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Hello, this is Carmen Mangin. It's the 6th of March 2024 and I'm in Oxford. Can you tell me your name, please? My name is Judith Maltby. And your place of birth and your date of birth? I was born in Kankakee, Illinois. That's one for the transcribers, isn't it? And I was born on the 14th of October, 1957. Perfect. And can you tell me a bit about what your

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parents did for a living? Yes, my parents were both from Illinois and they were the first in their family to go to university. And they trained as teachers. And my father went on and did a doctorate and became an academic, a professor of education. And my mother taught for a while but later had a career as an executive director in Girl Scouting,

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which is a very much bigger organisation in the States than Girl Guides here. So she was running a large charitable, you know, what were they called? Council, Girl Scout Council in the States. And could you tell me a bit about your education? Were you in school? Yeah, I was. Well, we moved around the country a bit but I always was educated in the state

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sector and finished high school in DeKalb, Illinois, which is in Northern Illinois. And then I went again to a public university, the University of Illinois, which is in Champaign-Urbana and did a, what in the States is called a double major in history and English. And can you kind of walk us through your, your vocation story? Sure. Yeah. So both my, my parents

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were both Episcopalians. And so I grew up in an Anglican household. And so being born in 1957, the ordination of women didn t really start appearing as a possibility on the horizon until I was a teenager. And I grew up in what s known as the Anglo-Catholic tradition of Anglicanism in the Midwest, that s particularly strong in Episcopalianism. It s not a big

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denomination in the Midwest, but it s quite Anglo-Catholic for historical reasons. And so the ordination of women was not something my parish priests welcomed very warmly, I think it would be fair to say. However, my parents both came around to it pretty quickly, you know, and were supportive in general terms, particularly about, about me. And so by the time I was

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finishing high school, I did have a parish priest who was much more supportive about it, and started talking with him about it. But I wasn t sure. And, you know, this whole sort of, I think, in late adolescence, I was going through the whole thing about, you know, I was a feminist, but feminism was about secular things, and about job justice, and, you know,

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that you should be paid the same thing for doing the same job, and all that sort of thing. Not about, you know, that those sorts of ways of discourse didn t apply to the church. And then I got to university, at the University of Illinois, which has a wonderful Episcopal church right on the campus, St. John the Divine. And my freshman year, well actually we d also

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attended when I was a child, because my father did his doctorate at the University of Illinois. And in my freshman year, we got a new rector and chaplain, Tim Hallett, and his wife Mary, became, become very close friends of mine. But, but, you know, they, they, they both, they helped me see that, you know, one could be a good Catholic Anglican, and be very supportive

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of the ordination of women. And it all, you know, it all actually worked. And, and it was also at that age, you know, when you re an undergraduate, I didn t do theology, but I read a lot of theology. And I read a lot of church, and my own interest is in church history. And so I was reading a lot of theology for that anyway. And, you know, that there were very good theological

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reasons for ordaining women. It wasn t, it wasn t only, as though justice is only, you know, when people say it s only justice, you know, you think, gosh, that s not much of an argument, is it? Because justice is pretty, you know, is a key biblical virtue. But, you know, that there were good theological, positive theological reasons for ordaining women. And that a lot of

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the reasons against were historically conditioned. And because I think I m primarily a historian rather than a theologian, I, you know, I began even as an undergraduate to realize, you know, how contextualized what we think is. And there s not this sort of tablets, you know, dropping down, and that there s, you know, something that s been a fixed orthodoxy for 2000 years, and suddenly in

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about 1968, it all fell apart. You know, I mean, that s just terrible, ahistorical way of thinking. So, so that, that was, you know, that was, that was part of it. And in a funny sort of way, being an Anglo-Catholic gave me tools to actually interrogate the reasons against the ordination of women, if you see what I mean. I m sure a woman from an evangelical perspective would have had the

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same, you know, scriptural ninja qualities. So, but for me, it was much more about tradition. And, you know, arguments like the priest represented Christ at the altar, so it had to be a man. You know, A, that s a fairly new idea. And B, you know, we believe that it s the Eucharistic host that is Christ at the altar, not the priest, by the way, you know, sort of thing. So, you know,

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just all those sorts of things. And then, you know, being in a church environment that was very warm and supportive of it. However, the diocese of Springfield, which is southern Illinois, to this day does not have a bishop who ordains women. So this, I was an undergraduate in the second half of the 70s. And so even though I had the support of my rector and the vestry,

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as it s called in the Episcopal Church, the bishop wouldn t let me go to seminary. So meanwhile, I d had a junior year abroad in England at Keele University, and through some of my tutors there, I was encouraged to apply to Cambridge to do a doctorate. And so, you know, I thought, well, you know, 21 s a bit young to go to seminary anyway.

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I ll go to Cambridge and I ll do a doctorate and then I ll come back. So that was 1980, you know. So the going back part never happened except for visits. My path became an English path about ordination. And, you know, when I arrived as a graduate student in Cambridge in 1979, women couldn t even be deacons yet. So when I started exploring ordination, the Church of

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to be a deaconess. KF So, I guess, were you, were you aware that there had been ordinations in other places? Obviously, your own diocese didn t, but other dioceses, yes, there have been. DL Yes, I knew it was very, I d met some women priests from, you know, in the Episcopal Church. I mean, you know, you didn t have to, you just had to go to the

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Chicago to meet one or Missouri, you know, I mean, so yeah, I mean, but I didn t know many, to be honest, because of just the situation. So I, as I said, I went to Cambridge to do a doctorate on these, I guess, shorthand way of putting it, the social history of the Book of Common Prayer after the Reformation. So how was the prayer book perceived and used and valued

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at the parish level, you know, and how was it contested, and looked a lot at how lay people would take their vicar to court if he was leaving out bits of the Book of Common Prayer, or, you know, he wouldn t wear a surplus or sort of, so, and I think I coined the phrase prayer book Protestantism as a way of distinguishing it from Puritanism, so that was, you know,

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so I ve always been interested in the history of Anglicanism. And so, you know, I was in Cambridge for about a year thinking, you know, I m not here forever, I m not going to get involved in the movement for the ordination of women, all that sort of thing, and I just kept getting crosser about stuff. I read the Church Times every week and go, Oh, you have to be kidding me. So I joined

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Mo in about 1981, I think. I must have been one of the youngest people at their meetings. And, you know, within a year I was on the, you know, I was a national rep and, you know, so was, you know, was very involved in Mo. I was never on Synod during that period, I m on Synod now, but was, you know, helped organise diocesan stuff in Ely Diocese, and then I was in Salisbury,

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so I was jumping ahead a bit, but I had a research fellowship in Cambridge and then I went into theological college teaching. And I taught for a year at the Methodist College in Bristol, Wesley College, which was filling in for a member of staff, and then I got a job at Salisbury and Wells Theological College for six years. I was the church history tutor there

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in Salisbury, and it was while I was there I was ordained a deacon. Okay. Can you tell me a bit about Mo in those early years? Yeah, it was, it was, it was quite something. There were, you know, these incredible women, which of course when you're 23 look ancient to you, but, you know, like Christian Howard and

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Jean Maland and Monica Furlong, who I became quite close to. In fact, I conducted her funeral in the end. And I have to, when I look back on that time, I realise it was, it was a real political education as well as a spiritual education, about how you run a movement, how you build consensus, how you need allies,

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and, you know, how you chain, how you, in the Anglican, are we working? It's working, is it good? Okay, excellent. So, you know, how you, in, you know, I don't think this is unique to the Church of England or the Anglican polity, but how do you, how do you change an institution? How do you bring about change? And so, you know, as a 20-something, I learned an awful lot from,

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from these wise women and wise men, you know. There were, you know, people like Stanley Luth-Clibben, who's an early, he was Bishop of Manchester, I think, and he's kind of one of the early bishops to come out of the closet, so to speak, in favour of the ordination of women, as was Montefiore in Birmingham, John Austin Baker at Salisbury, who later ordained me,

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actually, a deacon, he's an amazing man. So there were also those early male, Ronald Mulby of Southwark, you know, so there were these early, and lots of male clergy, too. And, but yeah, so, and I think one of the things about Mo I reflect on, in retrospect, is it's, it was also one of the most, of all my experience with the Church of England, it was a body that, that there was

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really shared lay and ordained leadership, you know, it felt very, felt a lot of equality, at least, you know, it did to me as a lay person, but, you know, a lot of equality with that, and also it cut across churchmanship. So, you know, there were those of us, Anglo-Catholic, broad church, evangelical, it sometimes made organising worship a bit challenging,

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but, you know, it was, it was not a party issue, in the way that so many things have become in the Church of England. I also don't think, looking back on the 80s, that there was, there wasn't the big conservative evangelical block that there is now, and, you know, most of the opposition did feel it was mainly coming from a certain type of Anglo-Catholicism. I wouldn't tie the whole

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movement with that. Those, I guess, those first women, what, I mean, did they, did they want to be priests themselves? Did they want other women to be priests? I mean, what was their, kind of, what did you sense their motivation was? That, again, I think is very interesting about Mo, and is that there were women who clearly felt a calling, and, you know, I was one of them,

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but there were, for lots of, I mean, I think Monica Furlong's such a good example of this, or Christian Howard, they were very different, but who, who didn't themselves feel a vocation to ordain ministry, but just in their bones felt it was essential for the Church that, that we had a priesthood that was inclusive of men and women,

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and, you know, for all kinds of different reasons, I think, but from a, you know, this was, you know, that this was a, well, everything from, you know, we were bearing talents, not being able to use the gifts of women and leadership in the Church beyond lay leadership, but also that, you know, there was a deep, ugly misogyny at the basis of the opposition,

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which needed to be challenged, which fed into, you know, everything from domestic abuse to child abuse to, you know, all sorts of stuff, so, and, and, you know, and, and also what you might call more purely theological reasons about the nature of Christ, I mean, I think for me, theologically, that was the key theological issue, that if, that if Christ's maleness

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was more important than his humanity, then why should I be remotely interested in him, that is to say, you know, if that's more significant than what's a male savior got to say to women, except, you know, that we're just, as Aquinas said, we're just defective men, so we get kind of scooped up under the big male thing, you know, but if you're actually,

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as of course they had to start to say, women were, you know, this wasn't that women were inferior, they were just different argument, then you go, well, okay, so how to explain that to me in soteriological terms, then, with a male savior. So that's just, that was me being a smartass age 25 or something, but yeah, so, you know, there are a lot of things, so it was a,

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it was a, it was a, it was an unwieldy organization, it took time to, you know, it became quite a crack unit towards the end there, but, you know, took a lot of intentionality, and also, you know, we, a lot of people were finding their feet, and it, I think it succeeded because we both had a grassroots network, and, you know, every diocese

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had a Mo chapter, and we would put on events and things, and then there was also in the central office, you know, people concentrating on the synod campaign. So you are giving me a sense of, you know, kind of anticipating my next question, which was about structure, how, as an organization, it was structured or not, that the case may be. I mean, so you suggest it's centralized, but does

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that mean a reporting into kind of centralization, or more of a collaborative? Yeah, I think it was more collaborative. I mean, I was a diocesan rep on, for Mo for some years, for Ely diocese, and, but not on the central council, which I think was kind of, you know, where a lot of the strategic stuff happened. But it did feel, and, you know, I was only in my 20s, so I wasn't

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the main table, really, but it did feel as though there was an interaction between locality and center. And, you know, particularly in those last few years, before the vote in 92, you know, it did feel quite well organized. And then, of course, you know, before the final vote in 92, it had to, you know, had to go around the diocese for approval. So, I mean, I was in

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Salisbury diocese by that time, and I, you know, I would go off and speak at deanery synods and sort of thing. And I remember, you know, Wiltshire's a very, you know, you don't see, you don't think of Wiltshire as like radical England very much, do you? Though it's a lovely place. And I remember the first time I went off to speak at a deanery synod somewhere in Wiltshire,

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I thought, oh my God, it's going to be full of retired majors, which of course it was, because that's Wiltshire. And, you know, and it was, you know, it was, but they were all, they were all so positive about the ordination of women. Because, you know, by the 80s, rural Anglicanism is on the ropes, you know, you're already in the 80s getting groups of

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10 parishes, one stipendiary priest. And they were just saying, you know, we want a vicar, we don't care if the vicar's male or female, we just want one and we want them to love us and to be with us. So, you know, there was a very healthy kind of pragmatism. I mean, we taught theology too and everything, but, you know, just the stereotype that rural Anglicans are

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conservative, I think is completely wrong, because they've had to be much more adaptable for a lot of the 20th century than those of us in cities and suburbia. You know, they've had to make it work. So at the local level then, lots of speaking to parish groups, synods, um, are there any, I guess, what other activities would there be to, I mean, were there activity,

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were there, you know, bringing youth together to discuss it with youth? Well, it did in, you know, when I was in Cambridge, we, you know, I mean, I was a graduate student, but we had, we would discuss it at things like the Student Christian Movement and so forth. There was also, Mo did a lot of publishing, and that was a very important part of its work, I think, and

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they, you know, looking at some of the material at the LSE, because it was pre-COVID, I went to the launch of the archive, and, you know, you sort of see these things produced on miniograph machines, you know, and then, you know, a few years later, they're kind of classy publications and everything. So there was a, you know, there was a huge learning curve about

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that, and also getting, you know, good people to write for Mo, so people like John Austin Baker wrote one of the very first Mo Kairos booklets, and I think, yeah, so, yeah, so publishing, having someone who knew how to handle the press was a very, so, you know, we had a press officer, all of that was, you know, all part of kind of

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getting our act together in terms of the vote. How was, how was communication, how, how were issues or points or strategies communicated, kind of, from the centre to the to the branches? Through a newsletter, if I recall correctly, yeah, because no email then, yeah, yeah, I mean, there were all, there were tensions in Mo, I mean, I talked to Grace about this when,

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when she interviewed me, about, you know, there were the sort of, there was a kind of radical gradualist divide, which, you know, characterises women's movements, and so, I mean, a point of issue in division within Mo would be things like inviting a woman from Canada, America, to preside at the Eucharist in England, and, you know, in the early 80s,

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that felt like so out there and radical, and, you know, by, by about 1990, it was happening all the time. But, but, and, you know, there was a failed attempt to allow women ordained abroad to, to, to function here as priests that got defeated by Synod. You know, I remember going to the UL in Cambridge and looking up the Colonial Clergy Act of 1860, whatever it was, which was the basis of

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sort of thing, you know, so my historian skills were useful to Mo. But, yeah, so we had those, we had those tensions within Mo. Do you, do you, and I suppose when I think again about my own political education in this, you gotta do the slog constitutional work, you know, but you also need acts of, you need acts of prophetic quality along with them. And, and, you know, one of the

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things about, for example, when we had a woman priest from abroad to preside at the Eucharist, there's sort of two ways to understand that. There is, you know, if it was a very public event, that's a kind of in-your-face defiance. If it's just as, you know, I had one took place in my, my rooms in Newnham College and that was private and it was for, you know, that was all about

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keeping our spirits up in the struggle. So, you know, it works, well, you know, the Eucharist, gosh, it works in lots of different ways. There's a profound observation. So, you know, but, but those were some of the, some of the tensions in Mo. Now this is, I mean, you've got the, I guess my question is, how does feminism fit in with this? Yeah. I'm thinking of it in multiple ways, but

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one is, you know, there is a feminist movement that's going on. Are there any points of intersections? But also, you know, were Mo women feminists? Yeah. Yeah. There were, certainly the, I think the movement for the Ordination of Women in its second life, you know, from the sort of 70s onwards, puzzled secular feminists a bit, you know, or they just weren't particularly interested in

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the church. But as time went on, I think there was, there was a growing awareness that this too was an important area for women to achieve equality in. The irony is, of course, in the early 20th century, women's suffrage and women's secular political participation is, you know, that struggle's going on absolutely alongside the first big movement to ordain women, with people

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like Maud Royden and so forth. And, you know, the League of the Church Militant and church, the women's church suffrage movement or something like that, which was, of course, about allowing women to be members of a parish church council, you know, and that sort of, the opening representative roles to women in the new emerging church structures, which, you know, could, you know,

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I don't know how far that's a rabbit hole you want to go down, but, you know, that the whole, you know, Parliament being the legislature for the Church of England, as we all know, becomes untenable by the 20th century. So it leads to the creation of the Church Assembly. And so the Church of England actually has to create, along with Parliament, you know, a set

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of governance structures, because not every little minutiae of church stuff needs to go to Parliament anymore. Parliament doesn't want it, we don't want it to go to Parliament, you know. But also then you're creating legislative structures. What are women, you know, at the same time that women are saying we would like to be part of Parliament and in local government, and so forth. So it's

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all part of it. It's all part of a piece. Yeah, but that's a rabbit, that's an early 20th century rabbit hole. I think in the 80s, you know, there was certainly amongst my friends who weren't church people at all, or Christians, they were curious. I think they were supportive because they were my friends, but they did find it sometimes a little baffling, you know. So baffling why you bothered,

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or baffling... Yeah, yeah, you know, is this institution worth all of this? Yeah, yeah. And were more women on the whole feminists, or did it run the gamut of those who were, I think, but I think, yeah, I think so, even if sometimes there was some discomfort in using the word. But I think, I think of the older women, you know, they were, well, they were well informed,

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and they knew that, you know, you just don't get the right to have a university degree because somebody decides to give it to you, you know, these things have to be fought for. So you said you, now I can't recall whether a Deaconess or a Deaconess. Well, I was, by the time I finished training, so the, while I was teaching the Theological

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College, I trained on a part-time course. That was a bit, that was hard work. And so by the time I completed that, I was ordained Deacon in 1992. So it was a Deacon? A Deacon, that's right. In fact, it was, it was Michaelmas 1992, and the vote was six weeks later. So I think I must have been in the last group of women ordained Deacon, not knowing if, when, you know, I remember thinking,

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you know, am I going to be Deacon for 18 months, or two years, or five years, or ten years, or whatever. It was, it felt a, an enormous leap of faith, actually, that, because I knew that once I was a Deacon, there's no going, you know, that, there's no copping out now, you know, I'd had to, I'd stick, I'd had to stick with it. And so, yeah, yeah. So when you were

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training to become a Deacon, who did you train with? Well, I trained on a regional course, you know, so training in the Church of England is, is, some people train full-time residentially, and I was, in fact, a tutor at such a college. And then, you know, about half of the other ordinands train on these regional part-time courses, because they're in employment, or that,

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you know, it suits their personal circumstances. So, interestingly, the course, which was then called the Southern Diocese Ministerial Training Course, SDMTS, and is now called Stets, I think, but anyway, so it covered sort of Salisbury Diocese, Chichester, Bath and Wells, you know, that, that, possibly Bristol, can't quite remember now.

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And interestingly, the course was about 50-50 male-female, whereas the full-time residential course, women were definite minority. And, and things were very skewed that way, and still are, to some extent, in the Church of England, that women are over-represented in non-stump, non-stipendiary ministry. But that was even more so the case then. And, and the courses

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were originally set up to train people to be non-stipendiary clergy. So, you know, you're ordained, so you're there to basically help the vicar keep the show on the road, right? And, but you're not an incumbent of a parish. And so, yeah, so my course was, yeah, it was pretty 50-50 male-female, because it covered a region, rather than,

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you know, the colleges tend to have, tended to have a churchmanship badge, though Salisbury and Wells was actually quite cross-party. But, so, you know, you trained with people with really quite, you know, pretty much the range that could be contained within the Church of England, conservative evangelicals to conservative Anglo-Catholics and everything

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in between. Would the men training to be deacons as well? No, they would be priests, yeah, as indeed the student, the residential students in the college, they would, you know, the women were training for the diaconate. Well, you know, that was always, that was a moot point, really, because I remember at my own selection conference saying, you know, are you selecting

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me to be a deacon or a priest? And fortunately, they were a pretty good group of selectors. I said, I think we're selecting you to be a priest. I said, but, you know, I said, it's tricky, isn't it? And they said, yeah, it is. So, and you may recall that you may have read about, so when the priesthood thing got through, there was a lot of, oh, all the women will have to be

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pre-selected before they could be ordained a priest. Fortunately, that got kind of stomped on. And in this diocese, I was an Oxford diocese by this time, it was done in a very low-key way. I mean, it was a quick chat with the bishop and then Bishop Oxford said to me, so do you want to be a priest? I said, yeah, he said, fine. You know, that was the depth of it, you know,

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whereas in a couple of dioceses, they really put those women through the wringer again. And it was just a way of rubbing noses in it, really, was what it was. I mean, were there any discussions when you were with the men who were trained to be priests? You were obviously going through the same identical education.

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Yeah, absolutely. And that was very important, actually, to, you know, looking forward to the future. Yeah, they were, you know, some of them were great, and some of them were not. And, you know, that's... And, you know, it was... And, you know, there was also the ones who were sort of, you know, let's not get too radical

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about it or anything like that, too. But yeah, you know, the men were... I mean, Salisbury and Wells, you know, had a very supportive principal, and the staff were all in favour. So, you know, that was a better environment than others had, I think. Did... At that time you were training, did any...

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Were there any issues about women becoming deacons, even? Um, can't really recall that. I mean, the diaconate... There's probably some good work to be done around that. It was... I remember it almost as becoming a bit of a no-brainer,

00:36:56.390 - 00:37:24.190

because of the history of the deaconess movement. And though, in England, of course, unlike... Unlike, I think... I think there was a Lambeth conference that said... You'll have to check this up, but I'm pretty sure it was a Lambeth conference at some point in the 20th century that said, you know, if deaconesses have had the laying out of hands, then they should be considered

00:37:24.190 - 00:37:46.930

in holy orders. So I think that's what was done in America, so deaconesses weren't reordained. In this country, because being a clerk in holy orders has a legal status, all the deaconesses had to be ordained again as deacons. Mm-hmm.

00:37:48.930 - 00:37:59.190

And because, you know, a deaconess was, in law, a layperson. Where the deacon was not. The deacon is in holy orders. Okay.

00:37:59.350 - 00:38:25.170

So back when all that happened in 87, I mean, this... I believe the law has been changed, but for example, you could not be a member of parliament if you were a clerk in holy orders, and you were exempted jury service if you were a clerk. I think both of those things have changed so, but yeah, so, you know, I remember going to the ordinations of friends of mine who'd

00:38:25.170 - 00:38:52.190

already been working as deaconesses for yonks. But we knew it was an important step. And of course, it got women into the House of Clergy and General Synod. That was important too. So you trained to be a deacon, and so when you became a deacon, what was, you know, what was your role? What were your duties?

00:38:52.510 - 00:39:21.650

Well, I remained a member of staff of the Theological College, and so was able to do more liturgically there. But I also was, what was my official title? Honorary Non-Stipendiary Curate at Wilton Parish Church, which is about seven miles from Salisbury. And, you know, that was really important. I had a lovely incumbent, and so, you know,

00:39:21.670 - 00:39:51.010

I actually learned how to do baptisms and funerals and preach in a parish context, and all that sort of thing. And it was a, you know, Wilton's a small town. The church was still, you know, at that time, still quite a central part of local life. And I think the only church, you know, the only church in town, I think, so the vicar was,

00:39:51.010 - 00:40:20.710

the rector was, you know, very aware. You know, we had Roman Catholics, we had Methodists, we had, you know, of being sensitive around those issues and so forth. But he was very supportive of the Ordination of Women. And so, and then from there, I got the job that I'd just retired from here in Oxford, so went to be chaplain of Corpus Christi College, and was there for 30 years. Retired in

00:40:20.710 - 00:41:00.810

September. Wow. Good long gig. Yep. Yep. So, as deacon, what couldn't you do? Okay, well, you couldn't preside at the Eucharist. You can't perform a blessing on a person. Those are the, you can't pronounce the absolution of sins. So deacons could bless inanimate objects. I know, somebody really worked this all out. So, you could, so you could conduct a wedding.

00:41:02.050 - 00:41:32.450

You could bless the rings, you couldn't bless the couple. I mean, you could use a formula, may God bless you, I think. And you can do funerals, because actually, a licensed lay reader can do a funeral. And preach, of course. So, one of the big changes, I guess, if you'd been a deaconess and then you became a deacon, was that you could conduct weddings.

00:41:33.010 - 00:42:08.850

That was one of the major things. And, you know, deaconesses had been able to, were already doing funerals and preaching and doing parish visiting and those sorts of things. So, the million dollar question, where were you and, you know, when women could become priests? Where was I? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I was here in Oxford. I had been elected to be chaplain and

00:42:08.850 - 00:42:34.030

fellow of Corpus Christi College when I was a deacon. The vote had gone through synod, but it hadn't gone through parliament. So, the college, we were all, with retiring, you know, we were all reminiscing about this. A couple of people at the college realized that the statutes of the college said the chaplain had to be a clerk and holy orders. Now, being a deacon is being in holy

00:42:34.030 - 00:43:01.190

orders. So, they pointed out, we can advertise for a man or a woman. So, they did. And that's what caught my eye about the job advert. And then the vote went, you know, the vote had gone through synod. It was just a matter of time, you know, because it had to lumber its way through parliament. So, they knew if they did elect a woman, it would just be a matter of time before she could be a

00:43:01.190 - 00:43:31.650

priest. So, my first year at Corpus, which was 1993 to 1994, my first two terms, I was only in deacon's orders and had to get, so I had a group of lovely retired male priests would come and do the, celebrate the Eucharist, who were, you know, were delighted to do it because they saw themselves as, it was people like John Fenton and actually Christopher Rowland, who wasn't retired

00:43:31.650 - 00:44:02.090

then, but, you know, they thought that this was a good thing to help out about. And then I was priested, I was ordained priest just after Easter in 1994. So, by the third term of the academic year, I was a priest. So, when, at the time of the synod vote, I mean, what, I mean, do you recall what you were kind of feeling the days before and then during? Well, it was, I was, it's still in

00:44:02.090 - 00:44:35.250

Salisbury then and I'd, I went up to London for the day and it was, you know, I don't know how to describe the, it felt very emotional and there'd been so many setbacks, so, you know, it was hard to let yourself get too hopeful. But one of the interesting things about that day in November 1992, so I was, you know, on the train up to Waterloo, I had a clerical shirt on and people

00:44:35.250 - 00:45:05.810

were walking by on the train and, you know, they'd stop and say, good luck today, I hope it goes well today. And I know a lot of women clergy had the same experience around the time of the vote, you know, taxi drivers not taking the fare, you know, there was enormous positivity around it from the public, which the Church of England then kind of squandered, I think. But on the day, so I

00:45:05.810 - 00:45:33.650

was, I wasn't a member of General Synod. You're interviewing Helen King, I think, later, who was a member of General Synod. And so I was outside in Dean's Yard and with, you know, what turned out, a lot of my former students from Salisbury, we all met up. And so, you know, when we heard the news, it was, Methodist Central Hall had opened up for us, so we were watching a live stream or whatever

00:45:33.650 - 00:46:01.450

they called it back then, you know, when we heard the result of the vote. So it was quite, it was, you know, it was very emotional. And remember, I went into, you know, we found a pub and I went in with a bunch of other female deacons, you know, we were all in our collars and the whole place went quiet, you know. And somebody then said, well, did you do it then?

00:46:02.170 - 00:46:25.710

And one of us said, yeah, we can be priests and they all cheered, you know. So all that positive publicity for the Church of England, which then the Church of England started backpedalling on and saying, oh, well, you know, we have to make provision for the opponents and we have to, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And even, you know, in 1994, women were told not to look too happy

00:46:25.710 - 00:46:52.450

at their ordination because it would upset, I don't know if you've heard that from other people, but you don't look, don't look too happy at your ordination. I mean, really? I mean, honestly. So, yeah, so it is, you know, very, very mixed. But yeah, it was quite a day. I guess I'm, I'm somewhat surprised that people were so, that people on the street,

00:46:52.990 - 00:47:10.270

kind of ordinary people would have been so very aware of. It was national, it was front page, it was on the front page of the newspapers. That's fascinating. You know, I wasn't here then, so I know, yeah. Yeah, no, it was, you know, and there was a lot of, you know, the BBC covered it a lot and,

00:47:10.910 - 00:47:37.450

you know, there was a lot of press attention. I mean, one, one contemporary of mine through, from all of that, made the observation to me that she felt that, you know, in 1992, the church felt a little ahead of society. And of course, all we've done since is just fall farther and farther back. But yeah, that's, I guess, you know, there's still,

00:47:38.550 - 00:48:06.830

and a little bit of research I did for an article, I've, well, actually, this was for some, some teaching I did for, there was a course on gender at Cambridge, and I used to go over and do just a seminar with these third years on the church. And what I had them read was the parliamentary debate from 1993 on the measure.

00:48:08.330 - 00:48:36.450

And, you know, it just blows them away, because to think that in 1993, you know, a half a day of parliamentary time was given to discussing the ordination of women. And it's quite a well informed debate. You know, people quoting New Testament Greek and various things. And, you know, it passes, I think, it's 10 to one in the commons and

00:48:36.450 - 00:49:03.950

seven to one in the Lords, if I remember rightly. But it's a serious thing. I mean, you get MPs saying, I'm going to vote for this, because, you know, it's natural justice, but we shouldn't be voting on it, you know, it shouldn't be a matter of parliamentary. But so, you know, the Church of England, and indeed, you know, women bishops had to,

00:49:04.050 - 00:49:28.190

of course, go through Parliament. And when it failed the first time to get through women bishops, and whenever that was 2012, MPs were really riled up, there were questions in the commons about, and, you know, kind of finger wagging at Archbishop Welby, you know. Oh, actually, it was Rowan was Archbishop when it failed the first time. Yeah. But you know,

00:49:28.190 - 00:50:05.370

a lot of crossness from MPs. So you said the Senate votes yes, but backpedalling. Can we talk a bit about that? Yeah, yeah. So I've actually published an article about this, which I'll send you, Karin. So there is something called the Ecclesiastical Committee, which is a committee of both houses. And since the, you know, Enabling Act of 1919, which created a separate church

00:50:05.370 - 00:50:35.890

assembly, measures from the church go to this joint committee. And that committee decides whether it is expedient to let the measure go to Parliament. And they can't fiddle with it. So they either have to say, you know, block it or say it can go. But the Ecclesiastical Committee, and this is, I think, a part of the history which has not really

00:50:35.890 - 00:51:04.310

been fully appreciated, is the, there was a lot of pressure from the Ecclesiastical Committee on the church to make more concessions for the opponents. So the original measure included things like the financial compensation for, you know, the guys who left. It did not create flying bishops or provincial Episcopal visitors. That was a separate

00:51:04.310 - 00:51:38.330

act of synod, which was, I think, yeah, I, you know, could disagree, but I think was the direct result of parliamentary pressure on the church. So in 1993, the Ecclesiastical Committee you have a group of parliamentarians. And Frank Field is very much in the forefront here. Is it Simon Hughes, a Liberal Democrat? Patrick Cormack. They're pressurizing the church to make

00:51:38.330 - 00:52:07.910

more concessions for opponents. And very interestingly, they use the language of safeguarding. It really jars now when you read the account, but that these men had to be safeguarded against women clergy. It was, you know, it was very, very interesting language. And so quite quickly, the House of Bishops came up with the whole provincial visitor structure, which we call

00:52:07.910 - 00:52:32.430

flying bishops for short, which we're still living with. But that was never part of the original measure, and wasn't, you know, in that sense, tested by going, you know, when they had to go to all the dioceses and synods, people didn't know they were voting on that as well. So, and that's what I mean about the sort of, you know, having done the right thing,

00:52:32.590 - 00:52:59.910

now sort of trying to make up for having done the right thing. Monica Furlong was ferocious about that, she really was. And quite rightly, quite rightly too. Can you explain a bit what the flying bishops, what their role is? Well, they are, that's a very good question. So there are now, there are four of them now, because they originally were all Anglo-Catholics.

00:53:00.710 - 00:53:35.110

And then it was decided the evangelicals needed one too. So I think we've got four. There's also the Bishop of Fulham, who kind of operates in this way too. So there are men who look after parishes that feel they need the particular sympathetic ministry of someone, of a bishop who's against the ordination of a woman. And also that he has not laid hands upon a woman himself,

00:53:36.210 - 00:53:59.390

he has not received presumably communion from a woman. They don't like it when you talk about the theology of taint, but it is very hard to find other language. I'm sorry about that guys, if you're listening to this, but you know, you tell me what that's about. So the, you know, the bishop who ordained me, the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries,

00:54:02.530 - 00:54:24.990

I remember arguing with, you know, one of these guys from Forward in Faith and saying, so, you know, I said, I get why, I don't agree with you, but I get why when you think I presided the Eucharist, it's, you know, I don't know, a pantomime or whatever, but what's wrong with the Bishop of Oxford? Because he was ordained by men, consecrated by men, you know, so what's

00:54:24.990 - 00:54:50.230

the problem here? And there's never, oh, impaired communion and blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's just, it's dressed up misogyny. I hate to say it, but you know, I really, I mean, if you put, replaced woman with black person, I mean, what would you, what conclusion would you come to? Can you say something a bit about this idea of taint?

00:54:51.790 - 00:55:20.770

I can. I mean, it seems to be, of course, there's a tradition of theology of, you know, it's called Donatism in the early church, that, but of course, Orthodox Christianity condemns Donatism. So, you know, in these controversies in the early church that if, you know, in persecution, you sort of offered a bit of incense to the idol, just to get,

00:55:20.910 - 00:55:48.910

you know, to save your life, you know, the purists said that, you know, people had to be baptized and all that sort of thing. So, theologians like Augustine write very strongly against Donatism. But it, I mean, I, you know, Carmen, I don't know how else, I mean, they, you know, you'll have to ask somebody from Forward in Faith, but it does seem to have to do with

00:55:50.550 - 00:56:21.930

physical contact, you know, actual, if a male bishop has laid hands on a woman at an ordination that he's now damaged goods. I mean, and quite how you, I mean, I, as a good Catholic, Anglican, I do not, you know, I cannot get my head around that understanding of sacramental ordination, unless there is something polluting about women or,

00:56:23.950 - 00:56:51.430

and, you know, the opponents to the ordination of women subdivide into different categories. So, you have the impossibilists, you say, under no circumstances can women be ordained. Because it's just impossible. And then you have other groups who, you know, who will say, until the Holy Father says we can ordain women, then we can't, because we would be departing from,

00:56:51.830 - 00:57:17.390

the Church of England sees itself as part of the Catholic Christendom, and so we would be departing from, you know, the Latin Church, the Church of Rome on this. But of course, the Church of England departs from the Church of Rome on all kinds of things, like marriage and all sorts of things. But this somehow is different. It's not my job to defend them.

00:57:17.570 - 00:57:34.450

No, no, no. I'm not asking you guys. They can do that themselves. Wanted, yeah. Just, we're not interviewing them, so just get a sense of what, what they're thinking, or what they're saying. I have a question about the parish itself. I mean,

00:57:36.790 - 00:58:05.330

can you explain how a parish comes to the decision that they would prefer not to have a woman priest? Is it a, you know, do they vote? Yeah, there's a process for that, yeah. And that was laid out in, you know, with the Act of Synod in 1993. That's been replaced by a slightly different system now, which, since we've had

00:58:05.330 - 00:58:38.910

women bishops. And that was, I mean, you know, that was a, one of the contested areas there was the difference between transfer and delegation. So let's say the next Bishop of Oxford's a woman. She will delegate, or let's take a contemporary example, the Bishop of London, or the Bishop of Bristol, or the Bishop of Gloucester, or the Bishop of Newcastle. They will, they will delegate

00:58:38.910 - 00:59:05.910

certain of their episcopal functions to someone who is acceptable to this minority. But it is not transfer. And that was a big battle we had back in the, you know, around 2012. That there were those who wanted it to, you know, as soon as you had a woman Bishop, it just transferred magically over to somebody else. And we fought that off.

00:59:07.150 - 00:59:39.050

And said, you know, the Bishop is the Bishop is the Bishop. He or she holds the temporalities and the spiritualities of the diocese. And so she, or indeed he, if he's tainted goods, because he like ordains women, you know, they will delegate certain functions to a PEV flying Bishop, who are suffragans. They don't have, you know, they're not diocesan bishops. We have

00:59:39.050 - 01:00:06.670

diocesan bishops who are opposed to the ordination of women. The Bishop of Chichester and the Bishop of Blackburn. So, you know, they have to do some of their own creative thinking. So, if you're a bishop in a diocese that personally opposes the ordination of women, does that mean that women aren't ordained in that diocese?

01:00:06.670 - 01:00:18.230

No, no. That means you don't ordain them? You don't ordain them. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you get this bizarre situation where you don't ordain them, but you license them.

01:00:20.410 - 01:00:31.970

Ah, but someone ordained you. Yeah, the suffragan or, yeah. That's crazy. Added bureaucracy.

01:00:32.370 - 01:00:52.870

Yeah. Well, there's that. Yeah. But just to reiterate, because this, I'm having a hard time getting my head around. I bet you are. I haven't realized this. So, before a parish couldn't, there aren't any other issues that

01:00:52.870 - 01:01:13.590

parishes make decisions on, except having a woman priest. Like, so this, in the sense that, well, in the sense that they can make that decision themselves, presumably a majority of the people. On the PCC.

01:01:14.170 - 01:01:23.210

Okay. And the PCC is? The Parochial Church Council. Okay. So, it's the council itself, not the people in the pew. Yeah, that's right.

01:01:23.450 - 01:01:40.390

Okay. That, I think that's what I wasn't... Yeah. I mean, PCCs make decisions about all sorts of things all the time, their budget and... You know, what, are they going to try to raise money for a youth worker or, you know, all the sorts of things about parish life. Are we going to, you know, we almost burned the church

01:01:40.390 - 01:02:19.170

down with Christingle last year. Are we going to do that again? You know, all those sorts of things. But, yeah, this is unique in the sense it's about a kind of erosion of your relationship to the diocese and to the diocesan bishop in a particular way. It's kind of worked, but at some price, I think. Is it possible for a PCC to make a decision that is unpopular with the people in the pews?

01:02:19.570 - 01:02:41.670

Or is that unlikely? No, that's entirely possible. Yeah, yeah. And let alone the people, you know, the parishioners in the other sense of, you know, the 10,000 people who live in the geographic parish. Yeah, yeah. And you're seeing some of this being played out now over LGBT inclusion. So some of these

01:02:41.670 - 01:03:08.010

models of, you know, a way of dealing with difference by having rent a bishop, you know, sort of thing. There's the strongly conservative people on LGBT inclusion, you know, wants entirely separate structure. They sort of want what we didn't give them over the ordination of women, but they want it. It's often called a third province. So you have York, Canterbury, and then

01:03:08.010 - 01:03:40.090

this other province, which would be non-geographical, and you would sort of join because of you don't think we should be blessing, you know, faithful gay relationships in church. Because that's the it, you know, it just generates these questions of how many other bottom line issues. Well, indeed, you might well think that I was in some facilitated conversations in September about

01:03:40.090 - 01:04:02.110

LGBT issues and the Church of England and, you know, a youngish priest was insisting to me that this is this is the bottom line, you know, first order issue. And I said, young man, that's what people said about the ordination of women. Well, no, that's not I'm sorry, I'm telling you, you weren't, you know, you were like, in first grade or something, I was there,

01:04:02.190 - 01:04:19.990

and people were saying, this is it. This is the bottom line. This is what it's all about. But it does, there is a terrible sense of deja vu with the human sexuality issue and the ordination. And again, in these things,

01:04:24.390 - 01:04:52.270

does Parliament have, you know, whereas Parliament needed to debate the issue of the ordination of women, does Parliament debate this also? Not directly, because it doesn't require parliamentary approval, whereas ordaining women did. Because it's a change in canon law, we change the canons, Parliament needs to sign that off. So, you know, so we can approve new

01:04:52.270 - 01:05:16.490

liturgies, that doesn't require parliamentary approval. If we wanted to replace the book of common prayer with a new book, that would take parliamentary approval. But, you know, parliamentarians are interested in it. And there's somebody called the Second Church Estates Commissioner. So the three church commissioners,

01:05:17.010 - 01:05:49.790

and he's always or she is always an MP. And their job is to answer questions that are church related from members of the commons. So people like Ben Bradshaw, and so forth, are very good at putting the Second Church Estates Commissioner through his paces. So, you know, if you checked on, you know, if you sort of googled this, you'd come up with, for example, some recent

01:05:50.430 - 01:06:16.310

questions about, because of being the established church, parliamentarians have every right to ask these questions. That's interesting. So you become a chaplain here in Oxford. I guess generally, how are you, how were you, I should say, initially received as a priest, not as a deacon now, but as a priest?

01:06:17.110 - 01:06:45.290

You know, it was pretty supportive for the college. And students were by and large pretty supportive. They thought it was kind of exciting, really a bit of history. And, you know, I remember with with great affection, the first time I presided at the Eucharist in the college chapel. And I'm still in touch with a few of, you know, the students from that vintage,

01:06:45.410 - 01:07:14.750

because it was it was all very formative for all of us, I think. There was some pushback, you know, there was always a certain kind of young male evangelical who knows everything. And, you know, they were on the lookout for the slightest suggestion of heterodoxy on my part. I once got told off for saying in the sermon that God loves everybody.

01:07:15.750 - 01:07:46.570

I don't know. Well, you know, that's liberalism for you. So, yeah, and, you know, and there's, there's, you know, there's, there's just a certain kind of entitled young man, you know. But, yeah, you know, you sort of, you get you sort of get through that. I mean, over my 30 years of being a college chaplain, I think, you know, one of the things I observed was,

01:07:48.410 - 01:08:20.970

when I started that people were, there was enough, you know, religious knowledge to know a bit about the church, and to be know enough about it, not to like it. So, but as time went on, it was increasingly I found kids were coming up to university, never having been to a church service. And so College Chapel was their first experience.

01:08:21.910 - 01:08:48.610

It was, you know, it's this weird, you know, we think about it, you know, the effective missionary quality of choral even song. So they join the choir, they get exposed to a repertoire of music that is glorious, but they never heard of before. You know, even song, it's always over and under an hour. So that's pretty painless. It's a nice way to do an early Sunday evening, you know,

01:08:48.710 - 01:09:20.190

and then there's this eat together. And, you know, the chaplain doesn't harangue them, you know, and also tries to bring in some interesting other people to preach. And it's a very, you know, it's a very sort of gentle thing. But they're kind of more open to it now, because they, you know, if you, they don't, they don't know enough about it, in a way, that sounds,

01:09:20.190 - 01:09:48.690

came out the wrong way. But, you know, they don't, they're not automatically hostile to religion in the way, I think, when I started. So I had a funny, I had the advantage of being a novelty and being seen as a little radical as one of these first women priests, at the same time that, you know, a lot of undergraduate age people thought the church was an irrelevancy and, you

01:09:48.690 - 01:10:14.550

know, the work of the establishment. So that's a definite change over 30 years. Can you tell me a bit about the bishops, women bishops, kind of that battlefront? Yeah. And how that evolved and when it began?

01:10:15.750 - 01:10:39.410

Well, I suppose, you know, as soon as we had women priests, of course, the obvious thing to do is have women bishops. And the fact that the Church of England did this incrementally, or did it by three stages, is also was not the way it was done in large parts of the Anglican Communion. I mean, I think the American church, when it passed women priests, it also

01:10:39.410 - 01:11:11.030

changed the canon to allow women to be bishops. But, you know, bishops are elected in a rather public process in lots of other parts of the communion, where here it's a very secretive, well, it's very behind closed doors process. So I suppose there was a bit of fatigue at the end of Mo. Mo went out of business, which I at the time remember thinking was a mistake.

01:11:11.570 - 01:11:38.110

But it was a single issue body that was always its claim. So it was then replaced by Watch, women in the church, which had a wider remit. I mean, obviously, women bishops, but a wider remit about both, you know, the role of lay and ordained women in the church, and also not quite being a trade union, but, you know, being on the lookout for discriminatory practices and

01:11:38.110 - 01:12:15.030

monitoring things and so forth. So I guess things kind of went quiet in the 90s, about women bishops, but then it starts up again in the 2000s. And again, I'll send you this essay, I co edited a book on church establishment some years ago, my own essay was on gender and the Parliament and the ordination of women. And in by the time you get into the 2000s, you get MPs

01:12:16.530 - 01:12:34.570

asking questions of the second church estate commissioner. Well, why, you know, isn't it? Why do we have women bishops, you know, in my constituency, there are three, you know, because of women, and they're doing a great job, and they would make great bishops and, you know, something. So there's a bit, you know, it's snowballing a bit.

01:12:39.070 - 01:13:09.870

So Rowan Williams didn't do anything about women bishops till towards the end of his time in office. So by which point I had been elected to synod. And I remember sitting there, you know, in his presidential speech, he talked about women bishops, I thought, oh, right, okay. And so the process started, it then failed to get the two thirds it needed in all in one of the

01:13:09.870 - 01:13:36.570

houses. And then Rowan retired. In fact, that vote, I remember, he was still Archbishop. I think we knew Justin Welby was going to be Archbishop, and he was there as Bishop of Durham in synod. And I remember thinking, it's going to pass because Justin gave quite a strong speech in favour of it. And I thought, everybody get the mess, you know, the new Archbishop, he wants it,

01:13:36.670 - 01:14:08.510

you know, and then it just failed to get two thirds, I think, in the laity. But, you know, Welby's a very different personality than Rowan. And he, you know, which is to say, he's kind of more pragmatic. And he got into office, and he was very intentional about it. He, he gave staff time to, you know, phoning up diocesan bishops and telling them they had to organise their synod

01:14:08.510 - 01:14:40.290

members. And, you know, there was, you know, he, he wanted, he wanted it through. And it's only two years later, something comes back. And it passes. And actually, what came back was a better bit of legislation than what we'd had under the Williams arrangements. There was less formal concession to the opposition. And this whole point, this disagreement about transfer and

01:14:40.290 - 01:15:15.230

delegation was definitely delegation. You know, no question about it. So I realised to secular feminists, that would sound like, well, that's a big deal. But anyway, but, you know, what it is a women in the Episcopate. Okay. I'm trying to think of any last questions to ask. Is there something,

01:15:15.950 - 01:15:37.990

is there something I haven't asked that you think would be, is an important part of this? In terms of the Moe archive? Yeah, in terms of Moe and, well in terms of the journey of women becoming priests and bishops. Yeah, I suppose it's kind of interesting the way the sexuality issue has, you know,

01:15:38.050 - 01:16:13.690

runs through this. And in all kinds of ways, I mean, it was a little divisive in Moe. And, you know, whether we wanted to also identify as supportive of gay people. And, and the opposition, you know, every woman who wanted to be a priest was, of course, a lesbian. They were, they were completely unscrupulous about that. Given that, you know, most of the

01:16:13.690 - 01:16:46.030

Anglo-Catholic priests I knew opposed to the ordination of women were closeted gay men. So, you know, that was, but they love throwing that one around. And, and I have to say my own experience that, you know, apart from a few examples of male priests who were straight, who got it about the ordination of women, you know, the male priests who most got why it was important were gay men.

01:16:46.630 - 01:17:24.610

Because they had the emotional intelligence to transfer some of their own experience. And then some of the absolute most vehement, nasty guys against it were gay priests. So there was a, you know. And so, and it's interesting now with, with LGBT inclusions, you know, what we're going through in Synod about how that's sort of dividing women. The, the majority of women priests on Synod are

01:17:24.610 - 01:17:53.950

inclusive, but there's a small group that isn't. And, I mean, there's, there's only one or two female bishops who are really, really, I would, you know, border, well, I would border, would describe one of them as homophobic, to be sure. So that's interesting about how that plays out. And I don't know quite where we're going to end up with all of that.

01:17:55.850 - 01:18:25.010

So, but it was a, you know, it was a tussle in the 80s about that. I like that. So, and, you know, Mo finding the right way, right way through that. And I suppose we dealt with it by saying, look, we're a single issue. I mean, was that agreed upon? I mean, was that, I don't know if I wasn't in the, you know, I wasn't

01:18:25.010 - 01:18:54.330

in the room where it happened, so to speak. But it was certainly, you know, there was, there were tensions over it. And I suppose, you know, we just, and indeed, when we got women bishops, and I was in synod by that time, and I'm still on synod, you know, there was a sort of feeling that, particularly from some of the gay male clergy, that, you know, okay, now, you know,

01:18:54.330 - 01:19:22.270

we need to focus on sexuality, you know, and, you know, kind of realizing that, you know, we had to get women bishops through and, you know, get that. And I remember Monica Furlong telling me, you know, obviously, before she died, she went to advise a group of, of course, this would have been before there were women bishops. But she went to, you know, kind of act as a consultant to a

01:19:22.270 - 01:19:49.810

gay clergy about how to start organizing synodical things. And she said it was like, going back 25 years to, you know, about, you know, naive, you know, and, you know, being naive about the structures of the church and how you get change done. And she was quite bemused by it, because she was very supportive. Do you think that the incoming women priests today understand

01:19:50.570 - 01:20:28.310

kind of the battle that was raged 40 years ago? Yeah, a few do, most don't. And, you know, it's hard, sometimes emotionally, to know how to deal with that. I mean, I bet, you know, for those suffragettes, it must have been... all these things. I mean, there is some awareness. But,

01:20:30.830 - 01:21:02.360

you know, I think, I mean, for one thing, church history is a very Cinderella subject, I think, in theological training, it's not really... people don't do a lot of church history. And, you know, that's part of it. But, yeah. I guess because I think they, too, must get some pushback in some quarters.

01:21:02.400 - 01:21:11.560

Well, yeah, they do. It's not as though... Yeah. So they have an understanding of it in that personal way.

01:21:11.740 - 01:21:48.520

Yeah. I suppose, you know, in most training situations, you wouldn't get too much pushback in most of our, what we call TEIs, Theological Educational Institutions. But in some of them, you would, definitely, where it's either about evangelical headship stuff, or, you know, the Anglo-Catholic stuff. But, yeah, I suppose...

01:21:50.740 - 01:22:18.120

And the things like, you know, I mean, in this way, the church resembles what it's like for women everywhere. You know, the being talked down to, the being talked over, making a point in a meeting, and then the man making the same point, and everybody going, oh, you're so brilliant, you know, kind of thing. I mean, that's just kind of how it happens, isn't it? And in that way,

01:22:19.380 - 01:22:34.080

for all the specialness of the church, it's remarkably like everything else, you know. And, you know, that comes with experience. Terrific. Well, thank you very, very much. Well, I hope that was useful.

01:22:34.220 - 01:22:35.340

I think it was. Good.