'News' in the Past 160 Years

28 Jan 2022 • Articles

St. Paul taught that men and women are of equal value and importance in the sight of God, and this is the view of the Church. In the first years after Jesus was on earth female leaders were welcomed and respected, but as the young Church became established they were excluded from becoming deacons, priests or bishops. Our modern age has convinced most people that it is right and natural for women to have the same opportunities as men, and it is generally felt that women's talents of dedication, tenderness, caring and concern help them in ministering to others.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, about the same time that Florence Nightingale was starting a revolution in nursing, a young woman called Elizabeth Ferard was asking to join the active ministry of the Church of England. Elizabeth visited churches in other countries and found that women were welcomed as caring representatives of the Church, assisting the priests in their pastoral work. Eventually, in 1862, just 150 years ago, the Bishop of London gave Elizabeth his blessing, licensing her as the first Deaconess in the Church of England. Other women gathered around her, and Elizabeth founded a Deaconess Community.

Another Deaconess, Isabella Gilmore, realised that it would be good to have a centre where deaconesses could be trained, so Gilmore House was established in London, and later on a similar college was opened in the north of England.

It took a hundred years until the 1970s for the Church to allow women to be trained for ministry at the same theological colleges that male ordinands attended. There were still very few women in ministry – in 1982 there were scarcely 100 women with stipendiary licences in England.  Men and women studied together and took the same exams but then the men became deacons and after a year were nearly always ordained as priests, while the women continued as deaconesses. This meant that women could give pastoral care to parishioners, preach, baptise and conduct funerals, but they could not bless people or preside at Holy Communion.

Just 35 years ago, in 1987, the deaconesses of the Church of England were ordained as deacons, at last being allowed to be called 'Reverend', to wear a clerical collar and to vote with the male clergy in the Church's Synods. Even then, as deacons they could not be the celebrant at Holy Communion or give absolution or a blessing. It was not until the mid-1990s that the first women were ordained to the priesthood, receiving the same rights and privileges as the male priests who worked alongside them. Less than ten years ago General Synod agreed that women could be consecrated as bishops, and maybe in time we will have a female archbishop.

In the meantime, let us thank God for the changes in understanding which have taken place in society and in the Church in the past 150 years and for the equality of opportunities which we now have, allowing greater freedom to serve God and to choose the people who will serve us in the name of God and his Church.

Ann