00:00:00.620 - 00:00:28.740

make sure it's all going, yes it is, yeah that's the one I worry about, it's fine, okay, that's great. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon, I'm Mandy Barry and I'm with the Reverend Karen Hall, the wonderful St Mark's Church has kindly agreed to talk to me this afternoon, if I may, is it alright to call you Karen? Oh absolutely.

00:00:29.500 - 00:01:01.860

I'd like to go right back to your early life if that's alright with you, can you tell me where and when you were born? I was born in Harrow on the 20th of April 1947, my mother had come from Burma during the 1930s, her mother was a Methodist and they'd arrived just before the Second World War. My father was from Liverpool and his first wife had died of TB so he was 48 when I was born.

00:01:02.500 - 00:01:10.720

Right, so your mother grew up in Burma? Yes. In a Methodist family? In a Methodist, yes, yes.

00:01:11.060 - 00:01:42.420

And tell me a little bit about your mother, what did she do when you were growing up? She was a shorthand typist until she got married and then as many women did in those days, when she got married she stopped work. She married in 1946 and I was born in 1947 so really when I was born she wasn't working and I had a younger brother who was born in 1950 so she didn't work after that

00:01:42.420 - 00:02:13.580

but she was involved in a number of voluntary organisations like the Towns Women's Guild and so on. And what about your father? He was, as I say, brought up in Liverpool, he was born in 1899, left school at 14, went to Russia at the tail end of the, well, in 1919 because he just missed being called up.

00:02:13.760 - 00:02:51.800

He was the same age as the year so he just missed being called up for the First World War and volunteered to go to Russia. So he served with the British Expeditionary Force in Archangel during the Revolution. And was there to defend the whites against the Bolsheviks but actually while he was out there became convinced of the Bolshevik case so came back at the beginning of the 20s as a real supporter of the Communist Party, which he joined when he got back.

00:02:52.500 - 00:03:14.700

How absolutely fascinating. And did he talk to you about it? Oh, lots. And he got involved with people who were writing about it. So he had photographs that he gave to people and he was cited in a couple of histories of that time in North Russia. Absolutely fascinating.

00:03:15.000 - 00:03:48.020

And he was not a churchgoer. Not a churchgoer at all. Although his family were Liverpool and Liverpool Welsh, he, when he first signed on during the First World War, joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers. So that was when he was still in this country before he left for Russia. And he discovered that if you went to mass, Catholic mass on a Sunday morning, you had first pickings of breakfast when you got back.

00:03:48.020 - 00:04:13.880

So that was why he went to mass without being a Catholic. And he wasn't really an Anglican either. He and my mother got married in a registry office. So they were not really churchgoers at all. Although my mother had been brought up in the Methodist Church. But when she was in the UK and she met your father, a churchgoer, he wasn't a regular thing in your life?

00:04:14.880 - 00:04:44.380

No, not really. Her mother was a very faithful Methodist. And she was involved in the Methodist Church back in Burma and in this country. She died on VE Day 1945, so I never met her. But I'm fascinated by her and by her faith and by her determination to make something of life over here, which wasn't very easy back in the day.

00:04:44.400 - 00:05:20.480

No, absolutely not. Fascinating. And you were the oldest of the children in your family? Sort of. I was my mother's first child, but my father had been married to someone previously who died of TB. So I had a half-brother who was 16 years older than me. He was three when his mother died. So he went away to stay with his grandparents in Birmingham and went on to an independent school when the time came.

00:05:20.900 - 00:05:49.260

So I only saw him during the holidays, but we got on very well and he was thrilled with me and I was thrilled with him. So actually, over the years, we got very close. So I had two one-and-a-half brothers and the half-brother who was 16 years older. Fascinating. So in your house, you said that your father became involved with the Communist Party. Yes.

00:05:49.380 - 00:06:28.040

And what about your mum? Was she involved in politics? They both had left-wing sympathies. And so the newspapers we had in those days were the News Chronicle and The Star. And then, as my father did a bit better at work, he got a copy of The Times when the front cover of The Times was just writing put through the door every morning. So we had that as well. But yes, I remember how excited they were at the prospect of Harold Wilson.

00:06:28.200 - 00:07:14.120

Because when I was very young, I was too young to know what was going on. But yes, they were so excited when Harold Wilson became Prime Minister. And I, back in the late 50s, got involved in a childish way with CND and Don Soper and Ban the Bomb and that. And that was my politics until I went on to university. Right. So when did religion first enter your life? Well, strangely, it just did by default. Because when you grew up in the suburbs of London in the 50s, very often, and I did, you joined the Brownies and the Guides.

00:07:14.640 - 00:07:50.760

And the local clergy came into the primary school to do what was then called assembly, now collective worship, once a week. And I found it fascinating. And I loved it. And my cohort, my peer group, all, as I say, became Brownies and Guides. And we all went on to confirmation classes. And we all got confirmed together at the age of 13. And actually, I loved that. That really meant something to me. So from, I suppose, the age of about 12, 13 onwards, I went to church every week. Because I just loved it.

00:07:51.360 - 00:08:30.460

What did your parents think about you going to church? They had no objection to my doing it, but they didn't join me. But they were, yes, I mean, my mother, more than my father, because she had a church background, would come along to services at Easter and Christmas. My father just didn't. He just didn't. He would have gone to weddings or funerals, but he wouldn't have gone to church. And he was quite, having got Liverpool, slightly Irish sympathies, he was quite critical of the Anglican church, and a bit critical of the Catholic church as well.

00:08:30.460 - 00:09:05.140

So yeah, he would not have had. But then, because he was so much older than me, he was retired by the time I went to university. So he retired at 65, which is the year I went off to York, to university. So from then on, he was retired and less dominant as a person with opinions one followed, although I always adored him. I thought he was great and respected him. So you, did you go to a grammar school?

00:09:05.140 - 00:09:45.240

Yes, I went to the local primary school, which again, was not expecting me, because my mother, having come from Burma, didn't know what you had to do to get your child to go to school. So when I arrived in, I suppose it was 1954, 1955, I wasn't on the list. And they said, she's not coming here. And my mother said, well, I don't know what to do. So yeah, so they put my name down on a list and I went. And then at the age of 11, we did the 11 plus. And my mother's mother, besides being a churchgoer, had been a maths teacher.

00:09:45.240 - 00:10:35.700

And my mother was very driven by the idea that I would get through the 11 plus, because my school was not a posh primary school that the majority didn't get through. But my mother gave me tuition every weekend. And I got through with flying colours, because she knew what to do. And so I jumped through the hoops and I got there. So I went to the local grammar school, Harrow County, where I don't think I was ever particularly intelligent. I just had been taught to jump through those hoops. But again, I liked school. That was a girls' school. And again, because it was the culture of the time, there was, we used to call it scripture in those days, it wasn't RE.

00:10:35.700 - 00:10:59.560

And there were a lot of unmarried women in their 50s and 60s who were teaching at the school. And I thought they were all terrific. I really admired them. So that was my background. And that was why I was very keen to go on with education as long as I could. And you went from there to York? I did.

00:10:59.980 - 00:12:00.580

And what did you study at York? Politics and sociology. And in those days, I went in 1965, the first part of that course involved looking at politics, sociology, economics, economic history, psychology, and so on, statistics and so on. And then one specialised after part ones, and I did politics, particularly because of my father, the history of the Russian Revolution, political sociology, because there was a very good teacher there, and something called ideology, which was a mixture of philosophy and whatever. And came out with a 2-1, which in those days was alright, actually. There weren't as many firsts around. One person in the entire year got a first. No, I'm wrong, two in social science got a first.

00:12:02.200 - 00:13:25.240

Can I go back to what you were saying about being drawn to religion at a very young age through the brownies and the guides, and then through confirmation, and that meant a lot to you. Can you say a little bit more about what it was that was drawing you? I was fascinated reading about it, thinking about it. So when we went to confirmation class, a lot of my friends just saw it as a hoop to jump through, whereas I wanted to discuss it all at great length, and I wanted to go into questions of sin and forgiveness and what that was about and where you drew the lines with what was a sin and how that all worked. So I just found faith such an interesting thing, and I would spend longer than your average teenager looking at it and thinking about it. And the other part of that was CND, peace, social justice. That was also very strong in me, and because there was always that element of faith, that interested me too. Very, very interesting. So you went through university, and what did you do after university?

00:13:47.000 - 00:15:13.380

So I was able to write stuff down and type it up, and at the end of that, as a not very proficient shorthand typist, I went into the BBC External Services and worked for the African section, and within that for what was known as the Rhodesian section, because that's what it was called at the time. As a secretary, you know, nowadays you call them PAs, but back in the day they were secretaries, to a man called Dick Hewlett, who was programme organiser in the Rhodesian section, and this was at the time when Ian Smith was declaring UDI. So I went all through that, and at the end, in 1969, Britain cut off formal communications links with what was then Rhodesia, because they'd fallen out with Ian Smith, and the Rhodesian section was made redundant. But actually that didn't matter, because I reapplied within the BBC and got a job as PA to the Assistant Head of External Broadcasting, so that was fine, I hardly physically moved, just went upstairs I think and worked for somebody else.

00:15:13.380 - 00:16:38.200

And did that until the end of 1969, because earlier in 1969 I got pregnant, and I got pregnant in the April, so I'd just started work at the BBC, some four months later I got pregnant, got married in the August, gave in my notice in the autumn, and left the BBC in January 1970. And had my first child in February 1970, and wondered what to do then, because I had a baby, was living in Putney, and decided I could teach politics and sociology at the local adult education institute, which was Putney Adult Education Institute. And had another child in 1971, daughter Cathy, moved out to Teddington, and once you're involved in adult education, that mushrooms, because other people ask me to teach courses. So I taught a course called the History of Political Ideas in Hounslow, and this went alongside women's studies becoming bigger.

00:16:39.200 - 00:17:44.560

And I did women's studies with a woman called Sally Alexander in Hampton, and Sally and I became friends, and she asked me whether I would take over her course when she left it, so I did. And so taught women's studies, but all the time was thinking I'm only a week ahead of the people in the group, I didn't feel confident, it was fine talking to women, because there was no hierarchy, it was just really exciting, great structure. But when it came to earning money teaching people, say in Richmond Adult College, I didn't feel I had as much, let alone more to give than the people who came along to the class, although they were lovely to me. So I went back and applied to do a Masters in Politics and Sociology at LSE, and I was there from 1977 to 1979.

00:17:44.560 - 00:19:09.440

I started full-time, and then it was quite hard with the two children, so I moved to part-time, but actually that was the best thing I could have done, because it was much cheaper, and I had two years at it, so I did rather well in that in 1979. And they offered me funding for the ESRC, Economic and Social Research Council, to look at, and I picked the subject, how do children learn about the world through television, because social media wasn't so big in those days. And I did it with respect to John Craven's Newsround. So I went to the White City, and I went to Television Centre, which I hadn't known when I worked for the BBC, because I'd worked in radio, but I met Eric Rowan, who was the then producer of John Craven's Newsround, and John Craven, and we talked about what their goals were, what their priorities were, and what they were trying to do. And then I went around 21 London schools and interviewed Year 5 and 6, but in those days we called them 3rd and 4th year children, about their ideas of the world.

00:19:10.440 - 00:20:22.560

And what I got from that, in a sentence, was that the Falklands War was on, and I said to the children, who are Britain's enemies, and they said Germany. Something was transcending what was going over on television. And that was programmes like Dad's Army, It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. Narrative transcends factual news. So that was, if you like, the main finding I made, and that was that. And then as I was coming to the end of that, my husband's job moved out to Holland. So my son and daughter were just at high school in Richmond, Greycourt School, and we all moved out to Holland. They went to the local English-speaking school, the British School of the Netherlands, and I did a piece of comparative work, comparing what I'd done on Newsround with a programme called Jeugdjournal in Holland.

00:20:26.080 - 00:21:29.680

And yeah, I did that and finished my doctorate, and so submitted that to LSE, that was that. What I haven't mentioned is that I married a Catholic. And so the children, when I went to get married, they said, will you guarantee to bring your children up Catholics? And I said no. And they said, well, will you do your best to assist in bringing your children up as Catholics? And I said no. Not because I was against faith, but because I had a faith, and I wanted more to do with their faith journey than simply abandoning them to Catholicism. But they went on, and this was during Vatican II, so actually the Catholic Church was becoming more self-critical at that time. And we went to a Catholic church I'd occasionally go, which was very liberal.

00:21:29.680 - 00:22:18.680

And so, weirdly, they grew up with more of an idea of social justice and faith than they might have done if they'd just gone to the local Anglican church, I don't know. But so they were both Catholics when we went to live in Holland. They carried on going to the church there. And after four years there, we moved on to Italy, by which time son Joe was 18, and he came back to this country. We'd always lived in this area, so he started going to Mass in a Catholic church not very far from here called Our Lady of Lord. And I said, after a year in Italy, I want to come back because I'm not able to work. Was this your husband's job again?

00:22:18.680 - 00:23:36.560

Yes, it was, yes. So daughter Kathy came back and went to boarding school, arts ed, arts educational in this country. Joe was already back and said, I'd go to this Catholic church, Mum, because they're really strong on social justice. So I did. And that gave my own faith journey a massive, massive leg up, because the then parish priest at this Catholic church was astonishing and inspirational and lived his faith. And people either hated him and left because he wasn't conventional, or were drawn into that congregation. And I thought at one point, maybe I'll become a Catholic. And he laughed at me, the parish priest laughed at me, and he went, we wouldn't have you, Cameron, you know, you're just much too much trouble. So I continued to go to Mass there, but I started going to the Anglican church. And that was the beginning of a sort of the joiners syndrome. Because I suppose I was 40, but by Anglican standards.

00:23:36.560 - 00:24:28.200

So it was 1997 then? I was by that time teaching in primary school, because I'd done a PGCE when I came back. And it was the Catholic church that was feeding my faith, but I was terribly involved in the Anglican church. I find that fascinating. It's a funny thing, isn't it?

00:24:28.320 - 00:25:32.760

So can you say a little bit more about why you were not tempted to go with the Catholic faith? Because of their stance on women. Because they were not really looking for women to get more involved in the church. Although if you were good at flower arranging and making coffee, there'd be plenty to do, but that wasn't really my thing. And because when I had my children, the Catholic church were not very affirming of a woman who wasn't a Catholic. If I'd been willing to join the union of Catholic mothers and do all that stuff, I think they would have been fine. But because I had said no. When my son was baptised, I felt like a spare part. There was no affirmation at all. So that didn't draw me into the church. Although the preaching of this particular Catholic priest was very powerful.

00:25:34.440 - 00:26:37.660

So with the Anglican church, you were beginning to be asked to do various offices. Were you given official training? At that point, not. But things happen. So I went to a house group. Then they said, would I host a house group? Then they said, would I coordinate the house groups? Because the person who had had moved somewhere else. Then they said, would you help at Sunday school? And then would you coordinate Sunday school? Which was quite an ask, actually, because I was fairly new to primary school teaching myself, so that was quite hard. But I did it and I loved it. And then one week, the vicar at the church where I went was a lovely man, very academic and painfully shy and struggling in the parish.

00:26:38.660 - 00:27:47.340

So various people in the parish contacted the diocese and got somebody who had retired from this area to get alongside him and help him. And I was teaching Sunday school one morning and I set all the fire alarms off in church because I'd got everyone to set fire to their sins. And the vicar asked to see me, the lovely, shy, quiet vicar. And I thought he was just going to tell me off, so I was expecting that. And he said, have you ever considered ordination? And I said, my first answer was no, although there is a bit more which I can say in a minute. And he said, well, I think you should. The primary school at which I was teaching was a church primary school in Shepparton. And I was quite friendly because he'd done the interview with me with a man called Richard Truss, who was the then rector of the church in Shepparton.

00:27:48.900 - 00:28:51.120

He moved shortly after that to St John's, Waterloo. And that's a story that involves WATCH, but that's where he went. And so I said, well, you know, I don't mind. I'd give it a go. And he said, well, I'm about to move to Waterloo and if you did, I'd be very happy to have you alongside me doing a bit of a placement in Waterloo. And that was just such an exciting, social justice wise, such an exciting prospect. I carried on teaching. I carried on teaching in Shepparton till the end of that academic year. Then I left and went to Chessington to work with children with moderate learning difficulties. Did their selection conference for the Church of England and got on to it. And studied at SITE, S-E-I-T-E, South East Institute of Theological Education.

00:28:52.120 - 00:29:56.840

And that was based in Southwark Cathedral, which wasn't half as smart in those days as it was. And that was from 1999, I think, 1999 to 2000, 2000, 2001, 2001 to 2002. Yeah, 1999. And yes, and so was ordained in 2002. So you were ordained as, I don't know if my date's right, ordained as a priest then, or ordained as a deacon? I was ordained deacon in 2002. Yeah, that's right. So I was ordained deacon in 2002 stipendially, because there was a very mercurial director of ordinands, diocesan director of ordinands, who was impressed by the academic qualifications, which were completely irrelevant to theology because that wasn't what I'd done.

00:29:56.840 - 00:30:54.100

But it seemed that if you were in the Church of England and you had academic qualifications, that impressed people. So God ordained then. Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, was in the year above me. There were some fantastic people at SITE. And my daughter called it God School, because it was like night school. It was once a week on a Tuesday evening with a couple of residentials per year. So I was teaching during the day and doing that in the evening. It was quite full on. It was full on, but it was so exciting and lovely. It didn't feel hard, you know, it felt great actually. But then when I was ordained in 2002, because I was ordained stipendially, I moved from Thames Ditton, where I'd been living, to Epsom, where I was the curate at St Martin's Church.

00:30:56.040 - 00:31:47.420

And my vicar, who'd said, was I interested in ordination, hadn't foreseen that I would do it stipendially. He had thought that I would stay living where I was living and do it non-stipendially and help out at the church. So for him it was a kind of double blow, because he lost me both ways and I'd totally moved out. Can I just ask you, when you were saying about the vicar that encouraged you to do the course, you said there was something else as well that at the same time that caused you to be ordained. Well, the funny thing was that when I was about 13 at my grammar school, I was hugely impressed, as I said, by these women teachers.

00:31:48.240 - 00:32:38.500

And I had written, and I've still got it, but I haven't got it with me today, I could have brought it, on the flyleaf of my King James Bible that I had at school, I hereby swear to dedicate my life to God, and I'd signed it. And I've still got that, and my best friend Jenny Spry had kind of countersigned it, and we probably got told off for making a noise or something like that while the lesson was going on. So I thought, well that's an interesting thing to have happened from that age. So yes, the other thing I should say, the reason I came to be involved in WATCH was that alongside me, before I went to site, was a woman called Nicky, and I will remember her surname, it'll come to me.

00:32:39.240 - 00:33:26.320

But Nicky had been a Catholic and left the Catholic Church because she felt a call to be ordained. Nicky Arthie, she is now at Gloucester, a really able person, in the same year as Sarah Mullally. And we were all, the women, well many of us at site, very interested in women's ordination and beyond that, women's becoming bishops. When we had to have a mentor assigned to us, in the second year I think it was, and my mentor, I think with the connivance of Nicky Arthie and various others, was a woman called Hilary Cotton,

00:33:26.320 - 00:34:14.880

who was then, I think, chair of WATCH, Women in the Church, which was based at St John's Waterloo, which is where the rector of the church in Shepparton was. So that all kind of came together a bit, and I became very involved in WATCH, and by then women had been ordained, but it was the movement to ordain women as bishops. So I was regularly going to WATCH meetings with Hilary Cotton, Nicky Arthie, a woman called Pippa Ross McCabe and various others, and we were very active locally in working for women bishops. Can you tell me what that activism involved? What were you doing? Were you lobbying?

00:34:14.880 - 00:34:55.480

Yeah, of course. We were meeting regularly, we were lobbying people, because at the time it was beginning to, slowly, slowly, slowly, to go through general synod. So we did it from the ground up. We worked through deanery synods, we then worked through diocesan synods, and then we, you know, all the time, it was political, really. We were trying to get majorities to carry our resolutions forward, and both Nicky Arthie and Hilary Cotton were very skilled at that. And we got to the point where the decisions were going through Guilford Diocese.

00:34:56.900 - 00:35:25.460

You say they were very skilled, and very eloquent with their arguments? But they were also skilled at lobbying people. So they would get alongside people. They would do the maths. They would say, you know, if we can get this person on board and this person on board, who is going to vote against us? And they did all that stuff that I would never have had the ability or the patience to do, but they were really good at that.

00:35:25.460 - 00:36:25.330

So I remember going to a meeting where we passed a motion way in front of many other diocese saying we supported the ordination of women bishops. There was a change of bishop in Guilford Diocese. When I was ordained, the bishop was John Gladwin, who went from Guilford to Chelmsford. And his replacement was a man called Christopher Hill, who was a very kind and nice man, but not enormously powerful in his argument for women clergy and women bishops. He wasn't against them, but he was not strong. And so we were a bit of a thorn in his side.

00:36:27.910 - 00:37:04.630

And he was there most of the time, actually. But much, much better was a man called Ian Brackley, who was the suffragan bishop in Guilford. He was the bishop of Dorking. So how did the two differ, Christopher Hill and Ian Brackley? Ian would get up and speak at General Synod or Diocesan Synod in favour of women, no holds barred. Christopher wanted to try and keep everybody on board in a loving and generous way.

00:37:05.530 - 00:37:45.770

So some of the resolutions that came up became watered down in order to move forward. That was the difficulty. And Guilford diocese has always had a very strong lobby of evangelical clergy, and some of them were very articulate and very well organised themselves. So it was like walking through treacle with him. And he was our diocesan bishop. Ian Brackley was a very strong supporter, but he was a suffragan bishop, although he did sit on General Synod.

00:37:46.610 - 00:38:20.370

So yeah, that was hard, but we finally got it through. And to this day, I am a member of WATCH. I've also, after I did my curacy, I moved back into this area and took on a parish near Hapton Court called St Mary's East Molesy. So that's where I went. They were a failing parish. They wanted to close the parish down. So this would have been around about 2002?

00:38:20.370 - 00:39:03.010

2002 was when I got ordained, so I spent three years in Epsom. So this was 2005, and they couldn't afford to pay. So I was stipendry. I got an income, but they couldn't afford to pay. And I said, as long as I've got the vicarage, because husband Chris was well paid, I said, I think we can probably manage with that. So I went in non-stipendry, with a history of having been stipendry, to this little church that was due to close.

00:39:03.130 - 00:39:28.810

And it didn't close. The long and the short was, it didn't close. The reason they gave us for wanting to close it was that it needed re-roofing. We managed to re-roof it, and that was all great. And because I'd been stipendry, the diocese used me to do various things. So I ended up, like Robert here, for a long time, as Area Dean. In those days they called it Rural Dean.

00:39:30.150 - 00:40:08.430

Which was very useful. Useful from a women's point of view, because it gave me access to meetings of other deans, and so on and so on. So that was all good. Can I just ask you, throughout your journey so far, with becoming involved in the church, and then doing formal training, and then actually becoming a curate, have you met objections from male or female colleagues or members of the congregation?

00:40:08.890 - 00:40:30.950

Yes, and I can give you two examples. One was when I was a curate in Epsom. I went to a church called, something on the hill, I want to say St John's on the hill, but I don't think it was, Walson on the hill, to take a service, very early on in my curacy. And as soon as I walked through the door, I could feel that they didn't want a woman there.

00:40:31.070 - 00:41:01.490

So this would have been 2002. And I could feel they were waiting for me to do something wrong. I just got that feeling. And as a result, I was very wobbly in that service. And of course they were delighted with me being very wobbly in the service, because that bore out what they thought about women. On another occasion, there was a church down the road, when I went to the church near Hampton Court in East Maltese,

00:41:02.070 - 00:41:22.310

where they had signed resolutions A and B. They didn't want women clergy. But there was going to be a healing service, and I went along to an ordinary evening service. And a woman in the congregation, who didn't know me, said to me, oh hello, who are you? And I said, my name's Carol, I've just moved into the area.

00:41:22.590 - 00:41:45.710

But I didn't say, I'm actually moved in to be the church minister at St Mary's. And got through the service, she was charming at that point, but within half an hour of my getting home, she'd knocked on the door and said, how dare you not tell me exactly what you were doing. And I just want to tell you that I am not welcoming you into this area, and blah, blah, blah.

00:41:46.970 - 00:42:12.750

Funnily enough, I now take services there. You know, time has moved everything on. There was a very nice vicar there, and over the years, that changed. So yes, I had that. There was also a woman in Epsom, St Martin's Epsom, where I did my curacy. Who was married to a retired clergyman, who was in the parish and helping out, rather as I am here now.

00:42:13.130 - 00:42:30.270

And she wouldn't receive communion from me. And at the beginning, there were a lot of people, well I say a lot, there were a minority of people who wouldn't take communion from a woman. And that changed over the years. I'm interested in the three examples that you cited, were all women objective?

00:42:31.290 - 00:42:54.710

Two of them were women. The other was the whole congregation in St Walton on the hill. But yeah, you're right, that two of them were women. Absolutely right. Yes. There was a man called Michael Rogerson, who wouldn't receive from me, but he changed very early on. And he said, if it really is the body of Christ, well that's fine then, I don't mind receiving from you.

00:42:54.990 - 00:43:19.510

And if it isn't, I don't suppose it will do me any harm. And I'm still in touch with him. So he was much more gracious in a way, than the women were. Did any of the people that were finding this difficult to accept, express why to you? They just felt that it wasn't women's place to be ministers.

00:43:20.710 - 00:43:42.810

The other thing was, that I told you I'm married to a Catholic. He carried on going to the Catholic Church, and because I had a lot to do with the Catholic Church at the beginning, they were enormously supportive of me. Including the clergy in the Catholic Church, and still are, and have been.

00:43:43.310 - 00:44:05.550

And there is one particular Catholic priest, when I was doing the deanery, Rob Estale, was a very supportive Catholic priest. He was kind of being fast-tracked up the Catholic hierarchy, but wrote an article about women being ordained, and was then sidelined.

00:44:05.810 - 00:44:29.630

But I'm still in touch with him, and he's been enormously supportive. So one can't just say, it's only Protestants, and not all Protestants. There are Catholics who are very strongly in favour of women's ordination. And I've got lots of friends in the Catholic Church who would love it if women were ordained.

00:44:30.090 - 00:44:50.350

Very interesting. When you did become ordained, and you were first a priest, how did it feel to have that bestowed on you at last? Amazing, I suppose. But I had never looked for it.

00:44:50.750 - 00:45:11.510

I'd never looked for it. It was my vicar who said to me, do you think you'd like to do this? So it was very special, but it wasn't kind of, this is what... I never, and I still never, want to be an important person in the hierarchy.

00:45:11.510 - 00:45:32.590

And there was a time in WATCH where I said, if all we are doing is fighting for women to be more important in the hierarchy, I'm not sure I'm very interested, because I'm more interested in peace and justice issues than what we're doing on the streets,

00:45:33.030 - 00:45:53.470

and in that, than actually giving women a leg up into a hierarchy that I'm a bit funny about anyway. So it was a great feeling. It was amazing and surprising. But it was not like, this is me dressed up in fine things doing any of that.

00:45:53.910 - 00:46:13.090

And, you know, it's not what I do, really. I'm a street pastor in Kingston. I work in night shelters. That's what I like to do. And I always think, Jesus was never kind of, you know, standing on ceremony.

00:46:13.370 - 00:46:30.330

So that, for me, is my faith. So while it did feel amazing, it was not like how marvellous I am standing up here. I completely understand. So can I ask you a bit more about the work with WATCH now?

00:46:30.750 - 00:46:41.230

Yes. What are the key things that you're campaigning for now? Well, a lot of it is to do with liturgy. And the reason I left WATCH for a while,

00:46:42.250 - 00:46:59.430

but one of the other things, after I retired from my parish, I was asked to do, was get involved with an organisation which was then called the Women's World Day of Prayer. It's an annual service. It used to be held on the first Friday of Lent.

00:46:59.430 - 00:47:13.450

It used to be held on the first Friday of Lent, and it's now held on the first Friday of March. And each year, we focus on one particular country. It's ecumenical. It's global.

00:47:14.210 - 00:47:30.530

The idea is that early in the morning, in Western Samoa, people start praying for this particular country. And it goes through Australia, New Zealand, Asia, across Europe, down through Africa, over through the United States,

00:47:30.630 - 00:47:50.790

and ends in American Samoa at the end of the day. So it's a wave of prayer that goes around the world. So I got involved in that, and after a while, they said, would I chair it nationally, which is what I'm doing at the moment.

00:47:51.670 - 00:48:11.690

And two years ago, we had a service that focused on England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We had a writing group that was putting the service together for it. And one of the writing group responsible for the order of service wrote a prayer which was, God, our mother and our father.

00:48:12.850 - 00:48:26.470

That went down very well in some areas, and in some churches in different countries. Germany loved it, but not in others. So Northern Ireland, the Presbyterians in Northern Ireland,

00:48:27.370 - 00:48:45.330

and a lot of very Bible-based Protestants hated it. We lost members of the National Committee over it. And I was not chairing the World Day of Prayer at that point, but I thought I could do with talking to some of those women I used to be involved with.

00:48:46.290 - 00:49:09.370

So I rejoined WATCH. And Hilary Cotton, who had been my mentor, was still involved with WATCH, and got involved in discussions about liturgy, and how you can recognise a female side of God when you're praying to God.

00:49:10.790 - 00:49:26.930

And it's surprisingly hard, because most people who now have got quite used to women clergy, if you start saying something like, God, our mother and our father, are very uncomfortable with that, and don't want to do it.

00:49:27.630 - 00:49:49.650

So it's tying up ends and moving forward, affirming not just women, because we've got women priests and bishops and so on, but women in the liturgy, just recognising that women have a place in the liturgy. And I don't know how much people have said to you already about

00:49:49.650 - 00:50:06.090

Phyllis Tribble, Texts of Terror? Not very much, so please tell me. Well, alongside MO, Movement for the Ordination of Women, and WATCH, there was a lot of theological research, some of it Catholic actually,

00:50:07.390 - 00:50:25.030

women looking at the place of women in the Bible, and how women have been written about. And Phyllis Tribble wrote a book called Texts of Terror, and she went through the Old Testament, and she looked at how women have been either ignored,

00:50:25.610 - 00:50:43.650

or really abused and badly treated, and that somehow went by default as being okay. And then women, of course, occur in the New Testament, and women, I've got shelves of books at home,

00:50:44.210 - 00:51:07.270

how women were seen by the early church. People like Phoebe, and some of the very early apostles, and Mary Magdalene the apostle to the apostles, and so on. So that body of research found it fed into experimental liturgy in the church.

00:51:07.650 - 00:51:21.170

So some of that is still around. And some of it is absolutely wonderful. So I don't know whether that gives you... Without it in front of me, I can't give you too much,

00:51:21.370 - 00:51:38.290

but that's really what they're working on at the moment. And it's unfinished business. And it was also still getting alongside people. When I became ordained, my children were grown up, long gone.

00:51:38.610 - 00:51:56.310

My children are in their 50s now, so they've got their own careers. But when I was studying for the church, Nicky Arthie was then in probably her 20s, and they had children, and they were really dependent

00:51:56.850 - 00:52:12.990

on some time off to look after their families and that sort of thing. And so it was representing women, and making sure that they got a reasonable deal. Without, and of course there'll always be human natures like this,

00:52:13.330 - 00:52:24.830

there will always be some women who take the church for a ride. You know, there will always be some women. Say a little bit more about that. What do you mean? Please.

00:52:24.990 - 00:52:41.310

Okay, yeah. No, that's fine, that's fine. I won't name any names. When I was in Epsom, there was a woman who wanted to be ordained because she thought it would be lovely to be ordained.

00:52:42.070 - 00:52:52.790

And I talked to her over several years, probably, about why that was so. I was not the director of Ordinance, I was simply someone who was alongside her.

00:52:53.270 - 00:53:17.750

And I never heard from her anything about faith, really, or about helping people and getting alongside them. So she did go through to interviews with the director of Ordinance, and they were saying, quite rightly in my opinion,

00:53:18.170 - 00:53:31.430

I don't think this is for you. She would then say, that's because I'm a woman, and you've got no time for women. And to take a parallel with that,

00:53:32.350 - 00:53:46.830

my daughter's director of Chichester Festival Theatre, she casts, plays and so on. Very occasionally, they'll have a woman of colour who will say, I want A, B and C,

00:53:47.430 - 00:54:02.510

and it'll get to a point where they'll say, well, we can't give you that. So they will then say, it's because I'm black and I'm a woman. And it's steering that course through what is a genuine grievance

00:54:02.510 - 00:54:21.070

and what is really, you know, is that a grievance. My granddaughter now is in her 20s and takes plays up to Edinburgh and is talking about, there is one particular woman who is defined as autistic and ADHD.

00:54:22.830 - 00:54:36.310

Last year, when she went up with this troupe to Edinburgh, she was quite difficult. And so when they were choosing who to take this year, she was not on the list.

00:54:36.810 - 00:54:47.230

And she said, it's because I've got disabilities and you're not. And you just have to make that judgement. You just have to say, is this really, you know, it's a difficult thing to do.

00:54:47.510 - 00:54:58.090

Yeah, I can completely see that. And it's, yeah, sometimes it's because they are a woman or because they're black or because they're something. But not always.

00:54:58.090 - 00:55:15.230

And if you are negotiating for women, you've got to be very certain the women you are fighting for are not going to, I would almost say, let you down, you know. No, I completely understand that.

00:55:15.530 - 00:55:30.330

Okay. When I was in my parish, I blessed a gay marriage of two women in the parish. And that was wonderful.

00:55:31.190 - 00:55:43.390

The marriage then got a bit rocky. And I remember saying to one of them, you're not making my life easy, you know, because I'm going out on a limb to support you, you know.

00:55:43.610 - 00:55:55.490

And this is not good. It's not a good, what do they call it, an optic, don't they? When you are then like the dysfunctional couple in the parish. So all of that stuff, but that's life.

00:55:55.650 - 00:56:02.890

That's just how things go on, really. Yeah. Can I ask you about 2014? Yeah.

00:56:02.910 - 00:56:11.390

When it became agreed that women could be bishops. Yes. And you've been involved in WATCH. How did you feel when that?

00:56:11.690 - 00:56:23.830

Delighted, absolutely thrilled to bits because it was the culmination of something. I had been, I'd retired by then because I was 65 in 2012.

00:56:24.630 - 00:56:38.830

And I worked on, but I had actually at that point retired. I think I was here in 2014. But I was really, really thrilled to bits because it was everything we'd been working for.

00:56:39.210 - 00:56:48.510

But as I say, having done that, we couldn't then just walk away from it because there were still things to be done. What about the compromises that were made

00:56:48.510 - 00:57:01.030

or the way, though, that there can... Yeah, yeah, if a church has a problem with it. I think it's inevitable. I think having run a parish,

00:57:02.650 - 00:57:14.810

you will always get people who are not ready for it. I have it now with World Day of Prayer. We've got another issue this year and we're celebrating Palestine,

00:57:14.950 - 00:57:28.030

the Christian Women of Palestine this year. And there are people who are not ready for that. And it's... I would love to go wholeheartedly out and say yes.

00:57:28.250 - 00:57:37.450

And we've got to do that to an extent. I don't want to be like my old Bishop Christopher Hill was and kind of muddy the waters. But at the same time, there are some people

00:57:37.450 - 00:57:45.990

who are simply not ready to hear that. And so while I wouldn't want it and while I would argue the case, you know, till the cows came home with those people,

00:57:46.750 - 00:57:55.270

I would know that I wasn't going to get them on board by talking to them. I have conversations on the streets of Kingston as a street pastor.

00:57:55.970 - 00:58:06.650

And there are people who come up to me and say, do you believe in gays getting married? And I say, I do. And so we will then talk about it for the next hour

00:58:06.650 - 00:58:18.330

and we'll never agree with each other. I won't back down and nor will they. And that's just how things are. But I suppose, I believe and hope

00:58:18.330 - 00:58:32.130

that if you're genuinely doing the right thing in your eyes with integrity and if God's behind what you're doing, sooner or later things will move forward

00:58:32.130 - 00:58:39.230

and in the case of women bishops in the Church of England, they did. Yeah. Where do you think the Church is now

00:58:39.230 - 00:59:00.230

with equality generally at the moment? Since I first was involved in the Church, they have come on zillions of miles. You know, when I was first involved in the Church

00:59:00.230 - 00:59:14.530

back in the 1950s as a churchgoer, there would be women in the Anglican church choir but nobody was involved in much in the Church at all apart from flower arranging and making coffee really.

00:59:17.690 - 00:59:26.770

So we've come on, you know, we've got people like Sarah, a Bishop of London, we've got women bishops, we've got all of that. So I think we've done wonderfully well

00:59:26.770 - 00:59:42.770

but what sometimes you can't afford to sit back and think we've done it all because we haven't and where I go all around the country now

00:59:42.770 - 00:59:52.150

for World Day of Prayer there's women, you know, up in Yorkshire or Wales or wherever and there will always be a few women

00:59:52.150 - 01:00:04.710

who will start talking about, well actually, you know, I'm not so sure about women ministers and I'm not so sure about that and often it'll be the same women

01:00:05.250 - 01:00:15.510

who are thinking we're making a big fuss about slavery and who don't like woke and who don't like... and it goes with a sort of mindset

01:00:15.510 - 01:00:27.470

and they are still there, they haven't moved at all. I've just come back from the Middle East last... when did I get back? Last Wednesday I think

01:00:29.070 - 01:00:40.290

and on the one hand you've got that but the other thing that's changed is in the evangelical wing of the Anglican Church you've got people who were never very happy

01:00:40.290 - 01:00:49.050

with women in leadership and although they are admitting women and some of them are marvellous people there are evangelicals who are not very happy

01:00:49.050 - 01:01:00.050

with women in leadership either so it's not a done deal by any means. What do you hope to see going forward? I mean, what do you think we can hope for

01:01:00.050 - 01:01:09.230

sort of in both our lifetimes, maybe? Yeah, well yours is going to be longer than mine you know, statistically but yeah...

01:01:11.370 - 01:01:24.410

a church which celebrates the rank and file I'm really keen I'm keen that women are brought forward

01:01:24.410 - 01:01:35.730

but I'm also keen that all kinds of people are empowered and brought forward that has integrity that's honest with itself

01:01:35.730 - 01:01:46.430

about where we are on a whole range of issues and commits itself to doing something about it and I think women in the past

01:01:46.430 - 01:01:58.330

did a huge amount to kind of win their spurs and I think we have to keep doing that in my experience, people who've seen

01:01:58.330 - 01:02:12.470

what women have done have thought, well, if you do do that you can't be all terrible so when our previous curate arrived

01:02:12.470 - 01:02:18.630

and he said to me if you were to give a piece of advice what would you say? I just said to him, show up

01:02:18.630 - 01:02:26.810

keep showing up, keep moving the chairs keep doing the jobs that nobody else will do and keep doing that and if you do that

01:02:26.810 - 01:02:35.150

people will be won over by your commitment to what you're doing and he did that and they adored him here

01:02:35.150 - 01:02:42.690

he did it so well that's what it's about and so I'd say for women I'd love to see a church

01:02:42.690 - 01:02:50.790

where women are more empowered but also remain committed to doing all that messy boring stuff that you can't ignore

01:02:50.790 - 01:02:59.170

because when you do ignore it you're not doing women any favours because people then can say oh well, they're just a waste of time

01:03:00.010 - 01:03:08.470

slightly different question and I don't want it to be a leading question what do you think the advancement of women

01:03:08.470 - 01:03:17.070

through the church has actually done for the church and its congregations why should women add anything

01:03:17.070 - 01:03:24.510

you know, people but what do you think? I think they've done a huge amount for families and children

01:03:25.190 - 01:03:34.430

and I can think of two examples one is Janice Janice is just fantastic you rarely get Janice

01:03:34.430 - 01:03:40.750

not knowing somebody's name she will get alongside she will get alongside women she'll get alongside children

01:03:40.750 - 01:03:46.050

she will know their names and she'll bring them forward the church as I remember it back in the 50s

01:03:46.050 - 01:03:52.830

was full of very dignified slightly pompous men who wouldn't even think it necessary to remember anybody's name

01:03:52.830 - 01:04:05.630

so I think women have brought that pastoral services by again just being the women they are

01:04:05.630 - 01:04:11.890

and getting alongside and sitting with families and talking about family background

01:04:11.890 - 01:04:20.610

and how things are on the ground and that sort of thing the other woman I'm thinking of who was so good at that

01:04:20.610 - 01:04:29.630

was a woman called Vicki Burrows who was the vicar at St Mary's Long Ditton she had a real ministry among troubled

01:04:30.190 - 01:04:37.810

single parents and I've never seen a man get as much alongside those women

01:04:37.810 - 01:04:44.410

as Vicki did because she knew what it was I think, you know women know what anorexia is like

01:04:44.410 - 01:04:53.510

women know what being a shopaholic is like and so we can bring that into the church

01:04:53.510 - 01:04:59.050

in a way that with the best women the loveliest men in the world and we would laugh about it

01:05:02.190 - 01:05:09.830

because they don't inhabit that half of the universe so it's that it's women who've been

01:05:09.830 - 01:05:18.250

abused or left or any of those things often women ministers

01:05:18.250 - 01:05:24.630

and now women ministers are not afraid to talk about their own lives and that's done a huge amount

01:05:24.630 - 01:05:35.970

for the church I can see that definitely just moving to the future you've long experience

01:05:35.970 - 01:05:43.590

of moving up the church hierarchy although you've explained that's not why you did it what advice would you give

01:05:43.590 - 01:05:49.830

to a woman starting out today who thought she might want to be a deacon? Talk to her first of all

01:05:49.830 - 01:05:54.630

very seriously about why she wanted to do it and listen to the answers and as I say

01:05:54.630 - 01:06:05.030

there was a woman in Epsom who wouldn't encourage someone like that I'd say

01:06:07.090 - 01:06:12.930

don't expect it to be easy don't expect you'll make piles of money at it because you don't

01:06:14.990 - 01:06:22.430

look very carefully at your own personal life and your family life because my marriage failed

01:06:22.430 - 01:06:27.890

you know a few years ago and that's because I mean we're still together

01:06:32.390 - 01:06:39.990

because I was never there I was so desperately into the parish I had an open door policy

01:06:39.990 - 01:06:46.490

there was a Catholic priest called Michael Hollins who had a ministry in Ealing who was another of my heroes

01:06:46.490 - 01:06:53.470

and he would never shut his door so if anyone knocked at the door any time of the day or night I was there to open the door

01:06:53.470 - 01:07:02.410

to be alongside them didn't matter where my children were concerned because my husband

01:07:02.410 - 01:07:08.190

in earlier years was not there because he was working away from home but who had recently retired

01:07:08.770 - 01:07:15.230

so I didn't really think that one through so I would say to a woman thinking of going into church just think about that

01:07:15.230 - 01:07:23.430

think about what your responsibilities are maybe I never had boundaries but maybe some boundaries are a good idea

01:07:23.430 - 01:07:35.190

Did you put in place boundaries yeah yeah yeah we're actually divorced

01:07:36.170 - 01:07:43.890

but we are still together and that was because he got involved with someone

01:07:43.890 - 01:07:52.250

with a woman in the parish and I was devastated thanks and so I said at the time

01:07:52.250 - 01:07:59.350

because he'd done that over the years when he'd been in business and I thought here we go again and I said right

01:07:59.350 - 01:08:05.850

I want a divorce because I think at the age I then was which was in my 60s

01:08:05.850 - 01:08:12.110

I can handle that I'm not sure if that came round again I would be able to but actually

01:08:12.110 - 01:08:18.210

we'd already been together about nearly 50 years so we had children grandchildren in common

01:08:18.210 - 01:08:24.670

it actually worked better that we stayed together but we have two independent accounts now

01:08:32.190 - 01:08:37.870

which is how that was but I would say I didn't have boundaries and I paid the price for that

01:08:40.210 - 01:08:46.610

so I would say to a woman thinking of going into it but I would also say it's the most wonderful

01:08:46.610 - 01:08:51.810

wonderful thing to be in it's just fantastic because you never know from one day to the next

01:08:51.810 - 01:09:02.810

what you'll be doing I took a funeral last Friday for a woman I've known in a council flat

01:09:02.810 - 01:09:10.230

about 30 years ago and lived it was amazing and I met him at the funeral

01:09:10.230 - 01:09:18.010

he's 30 something now so that sort of opportunity to get alongside people

01:09:18.010 - 01:09:24.510

is just fantastic and I'm sure there are lots of other ways of doing that but for me

01:09:24.510 - 01:09:35.610

because God's in it that's the thing isn't it so for me that's there

01:09:35.610 - 01:09:42.370

and that's wonderful has your faith ever wavered? never isn't that funny

01:09:42.370 - 01:09:49.770

even when even when I discovered over the years that my husband was involved

01:09:49.770 - 01:09:55.990

with other people and stuff like that my faith got stronger actually it got stronger

01:10:02.970 - 01:10:08.150

and yeah it's never I've never thought of

01:10:08.150 - 01:10:16.790

I kind of parked it a bit because when I was at York I was very left wing doing politics and sociology

01:10:16.790 - 01:10:24.750

very into that and Marxism was big in the 60s in York, in LSE in the universities I went to

01:10:25.390 - 01:10:33.690

and so the thing people used to say was why do you get down on your knees you know kick off the shackles of religion

01:10:33.690 - 01:10:40.350

and get alongside the working class and do that I did get disillusioned with ultra left politics

01:10:40.930 - 01:10:47.710

because they were the people I didn't feel had the integrity at the end of the day so although I was a trot

01:10:47.710 - 01:10:54.390

I was in the Socialist Workers Party for a while I was in the International Socialist before that

01:10:54.390 - 01:11:04.450

I was in the International Marxist League I was into all that I was involved in the Troops Out Movement in Ireland

01:11:06.050 - 01:11:14.170

they used to say silly things like oh well we'll put them up against the wall and I couldn't go along with that

01:11:14.170 - 01:11:20.250

and faith never does that faith is about is a much kinder more affirming

01:11:20.250 - 01:11:29.070

more ultimately sacrificial way of going on than they had We've covered an awful lot of ground so what I'd like to ask is

01:11:29.070 - 01:11:35.990

are there things that you would like to add to what we've been talking about this afternoon?

01:11:36.410 - 01:11:43.110

No not really I didn't know we'd be talking about so much so that's easy and I talk for England

01:11:43.110 - 01:11:51.610

so I could go on forever but I'm not dying to say one last thing What's marvellous

01:11:51.610 - 01:11:59.430

is you've anticipated most of my questions so thank you so much I've had such an interesting afternoon

01:12:05.690 - 01:12:08.490

Thank you