a mentally defective boy would be valid (even if inappropriate)”.

In regard to the Protestant arguments on the Pauline principle of the subordination of women, Baxter pointed out that theologians were far from agreed that the injunction to women to keep silent in church was “an expression of a permanently valid principle, or merely a restraint imposed by the particular conditions of the first century”. Until this century, Baxter stated, scriptural interpretation and the formation of tradition had been for the most part in masculine hands, mainly of ordained clergy. It was hardly surprising that the interpretation and the tradition should favour male government in society generally and in religion in particular. Much had already been discarded from Biblical modes of worship and the Biblical social pattern. The paternalism however remained and with it the desire to retain leadership for the male.

Baxter believed that women needed “the full authority of the Church” to absolve, and to be able to consecrate the bread and the wine and therefore should not be denied ordination. Baxter urged the Church to look forward and not back in the matter of sex relationships, pointing out that the role of the priest should not be a role of domination but of ministry. A great deal of the work of a priest was pastoral and required the gifts traditionally associated with women.

Church of England Commentary on the Scriptural Position.

Following the endorsement of the ordination of women by the first meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council held in Limuru in 1971, the Church of England Advisory Council for the Church Ministry was requested by the Standing Committee of General Synod to give it further advice on the ordination of women. Part of the Advisory Council’s findings, published in 1972, contained a report on the scriptural arguments used most frequently by Evangelicals to support or prohibit the ordination of women.

In a section “Jesus and Women”, the report commented on the significant role women did play in the life of Jesus, especially at the time of his crucifixion, burial and resurrection from the tomb. The report agreed that “the way that Jesus encountered women and his relationship with them” contrasted with the contemporary Jewish attitude to women. Examples of uncustomary behaviour cited were Jesus’ dialogue with Samaritan and Gentile women and with women who were sinners, and his willingness to interact with women who were ritually unclean. Jesus commended Mary for partaking in discussion rather than being a traditional Jewish housewife like her sister Martha. He praised the woman at Bethany for annointing Him in preparation for his death.¹¹

In the Acts and Epistles, the report cited texts which both supported and rejected women’s leadership in the Early Church. In Galatians 3:27-29, divisions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, men and women were overcome in Christianity, “for you are all one in Christ”. Since the mode of entry to the Church was by baptism rather than by circumcision, women attained spiritual equality with men, while in Judaism they had been dependent on their husbands’ membership. Attention was drawn to the active role women played in the life of the early Christian community, citing as examples Phoebe, Priscilla, Lydia, Euodia, Syntyche, Chloe and the four prophetic daughters of Philip the Evangelist.¹²

The scriptural passages most often used to justify the exclusion of women from the threefold ministry were: I Corinthians 11:3-16, I Corinthians 14, particularly verses 34-38, II Corinthians 11:3, I Timothy 2:11-15, Ephesians 5:21-24, Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:5, and I Peter 3:1-6. In conjunction with these New Testament texts were cited Chapters 2 and 3 of the Book of Genesis from the Old Testament.

The conservative evangelical viewpoint in the report conceded that in Galatians 3:28, women as well as men, through baptism, shared in the priesthood of all believers exercised by clergy and laity alike. This, however, was not considered to be relevant to the ordination of women. Nor did contradictions in the Pauline passages reduce the force of the subordination texts. The behaviour of the women at Corinth was acknowledged to be a problem; perhaps “a striving for the principle of the equality of men and women due to the putting into practice of Gnosticism”, again a correlation of feminism with heresy.¹³ Conservative evangelicals were adamant that the directions in I Corinthians, though arrived at in a particular situation of controversy, rested on an appeal to a permanent principle. The principle of the subordination of woman originated in Genesis 2 and 3, a result of Eve being the transgressor at the Fall. The description of women as the weaker sex in I Peter 3:7 and the requirement in the household codes that women be subject to their husbands (Ephesians 5:21-24, Colossians 3:18, Titus 2:5, I Peter 3:1-6) were the customary ways of expressing the principle of the subordination of women in the first century.¹⁴

There was a concession by conservative evangelicals that, while the principle of subordination still applied, different practices were permissible in the twentieth century. For example, it would be in order for women in certain circumstances to teach and lead in prayer in the congregation but they could not hold an office which usurped the authority of men. Women could not celebrate Holy Communion, nor have a predominant voice in church government. Some English conservatives, while not objecting to a woman’s ordination to priesthood, could not accept that she take sole charge of a parish or diocese. The conservative Evangelical argument in the debate entrenched permanent, universal patriarchy.

The moderate English viewpoint contended that the New Testament did not encourage Christians to reject innovation. While the New Testament had not expressly advocated the abolition of slavery, no one now considered that the abolitionist campaign had been unChristian.¹⁵ The moderates claimed that there was no evidence that Jesus ever treated women as subordinate. They considered that the subordination passages were not directed at those in ministry but referred rather to the behaviour of members of the Church in general. Priscilla shared in the teaching of Aquila and she and other women were “fellow workers” with Paul (Romans 16:3, 6, 12 and Philippians 4:3). If Junia were female, then she provided an example of a woman “apostle” (Romans 16:7). Phoebe, the deacon/deaconess of the Church at Cenchrae did not appear to be playing a subordinate ministerial role (Romans 16:1,2) since the word applied to her, prostatis, usually translated “helper”, did have the sense of “fellow worker”.¹⁶

Some commentators were of the opinion that I Corinthians 14:34-35 was an interpolation, based on I Timothy 2, which they would regard as non-Pauline, originally an addition in the margin which later entered different parts of the text. Others insisted that the word “women” (gunaikis) should properly be translated “wives” throughout and the injunctions in I Corinthians and I Timothy should be limited to married women in relation to their husbands. It was noted that Paul developed the subordination of wife to husband theologically and found in the unity of man and wife a symbol of the unity between Christ and the Church. This argument sited “man” alongside “Christ”.

In regard to the word “headship” in I Corinthians 11:3, it was indicated that “head” here might have the “sense of origin or fount of being”. Paul did not say that man is the lord of woman, but rather that he is the origin of her being. Such an interpretation would prevent a false “subordinationism” between Father and Son, this running contrary to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, or between men and women who are both made in the divine image.¹⁷

The report referred to Paul’s exegesis of Genesis 1-3, which lay behind the Corinthian and Timothy passages. The subordination of wife to husband, far from being part of the Creator’s design, belonged to the fallen condition. In Genesis 1:26, 27, men and women were both made in the image of God, no subordination of woman was implied. The question for the Church was whether it was bound by the questionable Pauline exegesis of Genesis 1-3.¹⁸

The English moderates agreed that Paul and others were anxious that the behaviour of the Christian community be well-regarded, forbidding any action which would discredit the infant Church. “Any abnormal behaviour, any disunity among members, any lack of regard for social conventions would only feed rumours circulating already.” It was acknowledged that Paul was writing for his time. The monotheistic religion of Israel had “desexualised” religion and Paul, as a Jew, would be sensitive to any elements which confused religion and sexuality. Without explicitly saying so, the report was admitting that social and political factors had been a major influence in the Pauline injunctions regarding women.

The report, in conclusion, conceded that patriarchal patterns of family and marriage in England were giving way to a pattern of partnership called forth by greater opportunities for women in regard to education and work. Deaconesses, women lay workers and women readers leading worship already exceeded in their ministry what Paul had envisaged and thus contradicted his rulings.

The Report admitted that many theologians regarded such detailed studies of New Testament evidence as relatively unimportant. There was an acknowledgement that the discussion of the ordination of women to the priesthood was “often based on anachronism” as far as the New Testament was concerned.¹⁹

Debate in Australia: Male Headship.

The statement by English theologians that detailed studies of New Testament evidence were “relatively unimportant” in the women’s ordination debate ran contrary to the Sydney Diocesan viewpoint. When addressing St. Matthew’s Church, Manly, on 22 April, 1985, Dr. Peter Jensen, Principal of Moore College, made it clear that the only legitimate approach to any controversial issue was to go to the Scriptures: “We begin, I take it, with a willingness to bend to Scripture...we’ve all got to be open-minded and prepared to change our minds in the light of sacred Scripture whatever it may tell us”.²⁰

As noted in previous chapters, theology teaching at Moore Theological College was heavily biblically oriented. Rev. Charles Sherlock, a Moore College graduate resident in Melbourne, in 1982 commented on the difference between his present evangelical stance and that of Sydney Diocese. It was as if he were “living in a different evangelical Christian world” where the Bible was understood “in the light of its main thrust”, open to “new discoveries and insights, seeking to keep logic and beauty, truth and love in balance”. For Sherlock, the alternative seemed to be marked by “technological, precise exegesis which leads to undermining the Catholic creeds, and is concerned with maintaining influence and power”.²¹ Sherlock was suggesting that male power politics lay behind Sydney’s narrow interpretative framework.

Another Moore College graduate who had changed his theological perspective was the Adelaide theologian, Rev. Kevin Giles, who hinted at a deliberate male conspiracy to keep women from church leadership in Sydney:

The Moore College teaching... is that women’s subordinate status is part of God’s good, creational order.... Men are doing God’s will and pleasing Christ when they work to keep women subordinate. The Reformed theologians’ God-given charter is to oppose the ordination of women because this would allow women to assume leadership in the church and thus stand side by side with men.²²

Kevin Giles pointed out that this approach put Sydney Diocese out of step with most other Australian evangelicals, who considered that “women’s subordination is a result of the Fall (Genesis 3:16)” and that “man’s desire to rule and women’s subvervience both reflect the realities of a world marred by sin”. Giles asserted that “the deliberate exclusion of women from any ministry simply because they are women, is contrary to the mind of Christ as revealed in the Gospels”.

According to Giles, “the tension between ideal and reality lies behind so much of what the Bible says about the status and role of women”.²³ Conservative theologians viewed the Scriptural passages subordinating women as the ideal, established once for all in creation. Revisionists viewed these passages as being in direct conflict with passages which speak of equality. Giles claimed that there was no theological tension between biblical affirmations of equality and the apostolic exhortations to be subordinate because the former give the ideal and the latter the reality, which has changed nowadays.²⁴ Giles insisted that “if the subordination of women is not creationally given and is opposed by Christ, then there can be no biblically based objection in principle to the ordination of women”.

In debate with Giles, Dr. Paul Barnett. Master of Robert Menzies College, MacQuarie University (later appointed a regional bishop within Sydney diocese), stressed that the principle in I Timothy 2:12-15 was universal, admitting that “at an emotional level” he would prefer that I Timothy 2:12-15 was not there. Barnett conceded that “at women’s and girls’ congregations (e.g. at women’s colleges) and mixed youth congregations (at university chaplaincies), he did not believe the Pauline restrictions on women operated”. ²⁵ In other words, women could minister to other women and young males in a situation where women would be unlikely to have authority over mature men.

An alternative to the positions of Barnett and Giles was put forward by another Moore College theologian, Rev. Dr. B. Ward Powers, who claimed that I Timothy 2 and the creation relationship to which Paul appealed in his comments was more applicable to a husband and wife in the home situation than women and men in public worship. A woman is never directed to be subordinate to any man other than her own husband (1 Peter 3:1). Ward Powers believed that “men and women are equal before God, but are different in role, especially within the marriage relationship”. In his opinion, “the significant and conclusive arguments against the ordination of women as priests is that this would go beyond the warrant of scripture and depart from the pattern of scripture”. That the apostles and elders were all male, Ward Powers saw as “a vital theological factor”,²⁶closing his mind to the fact that there was substantial evidence in Scripture and modern scholarship to argue that women had served as apostles and presbyters in the early church.

Giles saw Ward Powers as being “completely opposed to equality of opportunity in ministry for all women, and in particular to them being ordained to the presbyterate”. He claimed that, if pressed, most theologically articulate Sydney Evangelicals would admit that they think the Bible subordinates all women to men, this being “the necessary logic of the view that in creation God set Adam over Eve (Genesis 2)”.²⁷

Giles agreed that the Sydney argument appeared plausible. “Women are equal in dignity with men; it is just that God has given different roles to men and women.” In the Church and the home, men are given the role of leading and ruling and women are given the role of obeying and serving. However, in Giles’ opinion, the argument was not really about roles but about who should be in charge, which he regarded as “power distribution without role mobility”. He explained:

A ship’s captain and a second officer have different roles but one day the second officer can become a captain. In the case of women, however, they are permanently subordinated.... This clearly implies that women are not in fact the social equals of men. There is something defective in their personalities. God has assigned to them in his sovereign good pleasure, in perpetuity, a fixed subordinate status in the church and the home. He has not equipped them for leadership.²⁸

Giles dismissed the Sydney argument as “all humbug and blatant male chauvinism”, declaring that “these medieval Sydney anthropological ideas which demean women do not explain a Deborah, a Priscilla, a Hilda, a Queen Elizabeth, a Margaret Thatcher, or any of thousands of other women with great gifts of leadership”. He accused Moore College theologians of beginning with the premise that men were in charge, confirming this by their interpretation of I Timothy 2: 11-14, ignoring the scriptural reality that these texts were the exception.

The constant denigration of women in the debate not unexpectedly aroused Anglican women. Mrs. M. R. Lambourne of Mount Waverley, in Victoria, protested that “Christ’s teaching underlines the importance of the individual, that he/she may develop and use his/her talents to the full”. She queried: “Has any clergyman ever wondered how angry, frustrated or alienated he would have become had he felt called to the priesthood, yet had not been a man but a woman? Would he have expressed his call in serving coffee, knitting, arranging flowers, teaching children, sweeping out the hall... or would he have used his talent in a more accepting, challenging environment?”²⁹

Mrs. Patricia McPhee of Booker Bay, NSW, claimed that the biblical text “Wives should be subservient to their husbands” and others like it, had for generations been used “not only to keep women subservient but as an excuse or reason for the perpetration of many forms of physical and emotional abuse”:

In his epistles, the greatest misogynist of all, St. Paul, strips women of every vestige of the respect accorded to them by Jesus Christ Himself - even to a reformed and repentant prostitute. How degrading it is to sit in church and listen to his missives describing all women - even virtuous ones - as evil, unclean, corrupters of men. Are men really so pathetic that they must lay the blame for their own failings, short-comings and lack of control over their primeval urges on women?.... I often wonder what St. Paul’s mother thought of his diatribes.³⁰

Bishop John Wilson held a more favourable impression of Paul, indicating that in I Corinthians 7:4-6, St. Paul advocated such a level of mutual consent in sexual relations between husband and wife that it caused him to say that “the husband is not the master of his own body, his wife is!”. Submission was not just for women, said Wilson. It was “a calling for every Christian (Ephesians 5:21)”, “part of the pattern given us by Christ”.³¹

Bishop Wilson compared the debate on women’s ordination with arguments for separate schools for blacks and whites, “separate but supposedly equal” which he had observed while in America. He admitted that “back in Australia I came to discover that we have treated women like the black American had been treated” by filtering out of the telling of history many of their achievements and therefore robbing them of much of their potential. He came to realise that the failure to ordain women at this period of history affected the value placed on all ministries by women in the Church.

Dr. Barbara Thiering pointed out that, within the strongly male supremacist Roman system of government, the Christian Church put forward a quite new concept of leadership, that it consisted in love and depended on serving and compassion. However, the new concept of love in leadership was undermined by the existing patriarchal structure. “Even a male supremacy moderated by love is an offence against love, for it perpetuates a system whereby one part of the human race rules another by right of accidental externals, rather than by right of ethical superiority.”³²

Rev. Clive Harcourt Norton of Hunter’s Hill in Sydney acknowledged that “as spiritual beings, there is no difference between male and female”, asserting that “there is a new richness and freedom in social, intellectual, business and family life because men and women can meet as equal human beings”, explaining:

The spiritual and human equality of men and women before God is central to the Gospel. Since Christ did not lay down any neat structural blue print for the continuance of His work or for the Church in history, we have to conclude that its form and order is secondary .... Jesus lived in a strongly patristic society. Increasingly our society rejects that dominance of males.... If the Anglican Church continues to falter on the brink, and try to avoid change, it will become increasingly a religious club for the traditionally minded and forfeit all right to be heard as a church with Good News for all people.³³

The “religious club” theme was endorsed by Brisbane Courier Mail commentator, Lawrie Kavanagh, who pointed out that “when you’ve got your back to the wall, you want to thank God for those who will stand behind you, be they blind, disabled or women”. He added:

Traditional religion is in that sort of dire situation today, yet sections of it continue to reject women from what appears to be a rather sacred old boys’ club.... Rather than accept offered help, the better to battle the amazing degeneration of even “civilized” societies, God’s self-appointed generals dither and posture, grandly pondering the unsuitability of women in the priesthood....There is no question in the minds of the thinking public that every able-bodied person, no matter what their appendages or lack thereof, should be used to their best ability to help the people who need it.³⁴

Mrs. Chris Dixon of Mount Ousley, N.S.W., felt a “deep distress for women who have so much to offer the Church and the world in terms of their teaching, preaching and leadership skills”. She pointed out that, if Paul himself was ambivalent about women’s place in the church, “we dare not settle for an interpretation of these isolated texts based on misogyny”, exclaiming: “small wonder that so many women feel completely alienated from an institution which insists on a literal interpretation of I Timothy 2:13-14 and I Corinthians 14:34".³⁵

The Rev. Alison Cheek in a paper on “1 Timothy 2:11-12", commented that ”many women, on reading or hearing this text, react with a sense of shock and moral outrage because they have grown up in the Church, taught in Sunday School, sung in the choir, addressed adult education groups, read lessons, preached in church services or led the prayers". Cheek pointed out that when any question of pursuing ordination to the priesthood was raised, this text was often quoted “as the definitive rejection of such an idea”, being used as a “political weapon to keep women in a subordinate place”. Women taught to regard “scripture” as the ultimate authority find themselves caught “in a bewildering and evil oppression”.³⁶

Cheek believed Giles’ statement in his work Created Woman that “the subordinating passages reflect a past, patriarchal culture” did not go far enough. She pointed out that the subordinating passages “are alive and well in today’s patriarchal culture and they cannot be dismissed without dismissing the lives of countless women”. In Cheek’s opinion, “the theology, ideology and system of values operative in such texts need to be debunked, unmasked and disentangled in terms of the power relationships and presuppositions that hold the status quo in place before the well-being of women and men in a new society can be envisioned”.³⁷

Cheek also questioned Giles’ framework of “creation, fall, redemption and consummation” and his category of “old creation/new creation tension” to “harmonise apparently conflicting passages in the apostolic writers and Paul”. Giles’ statement that I Timothy 2:11-12 is “the one and only really difficult text in the whole of the Bible for those who would argue for equality of opportunity for women and men” and his conclusion that, for supporters of women, there were two options, namely, to regard the text as culturally limited or regard the text as uncanonical because it is a “post apostolic” writing, were also queried.³⁸

Cheek agreed with the theologian Edwin Freed that I Timothy, 11 Timothy and Titus all seemed to be written “to preserve traditional doctrines of faith, to select morally responsible and qualified church officials, to preserve order in the church and regulate worship, to urge believers to live Godly lives, and to reject false teachers and teachings”. Most scholars were convinced that these Pastoral letters reflected a later period of Church history than the Pauline letters - a pseudonymous and post-Pauline authorship.

Cheek suggested approaching the text via the fourfold interpretative model formulated by the Harvard University theologian, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. This model consisted of: (a) a hermeneutics of suspicion which does not take androcentric texts at face value, and which analyses the patriarchal interests behind the texts; (b) a hermeneutics of remembrance which delves beneath “generic” language and specific texts on women to retrieve the hidden history; (c) a hermeneutics of proclamation which assesses all scriptural texts and evaluates them theologically for their oppression impact or liberating tendency; and (d) a hermeneutics of actualization which stimulates creative powers to recall, embody and celebrate the achievement, sufferings and struggles of the biblical women who are our forbears in the faith.³⁹

Using a hermeneutics of suspicion approach, Cheek came to the conclusion that the I Timothy texts were prescriptive, addressing a situation of which the author disapproved. One might assume that women were teaching, were vocal in prayer meetings and did hold positions of authority. The author, Cheek felt, adopted a Pauline letter style to bolster his authority so that he could change the existing practices. The use of admonishments about dress at prayer meetings and hairstyles and covering applied to women but there was no equivalent grooming instructions for men. The scorn of young widows in I Timothy 5:13 and of weak women in II Timothy 3:6-8, raised the suspicion, Cheek suggested, that the author was using “a rhetorical device designed to disempower important women leaders who are promoting a theology which differed from that of the author”. In order to win over the readership, the author was declaiming the “discipleship of equals”, averring that “women should keep their place in the patriarchal structures of society and in a patriarchalizing church”.⁴⁰

Cheek believed that the Pastoral letters were really addressed to men. The strategy of the rhetoric is to make the man identify with the writer by taking control, inferring that women are “the enemy, the danger, the seducer”. Cheek referred to research carried out by David Verner⁴¹ who found that women in Asia Minor, especially those who were wealthy, had a great deal of prominence in the political, social and religious life of the region. They were magistrates, officials, priestesses, presidents of synogogues and patronesses of voluntary associations. That they were also presbyters and deacons is evident in the Greek of I Timothy 5:1.

According to Cheek, the household codes were political codes holding in place the family as the basic unit of society, with the paterfamilias as the ruling authority. “For all women and female children and all male slaves, their subordination is predicated upon a defective rationality, an inferiority of nature (cf. II Timothy 3:6-9).” This was derived from the philosophy of Aristotle, and had nothing to do with Jesus Christ. Aristotle’s teaching of a defective nature in women and male slaves “provided a rationale for power to be focussed in the hands of free men of property”.

Cheek observed that this pernicious ideology, which infiltrated and finally dominated early Christian communities, had continued to the present time. Giles as observed in his argument with Barnett, did later introduce a more pronounced socio-political note into his debate in the church press than in his earlier writing, asserting that “the basic issue is not rights but wrongs; the wrongs male theologians have perpetrated against women”. “The male will hold onto power, which is at base level what opposition to women’s ordination is all about, [it] is a form of social injustice.”⁴² The Anglican Church prided itself on its record of social justice, but this did not extend to women in priesthood.

Debate in Australia: Male Symbolism and Imagery.

Mirroring the Church of England trend, debate among Anglo-Catholics in Australia has centred more on male symbolism and imagery and on Anglican Church tradition and catholicity than on scriptural texts. The priesthood per se has assumed a much more important place than in the evangelical debate.

Canon Jim Minchin of St. John’s, West Geelong, in July 1983, in an article on the ordination of women, pointed out that the present Thirty-nine Articles and the Ordinal reflected a change in the role of priesthood which took place when the English Church reformed. The mediaeval notion that a priest’s main role was to offer Mass was challenged and played down, with more weight being given to pastoral roles. Canon Minchin believed that “it would be difficult to argue that women are prevented by their sex from carrying out most of the tasks laid upon an Anglican priest in the Ordinal”. Minchin did concede that the Oxford Movement “may have strengthened the notion that a male priest at the altar represented Christ”.⁴³

In a discussion paper, For the Ordination of Women, Dr. John Gaden commented that “throughout the Ordinal and in all references to clergy in the Thirty-nine Articles and in the services provided in the Book of Common Prayer, masculine pronouns are used” but “this cannot be held to enshrine a principle of deliberately excluding women from these orders, since the possibility of women being admitted to any of the historic orders was not envisaged by the English Church in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries”. Gaden pointed out that the use of masculine pronouns should be treated as inclusively in the Ordinal as in other parts of the Prayer Book, for no rubric specifically excludes this possibility. “For instance, what tells us that the reference to ‘men’ in the opening sentence of the Preface to the Ordinal (‘It is evident to all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and Ancient Authors...’) presumably includes women, while the next reference to ‘man’... excludes women”.⁴⁴

Exclusive language in the scriptures, prayer and hymn books and sermons was frequently cited as projecting a male dimension into the Anglican Church. As Melbourne MOW leader, Janet Nelson, observed: “I do not, as female, necessarily feel included by the male”. She pointed out that while “man” might sometimes be used to denote “people”, “father” was not commonly used to include “mother” and “son” did not mean “daughter”. It had also never occurred to her that only a male person could be “a living icon of Christ” as her personal experience had not led her to see Christ more clearly in men than in women. She queried: “Are we likely to grow up understanding that we are all made in God’s image, that God is not simply male when almost exclusively masculine language is used to form our images of God?”⁴⁵

When commenting on why the priesthood had never been institutionalised in female form, Canon Keith Chittleborough of Adelaide put forward three suppositions: (i) Regression - “the fear of doing something experimental that has never been done makes some, both men and women, regress into the institutional securities of the past”; (ii) Sexuality - “many, though not all, men fear the awesome power of women to get through their defences...an intuition of the power of women to carry men beyond where they feel safe”; and (iii) Authority - “one does not have to be a Freudian to know that many men have a fear that their manhood will be somehow swallowed up by a woman ...”. ⁴⁶ Chittleborough admitted that “all these fears and anxieties attached to regression, sexuality and authority are neuroses - male neuroses, but they are real”.

Regression.

Regression into the institutional securities of the past, especially into a past where male priesthood was the norm, was clearly evident in the Anglo-Catholic debate. Bishop Ian Shevill pointed out that “in the Old Testament among the Semitic Tribes it was Israel alone who had an exclusive male priesthood and it was Israel who became ”God’s chosen people". He concluded: “Thus, for a Christian Church to have priestesses would mean a break, not only with the priesthood of the Old and New Testament, but also with the history of religions which Worship one God”.⁴⁷ Shevill’s statements were particularly patriarchal because they inferred that a condition of being “God’s chosen people” was the acceptance of a male priesthood.

Rev. John Fleming cited Professor John Macquarrie’s Principles of Theology in which Macquarrie linked the Anglican priesthood with the ministry of the apostles.⁴⁸ Fleming, echoing the Vatican Declaration Inter Insigniores , stressed that the “orders of bishop, priest and deacon which derive from the apostles have always been male-only orders”, omitting to include the women deacons, especially those who were co-workers with the apostle Paul, who were for a period in church history senior to presbyters. Fleming dismissed Giles’ statements that in a patriarchal society it was not surprising that Jesus singled out twelve men as his closest companions, particularly as women could not be witnesses in a court of law in Jesus’ day. Fleming argued that this suggested that Jesus could have done nothing else, given the sociological conditions of his day, that he was “a creature of his time”.⁴⁹ But to be fully human, Jesus did need to be a creature of his time.

John Pomeroy of Sydney, an active MOW member, responding to an argument put forward by Rev. James Murray in The Australian of 23 February 1987 that because Christ chose only men as apostles women could not be priests, pointed out that Christ “also chose only Jews”. “To be logical this would exclude Mr. Murray and most of his fellow priests.” Pomeroy also observed that Christ called at least one married man to be an apostle, so the argument for celibacy would also be “humbug”.⁵⁰

Another buffer against change was the argument that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, being superior in status and numbers to the Anglicans, must lead the way in regard to the ordination of women. As Jill Black, President of the Union of Anglican Catholic Laity, remarked:

There are very few of us who would not vote for the ordination of women if the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches had formally agreed to it.... I am told that some members of the clergy believe that the Anglican Church must lead the way on the ordination of women for the rest of the holy Catholic Church to follow. Is it not presumption to think that such a small minority... could take the lead over 80 per cent of the Christian Church?⁵¹

The Rev. Eric Manley-Harris of Townsville pointed out that to argue that the universal church must concur with all ordinations if they are to be valid theologically meant that Anglican priests’ own ordination must be “null and void”. He commented that in 1896, Pope Leo XIII condemned Anglican Orders as being “utterly invalid and altogether void” in his Encyclical “Apostolicae Curae”. The most that opponents of the ordination of women could argue was that this new factor in Anglican ordinations might complicate Rome’s recantation of their condemnation of Anglican orders nearly a century ago.⁵²

Bishop Renfrey of Adelaide, in a sermon preached at the London Festival of Ecclesia on Saturday, 24 October, 1987, warned that “the innovation of purporting to admit women to the order of priesthood ... is serious for a number of reasons, one of the most important of which is the effect of taking from the Anglican Church its claim to be Apostolic and Catholic in its teaching”. Renfrey pointed out that the Tractarian Movement out of which Anglo-Catholicism had grown, had been a response to the incursion of secularisation into Anglicanism. “Newman’s fight was against...in particular, the secularising of the Church of God”.⁵³

The Rev. Robert Gribben, a Uniting Church minister of Balwyn, reminded Anglo-Catholics that “there is a tendency for Anglicans to forget that they are a Church which is both catholic and reformed, that ”the debate seems to refer to connections with Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches". He stated: “I am not at all sure that these links are any stronger than those with other historic Protestant Churches such as the traditions in the Uniting Church in Australia”.⁵⁴

Because of their avowed resistance to change and determination to uphold patriarchy, the Anglo-Catholic conservatives had managed to entice one of Australia’s most conservative evangelicals, Archbishop Robinson of Sydney, into becoming with Bishop Leonard of London a joint leader in the Association for the Apostolic Ministry (AAM). Thus the onslaught on feminism overruled former bitter internal churchmanship divisions.

Sexuality.

In regard to women’s sexuality, the Anglo-Catholic opposition argument was circumspect rather than overt. There were frequent accusations that women who supported the ordination of women were feminists who “see child bearing, motherhood and the nurturing of the family as intolerable burdens inhibiting a woman’s right to express herself in the way a man does”.⁵⁵ According to Mrs. Phyllis Boyd, a University of Adelaide graduate and also the mother of seven children, “liberation for women should start with a recognition of the work of women as wives and mothers”,⁵⁶ a re-inforcement of the conservative Anglican stance epitomised in the Mothers’ Union.

Suzanne Glover expressed no surprise that Australian Christian women had so little confidence in themselves and that they were so reluctant to take initiatives in the presence of men. “In spite of exceptions, the average Christian woman has such a stereotyped image of what femininity is, she is afraid to move beyond it, so much afraid, that the real hard core of opposition to women’s ordination is coming from women as much as men”. Glover saw the suppression of women’s gifts as the suppression of being.⁵⁷

Spiteful attacks on churchwomen who broke away from traditional roles, categorised as secular feminists, were a particular feature of the opposition debate. Rev. James Murray exemplified this tendency, as the following excerpt from one of his newspaper columns demonstrates:

All the churches are presently suffering from a sort of panic to run with the latest contemporary movements, and the ecclesiastical harpies have used the equity argument with a persistence bordering on arrogance, while the president of the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW), a medical practitioner by training, Dr. Patricia Brennan, has used the ploy of all affirmative action protagonists in accusing opposing males of being afraid of their own sexuality.⁵⁸

Aware that secular feminism was a very unpopular subject among Establishment Anglicans, Murray accentuated that the protagonists of women’s ordination were espousing secular values:

Were the debate on women’s priesthood to be about priesthood as such, we might have got somewhere; but it is invariably about women’s rights and women’s equality, about which none of us should really be at variance at all. But we appear to be because MOW and others have been determined to characterise the opponents of women’s priesthood as conservative reactionaries asserting an inferior position for women in society.⁵⁹

Janet Gaden at the Second National MOW Conference in 1986, expressed the view that “there are men within the church who cannot see Christ in women”. “There are well-meaning men quite unaware of their sexism, who trivialise us, often ‘humorously’, keeping us distant and below threat level ....You cannot see Christ in anyone you don’t take seriously.” Janet Gaden also cited the case of clergymen who “have been so taught to see themselves as alter Christus, standing in the place of Christ, that they cannot see that all Christians stand there with them”, adding that “for such men it is possible to get along with women more or less until it comes to their relation to Christ”.⁶⁰

Her husband, Dr. John Gaden, in defence of women, ventured into the realm of women’s physiology, an area skirted around by many opponents of women’s ordination. He pointed out that until Canon XV of Chalcedon in 451 was instituted, any deaconess could be stationed within the sanctuary. After the Canon was passed, ordination was delayed until the deaconess had reached the menopause,⁶¹ an indication of a revival of Jewish cleanliness taboos in regard to menstruation.

According to Alison Cotes in an address to the Second National MOW Conference, “one of the major problems with Christianity is that, like the other great monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam, it has imaged its one god as exclusively male” and this “has led to the development of unbiblical and unhistorical myths about women like the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene”.⁶² Cotes stated that from about the second century onwards, there were men in the church who saw “women and sexuality as vile in themselves”, and these attitudes “persisted pretty strongly throughout the history of the church”. Cotes continued:

In patristic writing generally, woman was seen only as whore, as wife, or as virgin. As whore she displays the revolting carnality, the incarnation of the fleshly principle, which separates her from God. As wife, she is still essentially body and therefore evil, but she has the slight advantage of surrendering her evil body to her husband. Only as virgin can she be raised to spirituality, personhood, and potential equality with men.⁶³

Janet Nelson observed that throughout the ages “the bodily functions of women, their hidden, mysterious, creative power have been feared and despised by men, and made sources of uncleanliness and taboo”, and she too had noticed that these negative attitudes persisted at present in society at large.⁶⁴

Alison Gent of MOW Adelaide maintained that sex was potentially the deepest cause of either union or alienation between human beings. She felt that it was one of the most remarkable features of the life of Jesus Christ that there was no evidence in the records that Christ felt alienated from women as persons of the other sex.⁶⁵

According to Suzanne Glover, “the erotic associations conjured up by the presence of women has at its basis non-Christian sources”, having more primeval roots connected with fertility rites and cults. These erotic associations did however reveal a general fear among Christian men regarding their own sexuality. “And it is women who have been the objects of that fear, even as they have also been the bearers of its guilt.”⁶⁶

John Fleming believed there were some very good theological arguments, “such as the priests being the icons of Christ”, which substantiated the basis of male priesthood:

Christ is still in human flesh resurrected and is still male. The idea that his sex had nothing to do with his humanity is heretical....I’ve heard it said that the priesthood is incomplete without women. Really. Has what the church has been doing for two thousand years been totally wrong?⁶⁷

Here Fleming was claiming that longevity legitimised tradition and practice, a statement also reminiscent of the Roman Catholic document Inter Insigniores.

According to Rev. Ian Herring of Ararat, Victoria, “a revelation is selective and screens out symbolisms which are not consistent with its perspective”. .He argued that “revelations which allow a female representation of God may allow a female priesthood”. However, although all humanity was integrated into God in the Incarnation, “all humanity is not the canonical symbol of the teaching authority, the male head is”.⁶⁸ Herring was inferring that the Incarnation prevented God from transcending sexuality, that it identified him eternally as male.

Rev. David Robarts, then Dean of Perth, asserted that “Jesus was a man and not a hermaphrodite” and that he was referred to as “God the Son and not God the Daughter, Christ the New Adam and not Christ the New Eve”. In Robarts’ opinion, those who wished to bring about change, discarded “the essential images of our salvation” replacing Christianity with a new and quite different religion. This, Robarts was convinced, was “not the guidance of the Holy Spirit”, it was “demonic”.⁶⁹ Again the introduction of feminine priesthood into Christianity was viewed as changing its essence in a way which was evil.

In regard to the Holy Spirit, John Gaden observed that St. Jerome made the point that “‘Spirit’ is feminine in Hebrew, masculine in Latin and neuter in Greek, to teach us that there is no sexual gender in God”. Gaden stated that in both Jewish and Christian thinking, the Spirit of God is closely linked with divine Wisdom, commenting that “not only is Wisdom a feminine noun in both Hebrew and Greek, but Wisdom is usually personified as a woman”. He added that it was also worth noting that many of the fruits of the Spirit are used as female names - Grace, Joy, Patience, Hope and Charity, and that the early Syriac tradition saw a flowering of female imagery for the Holy Spirit. Both in the early Church and later, those communities which prized the free movement of the Spirit were also the ones which recognised the leadership of women.⁷⁰

Gaden’s comments were dismissed by the Rev. Tony Noble of Fitzroy, Melbourne, who claimed that Wisdom was usually equated with Jesus Christ - “the Son of God and THE Word of God”. Since Jesus was male, there was either a contradiction here or the sexuality of Wisdom and the Holy Spirit was irrelevant. Noble went on to make the following association: “If the Holy Spirit is feminine, then we have the concept of the Blessed Virgin Mary being feminine also.... Even if our lady and the Holy Spirit were lesbians, they still could not achieve conception!”.⁷¹ This was an example of the strange distortions which the issue of sexuality could bring to the surface in the debate.

Authority.

The issue of “authority” was raised in an “Open Letter” printed in Church Scene of 1 November 1985, following the passing of the Deaconing of Women Canon in General Synod. The “Open Letter” was from the Executive Committee of the Union of Anglican Catholic Laity Inc. of North Adelaide and was addressed to “those bishops of the Anglican Church of Australia who support the ordination of women to priesthood and who believe the Anglican Church of Australia can make this decision”. The letter began::

By what authority, Bishops, do you lead your flock away from the truth that has been accepted for 2000 years? A Catholic is pre-eminently one who does not act alone, on his or her authority.⁷²

According to Dr. Allen Brent of Townsville, the Anglican Church was “in the middle of a crisis of authority” over the ordination of women concerning not simply doctrine, but “the Order to which doctrine gives rise, and the extent to which one diocese or province of the church should recognize the Order of another”. In his opinion, there could be no valid ordination of women until that “moral consensus, that judgement in which the whole church at length rests and acquiesces”, was confirmed by the whole church.⁷³ Brent was overlooking the reality that the Deaconing Canon had passed with a seventy-five per cent majority, a considerable degree of consensus.

Brent, who was in disagreement with Bishop Lewis of North Queensland because of his support for the ordination of women to priesthood, suggested that Anglicans should not necessarily be under the authority of the bishop in their geographical region but have the choice of being under the authority of a diocesan bishop whose views were more in accord with their own. Brent stated: “We must ... encourage through General Synod a new concept of episcopacy in which individual parishes, congregations, and clergy can submit to bishops of their rite and theological tradition, regardless of their geographical location”. In North Queensland, Brent suggested, “we could witness the formation of Ballarat rite congregations and Sydney rite congregations with clergy in canonical obedience to the bishops of those Sees”.⁷⁴

John Fleming criticised Archbishop Rayner’s assertion that the local national Anglican Church had the authority to determine the ordination of women on the basis of Article 20 of the Thirty-nine Articles.⁷⁵ According to Fleming, “the weakness of the Archbishop’s position is that he argues from too narrow a selection of Anglican documents”. Fleming contended that, as the Church of England received the three-fold ordained ministry from the whole Church, “the Anglicans take no authority to change unilaterally that which belongs to the Church as a whole”. Thus any attempt to change the inherited order of ministry placed at risk the Anglican claim to “true Catholicity”. The Anglican Church was bound to the “tradition from Christ to the Apostles, and from the Apostles to the present time, that women were excluded from the priesthood and from the episcopate”. Fleming was claiming that Anglican authority needed the ratification of the Pope and the chief patriarch of the Orthodox Churches.

Dr. Robin Sharwood, Chancellor of the Diocese of Wangaratta, averred that “a bishop’s inherent sacramental power is not necessarily co-extensive with his legal authority in the particular church in which he holds his episcopal office”. Thus, in Sharwood’s opinion, an Australian Anglican bishop who wished to ordain a person to the office of priest within the Anglican Church of Australia must do so within the constraints of the law of the Anglican Church of Australia, to which he swears his obedience at his consecration.⁷⁶ But like Fleming, Sharwood also sought a higher authority than that within Anglicanism. He saw the need for an “Ecumenical Council” of the Catholic Church to be the “final authority in matters of faith and order”, commenting that “in Anglican eyes, no such Council has been held since 787 AD”. The centralised, authoritarian, priest-dominated power structure of Catholicism which made it almost impossible to change the status quo was preferable to conservative Anglo-Catholics than the pluralist, dispersed power of Anglicanism.

Certainly the Australian bishops had all been warned by Melbourne lawyer, Dr. Ian Spry, Q.C., an advocate for the AAM, that they could face litigation if they unilaterally ordained women to priesthood without adequate supporting church legislation. Spry’s legal “sabre-rattling” drew forth the following comment from the Rev. Dave McLean of Kangaroo Flat, Victoria:

One is reminded of the circumcision party in the early church. For Dr. Spry’s group, it appears, there is no room to move, no room for compromise. They do not seem to be interested in justifying their position or arguing it. At least Dr. Spry’s group is honest enough to go by the name of “The Association for the Apostolic Ministry” rather than “Peace, Unity and Concord”.⁷⁷

At the 1988 Lambeth Conference, Archbishop Rayner pointed out that the issue of women’s ordination had not caused any breach of communion among Anglicans. He described Anglican authority as “consultative” rather than “jurisdictional”, urging Anglicans to develop a greater respect for the decisions of synods and a willingness to submit to local decisions, pointing to the dynamic interplay between Scripture, Tradition and Reason.⁷⁸

In response to Rayner’s address, Rev. Dr. S. J. Samartha of the Church of South India gave his opinion that “authority may be understood in two senses: as formal, that is based on decisions of councils, and as intrinsic, that is based on the persuasive power of truth itself that needs no compulsion to be accepted”. In regard to the ordination of women, which Rayner had used to illustrate “how such theological controversy arises among people who are equally committed to Christ and are equally concerned to take seriously the authority of Scripture, tradition and reason”, Dr. Samartha drew attention to the problem within Scripture and tradition:

When all scriptures and traditions have been shaped, written and interpreted by men for centuries, it is impossible to regard them as allies of women in their struggle against discrimination. Picking up stray texts and investing them with an authority they cannot carry is less than helpful. Women in multi-religious societies have to liberate themselves from a double bondage, that of the patriarchal assumptions of the Bible, and that of other scriptures as well which are equally patriarchal. Therefore a radical reassessment of all scriptural authority is necessary at this juncture. Neither scriptures nor traditions are of particular help to women....The debate goes beyond “maleness” and “femaleness” to the deeper question of what it is to be human in the world today.⁷⁹

Summary.

The content of the Australian Anglican debate on the ordination of women to priesthood did not differ significantly from the English Church’s basic arguments, as recorded in the two official reports, Women in Holy Orders and The Ordination of Women to the Priesthood. In both is evident the undercurrent of feminism grappling with patriarchy and patriarchy seeking to discredit and stifle feminism. The conservative Evangelical viewpoint in both England and Australia has been scripturally selective to entrench patriarchy, stressing a “universal principle of male headship” based on literal interpretations of Genesis 2-3 and the New Testament texts subordinating women to men. This type of argument has been propagated tenaciously by opponents of women’s ordination in Sydney Diocese and is in particular associated with Moore College teaching. The broader, more liberal Evangelical stance has been reflected in the views of theologians such as Kevin Giles, Susanne Glover and Charles Sherlock.

The opposition Anglo-Catholic argument put forward by Professor Demant of Oxford University touches on a wide range of themes to confront the threat to patriarchy, such as Christ’s maleness, male apostolic succession, male tradition, and the association of femaleness with evil, sexual carnality, paganism and heresy. Many of the points raised by Professor Demant have been echoed in Australia by conservative Anglo-Catholics. There is also evident a tendency in conservative Anglo-Catholic debate to follow closely the line set out in the Vatican Declaration on Women’s Ministry, Inter Insigniores.

Conservative women such as Phyllis Boyd have stressed the importance of the woman’s motherhood role, thus conforming to the Church’s long held preference for where women should concentrate their efforts. Alison Cotes , in arguing for women’s ordination, has countered by drawing attention to the myths about the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and how they were shaped to remind women that they were basically vile and only as virgin or virtuous wife could they be raised to potential equality with men.

Stress on preserving good relations between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches has also been a frequently used argument in the Anglo-Catholic opposition debate, with “ecumenism” narrowed down to omit the reformed and non-conformist Christian Churches since many of these denominations have ordained women. Because change can be effected more easily in the Anglican provinces than in Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox Churches, there has been in the opposition Anglo-Catholic debate an expressed desire for a strong, conservative central authority such as the Vatican or a Catholic Ecumenical Council in order to protect the status quo.

Overall, male clergy and theologians who have argued for women’s ordination have displayed a reluctance to introduce into the debate the more challenging contemporary theologies and biblical interpretations on women in the church, many of which emanate from liberation and feminist theologies. Many theologians have thus failed to identify the power play and political and economic motives which have lain beneath the evolution of a Church which so blatantly excluded women from its language, rituals, scriptures, decision-making and corridors of power and made them symbols of nonentity. It has been Australian women theologians such as Alison Cheek and Barbara Thiering and biblical scholars such as Elaine Wainright, who have been prepared to reveal how effective a weapon gender has been in preserving a male supremacist church structure.

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