Where were you twenty years ago?

Blog by The Rev Ruth Stock

Its hard to believe that its twenty years since those first ordinations.  One the one hand twenty years seems like a long time ago, on the other hand why did it take so long?  Perhaps for women now exploring vocation the arguments seem irrelevant.  With the discussions about Women Bishops some of the old polemic has reappeared, but the heart isn’t in it any more – women priests are a reality and the sky has not fallen in.

But for those of us priested that first year the memories are still there, both of affirmation and of (very vocal) disapproval.  Strangely my clearest memories are not of my ordination in Liverpool Cathedral, but of the vote in Synod and its aftermath. This happened a year earlier, while I was still at Wycliffe Hall Theological College – which was then as now a very conservative evangelical place.  The small group of women ordinands training there at the time did not expect the vote to be ‘yes’ – and neither did the rather larger number of male ordinands some very supportive, others very negative indeed.  One comment I heard at the time was “When women preach I stop listening”. 

When the vote happened the result was declared quite late and many of us did not know the outcome until it was announced that afternoon in our weekly Chapel communion service by the Principal.  He asked for it to be received in silence (as it had been in General Synod) and then continued with the service as if nothing significant had happened.  But it was a seismic shift in the church, never then or since properly acknowledged.  I felt a great weight lifted that I had not even known was there.  But both those who were against and those who were for were silenced, and sat there for the service with tears running down our faces, unable to speak, so full of emotions we had no way to express.  At the subsequent meeting ‘to air our feelings’ it was those who had been against, who felt so hurt by the result, who dominated: expressing their sense that the Church of England was not scriptural, was discriminating against them, would restrict their vocation.  In short: all the language that those in favour of women’s priesthood had used before the vote was being used after the vote by our ‘opponents’.  In that moment we realised the ‘period of reception’ which the Synod called for would be for some a period of continued rejection.  It was from that sense of hurt and rejection that some of those students went on to be the core of the conservative evangelical ‘Reform’ group and its continued campaigns against change.  In its desire not to antagonise anyone the college, like the Church of England as a whole, shied away from real feelings, from an exploration of what priesthood really means.  By trying to keep everyone on board the legal reality of women’s priesthood was never fully embraced, particularly by all the bishops, and young men are still being ordained who do not value women priests.

In 1994 there was limited opportunity for real celebration: the vote, our ordination, our acceptance all felt very tentative and precarious.  It could all still be reversed.  Twenty years later the clock cannot be turned back.  Women have proved their worth, congregations have experienced, accepted and grown protective of their women priests.  My hope is that on the 4th May the celebration will be undiluted and will pave the way for the celebration of the first Women Bishops.