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Hello, this is Carmen Mangin. It's the 8th of February, 2024, and I'm here in Abingdon. And can you tell me your name, please? Yeah, my name is Rosalind Rutherford. And your place of birth and date of birth?

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I was born in Preston, in Lancashire, and on the 25th of January in 1952. Can you tell me a bit about your parents, what they did for work, and their backgrounds? Well, when I was born, my father was a Methodist minister, and my mother trained as a speech therapist. It was quite surprising that she'd even been allowed to train. She didn't dare

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let anyone know they were engaged, in case they stopped her training. Because they got married in 1949, they'd met in London. My father was a pacifist, and so he'd been living at Kingsway during the war. He in fact studied at Birkbeck while he was there. I met my mother because she had a friend who was Methodist, and brought her to Kingsway for a cup of coffee

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on a day off from Bletchley. But they then ended up in Preston, and so my father was a Methodist minister, and we moved when I was about six months to Nottingham, and then we moved when I was four and a half to Ipswich in Suffolk, and then we moved to Huddersfield when I was about nine and a half, at which point the various things that were difficult

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about the Methodist ministry came to a head, and he left the ministry. He was ordained as an Anglican a few years later. We moved down to Leamington in Warwickshire. My mother worked part-time, really, as long as I can remember, because you didn't have much money as a minister, so they needed the money, and she enjoyed the work, I think. So there was

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always that, even if it was only sessional work, or once or twice a week, yes, I always grew up with a sense that of course women could work as well. And did she work as a speech therapist? Yes, in clinics, so predominantly with children, and at that stage a lot of the work she was

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doing was working with children with stammers, or possibly cleft palates, but not the language work in speech therapy developed during her career. She got very interested into language and working with children without two and three-year-olds who weren't developing language, but that wasn't anything speech therapists did very much when she began, but she moved that way.

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And so, can you tell me a bit about your education as you were moving around? Well, I suppose the education was just the local school. When we moved to Leamington, there was still the 11-plus, and so I passed the 11-plus and I ended up in a direct-grant girls school in Warwick,

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King's High School. So again, for me that worked, it was an academic education, but I enjoyed it, and again, women teachers, some of whom were those who had lived through the war or wouldn't have married because men had died, who were all very committed to women fulfilling their potential and not being housewives and mothers. You go to university, you train,

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you're as good as the men, get on with it, that kind of thing. And your primary school, was it a religious school? No, just the local. I don't think any of them were church schools, not for any reason, one way or another, just because they were the local primary school.

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And did you have siblings as well? Yes, I was the oldest, so I've got a brother and a sister, and there's three years between each of us. How was faith lived out in your family?

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I think it was just an integral part of the family. You see, my father was a Methodist minister, so we knew that he had to go out. He took services, he went out visiting, people would sometimes come to the door. In Ipswich, I can remember, there were the various, well, if I use tramp, it isn't quite the word, but that was still the stage where people moved

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for agricultural labour, and so there'd be a few weeks where people would be passing through, and we'd be kept out of the way, but they'd go in and be given a cup of tea and a sandwich, and then they'd go on. And my mother came from a family of faith, because my, well, they were clergy or faithly ministers, pretty well on all bits of the family.

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My father's father was a Methodist minister, but he had worked as a missionary in the West Indies, and had married, when he went to the West Indies, the daughter of, I think, another Methodist minister, who had lots of daughters, and therefore married them off to all the young ministers as they arrived. Because that's who you could marry them to, and my mother's father

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was a Methodist local preacher, and her grandfather had been really paid to be a stipendiary independent minister for an independent chapel just outside Devizes. The landowner there had just paid them to be there, so it kind of was everywhere. Very much a part of your life.

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Yeah, and so church was the normal thing we did, that's where half our friends were. They weren't puritanical, but they were committed, so yes, we'd say grace, we said prayers, but my father's background, well both of their backgrounds, was, you know, you can ask questions, he'd been, a lot of his formative time was in Kingsway, where there was Donald Soper,

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and therefore strong links between pacifism and politics and faith, and so that, so the links between life and politics and faith were normal, they weren't compartmentalised. That's interesting, and so politically they were active as well then? Well not active, but I knew how they voted, which was Labour.

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So they were very active. So they would have conversations, so I mean they didn't go out, well as a minister, no, we wouldn't have put up posters, so there was that sense as a minister, he wouldn't overtly be party political, but he was political, and would talk about political things,

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I mean he'd been, he was also involved in what I think was a spin-off from Donald Soper and Kingsway, which was called The Order of Christian Witness, which was Soper's sense that, yes you'd get, well he was a soapbox preacher, and so it was encouraging people to go out and be able to preach to people and talk to them,

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and they had these regular campaigns, which I think began to diminish in the 60s. And so after secondary school, what do you do after that? Um, well I went to university, I had this, I had a, well not a full gap year, a gap nine months, because I went up to read history, and at that point if I wanted to go to

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Oxford or Cambridge if I could, and the entrance exams, if you were doing arts, it was recommended you did them after eight levels in a seventh term. Um, so that's what I did, because that's what my friends did, because that's what we did in the school. Um, and I got the place, but then I had this nine months, so I spent about,

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nearly two to three months just working in a, well it was a nursing home, I think it was a Methodist nursing home, and most of the people there had very serious multiple sclerosis, I think, and couldn't, I mean there were some pretty well paralysed, but it was just up the road. But it actually made me do some fairly hard thinking,

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even then, about how do you treat people, because it was hard work, and I could see some of the, I felt some of the regular staff didn't treat the people there as people, but as sort of bodies with, who couldn't talk easily, and you were in a hurry, so you just,

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so I mean it didn't go on, but it just did make me think, but then I had the, spent six months in Bosse, which was the conference centre run by the World Council of Churches, just outside Geneva. Not, not as a student, they, one of the ways in which they were able, funded it, was that you could go there as a volunteer, you're called a blue angel, and you did the domestic,

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the basic domestic work, you know, cleaning rooms and helping in the kitchen and helping serve, for, as an au pair. So the au pair status meant we had somewhere to live, we had pocket money, we had clear time off, and we had got these, met these amazing people, you know. I mean, on the whole, we were kept a bit out of the way when it was the theological colloquies,

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but when it was students and things, you just had chats, and if there were plenary sessions, you could go in. I mean, I don't remember much, but I do remember two consecutive lectures on orthodox icons by the Greek, the director who was a Greek orthodox, and one of the top experts on icons, so you just think, so yeah, so I'd had that.

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Quite an amazing experience. Yeah, it was. How was that spelled? Bosse, B-O-S-S-E-Y. I think it does still exist, but

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Wow. Fewer people went from England because Switzerland was more expensive, you know, but they, you know, it was a big mix of people there. That's quite a, quite a learning experience for a young person, you know, outside the realm.

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Yeah, I mean, Bosse was actually very safe in that sense, because there was this group of up to about nine, we were pretty well all girls and all within sort of 18 to 25 kind of age, so you may, so it was. And international, where they've been.

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Yes. Oh, that's lovely. But English, of course, was the language that was the predominant language that was used, though in the kitchen, German was used because the cook was German and the housekeeper was French,

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so when there were a lot of people in and it was stressful in the kitchen, they had to have people there who spoke German. That's interesting. But there were a lot of Dutch girls, so they spoke excellent English, you know.

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Oh, a Japanese girl. So again, English was her comp. So English was the common language, so I didn't get quite as much practice in other languages. Yeah, and then you returned to enter?

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I studied in Oxford for three years and did history then. And then, yes, I was very, what I really got involved with is probably the student Christian movement in Oxford at the time. It was known as OCM, Oxford Christian Movement, but we were affiliated to SCM.

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And this would have been in the 19... I mean, I went up in 71. So I guess it was, yeah, it was actually when SCM was going through convolutions after the 60s. It was, I mean, the colleges were all still single sex when I was there,

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so it was just before some of the men's colleges began admitting women. And so which women's colleges? I was at St Hugh's. Thank you.

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But yes, so as we, you know, we could sort out... At one point, I was secretary of one of the ecumenical groups, and I reckoned I could give information to representatives of pretty well all the Christian societies over breakfast in college or something.

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Because, of course, there were only five women's colleges, and so the women were involved in kind of everything. So you got to know each other then, presumably, across the women in those five colleges? Well, I mean, you just got to know who you got to know.

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You know, so I mean, we didn't function as women separately, but the women could... I mean, for example, if you're a singer, all the college choirs wanted women because they'd only got men.

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You were popular then, if you were a singer. I mean, I didn't... I think I sang in Waddleford, mainly because that's where my friends were.

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So what was Oxford like for someone who's actively Christian? I mean, there was loads going on. So yes, you had to work out a game where... I mean, I think exploring my own spirituality and challenges and thinking,

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it was an incredibly rich place to be, because most of the colleges had chapels. The St Hugh's Chapel, I did get involved with for a bit, but it wasn't a very...

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I think it wasn't as liberal or as open as some of the other college chapels, and we didn't have a permanent chaplain. It was the Vicar of St Margaret's down the road. There was an amusing time, though,

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when Colin Winter was exiled from Namibia, Damaraland, about 1972, would it have been? 1972, I think. And the Church of England was scrabbling around

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to find somewhere for him to go and live, and I think there was a vacancy in St Margaret's, a church down the road, or he lived at the vicarage there

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and then by default became the chaplain of St Hugh's. I think that probably only lasted a term or so, because he and St Hugh's and the principal just... It was Kathleen Kenyon at that point, I think.

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I mean, they were just almost on different planets. It was really quite interesting for us for a while. I don't think he stayed there long. I think it just wasn't the right place to be for what he needed to do.

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But yeah, so I mean, it was incredibly unique, because there were different churches. The leaders of most of the churches were interesting people, and yes, of course, there was still the conflict

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between the Christian Union and OICU and CU and St Ebbs, and I soon worked out that that was not me. And once I'd got history prelims over, I sort of was able to get more involved in...

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Because that was when, if you were doing history, there were prelims at the end of the first term, and then no other exams till finals. Not a good pattern.

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Not a good pattern. But it did give me space for a year and a half to... I must admit, I cringe. Yeah, no, it's...

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And I mean, it was in many ways not good how it worked. There was no research elements to it. I may have learned how to write an essay under pressure and select information under pressure,

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but I didn't learn how to ever do a completed, a finished piece of work, because it was always for tutorials. And so there was never even a sort of essay

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that you don't do a draft and improve. That's fascinating. And no dissertation at the end? No, no.

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No, it was... I don't think there was. No, it was all examined. That's interesting.

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I mean, 10 three-hour exams in five days. I think we had a weekend in the middle, but other than that, it was... But I mean, so yes, the skill of reading

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quite a lot of stuff and rapidly getting something down is there, but going back and making it better and checking that the argument works

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was not a skill that was taught at that level. I suppose you have to do the next level up. Yeah, that's interesting. But spiritually, it was also a time of kind of learning,

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it seems like. Yes, and exploring. And it was... I mean, it was actually really interesting

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because there was quite a lot of... Well, it was just post-60s, 70s, the theology was opening up. So looking at...

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And I suppose it's when theology began to get horizontal, if you like. So looking at what does it mean to be a church in the world.

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An awful lot of conversation about everyone is your brother and mankind, which I didn't notice in the 70s. You know, brotherhood of man kind of stuff.

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And so, yes, the books, His Palo Frere was the sort of thing we were reading in Ivan Illich and in John Taylor, enough is enough.

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And so a whole... And so you've also got... I can't quite remember where... So racism is beginning,

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is sort of rumbling around. I can't quite remember when... I mean, apartheid was clearly an issue. I mean, we couldn't buy Jaffa oranges, I think.

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And could we? No, we couldn't buy any... You couldn't buy Del Monte, you couldn't buy anything from South Africa.

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It was the time when people were campaigning against Barclays. I arrived just after university sitting, so there weren't significant...

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Yeah, I did get involved in a sitting in Manchester about a couple of years later. So the sense of democracy, students being involved in running universities

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was beginning. It was all... I can't separate it all out, but that's what was going on.

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Protest, yes, women's rights were there, but I think... But we're only just beginning to... And then living in community

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was the thing that in faith began to develop. SCM, even the national officers, who sold their big house in North London and bought some rundown house

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just near Bath called Wick Court, the aim that you have to model what you're talking about. And if what you're talking about

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is that being a Christian is about community, then you model it by living in community. And we were actually working that out because some of the SCM group

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persuaded someone who I think was on Oxford Council, was it? In the housing. Anyway, they bought a house

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to be a community house for SCM people and lived in it. Now, I didn't live in it, but...

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So there was just down off Marlborough Road, just south of Folly Bridge. And again, I think the aim was that actually you have somewhere...

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The aim, I think, was to get involved in the local community and I don't think that really... It didn't really happen very much.

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Because you would have all been students, presumably, or many of you. I think that on the whole, the ones who lived there were postgrad.

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I think there were a couple of undergraduates who lived there, but there were also... We could hold either four or five,

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but there were postgraduates as well. So, I mean, we were involved in things like the Third World Shop down in Cali and lots of hunger lunches.

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So three W students getting involved. I mean, it's Wayne Oxfam and W... Oxfam and Christian Aid were beginning to get into development

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rather than charitable relief. And those sort of tension... I mean, the tensions were there at that point. Because the job I got after being a student,

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I kind of wanted to work for the British Council of Churches. It was a job I quite liked, but someone else got it.

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But I got one as a field worker for what was Third World First, which was sort of the student group that was funded by Oxfam

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to work with students. It was Peter Adams. He was the person who set up the new internationalist

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who started it. Robert Maxwell funding actually as well. That's really interesting. Before other things.

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So because they'd started this campaign where you signed a standing order to Third World First, which was used

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the developmental sides of poverty relief. And so we were involved in the educational element and the political element.

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And I did that for a couple of years. And I think we were the small generation, and the generations would be only a few years at that point

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because when you're young... Looking at, actually, if you want to change poverty, you have to change the political structures.

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What was used then was education. So, you know, give a man a fish and it feeds him for a day, teach a man to fish

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and it feeds him for a lifetime. So it was at that level, WDM was just starting getting into the challenging government

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so that kind of thing. So did you know that that's the kind of work you wanted to do after university

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or was it just something that kind of happened organically in a way? It's amazing.

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I think I was thinking about teaching, but I knew I didn't want to go straight into teaching because I felt I've been at school,

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I've been at a privileged school, I've been at a privileged university. I've got to find out a little bit more about life

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before I do something like teaching. And actually, yes, I think I've just got to find out a bit more. I mean, in some ways,

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Third World First was not much less privileged because it was working with students, but it was a group I knew and it overlapped a lot with

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OCM and SCM because at almost any university you'd go to, the people running the more radical Christian groups

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and the Third World developmental groups overlapped a lot. That is fascinating. But I mean, I only did it for two years

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and then I just thought it probably is teaching. But at that point, if you were 25

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or you had supported yourself for three years, you then got a full grant, maintenance grant, without it being dependent

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on your parents' income. To study? Yeah, I mean, so I thought,

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well, I may as well wait a year before I do teach because then I don't have to go back to my parents who were also having to support my brother

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and then my sister and didn't have masses of money. But I mean, they would have supported me. But I thought,

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here we go, much easier just to wait another year. So then I had to look around for another job to get

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and it had to be the same sort of thing because I didn't actually have any great skills. I saw this job advertised for Manchester and it was the Youth and Community Service.

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So again, it was a sort of umbrella charitable organisation that worked with small community groups or youth groups and others

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and they were advertising for someone to run a toy library. I'd never heard of toy libraries. They'd obviously seen something put in

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and got a grant and they'd actually managed to get quite a good grant. So that was,

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I mean, this is the time when you could get money for that sort of thing. So somehow I got it.

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I mean, I think, I was just good at blagging. I mean, I just thought, this is so crazy.

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They're interviewing me for something for which I basically have no qualification. So I then dreamed up all the things I knew that could.

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Anyway. So then you were in Manchester for a year. Just a year. And that's when I met Feminism, I think.

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Both, yes, this group I was talking about where some of the women were beginning to be influenced by some of the radical lesbian feminists.

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And influenced is, I think, influenced. They didn't, it was a huge amount of experimentation and trying things out

00:29:18.640 - 00:29:34.000

and very fluid sort of world. But SCM had one of their national conferences in Manchester that new year, Seeds of Liberation.

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No, no, it wasn't Seeds of Liberation. Seeds of Liberation was the one I didn't go to because I was exhausted by SCM two years previously. So I can't remember what it,

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I might be able to remember the name. But anyway, I think they had Rosemary Reuter-Adford come and speak. Wow.

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And she talked about language and the fact that, and we just sort of sat there in an hour.

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I just thought, oh yes. It's everywhere. Yeah. And.

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So yeah, just for clarification, what did she say about language? I can't remember what she said, but what I realised is that

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by using male language for God and for people, we were, women were just, being, didn't exist.

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And how could I be created in the image of God if God was always talked about as male? I mean, I can't act, I can't remember the detail of it now,

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but I just know that it, I think that, I suppose she expressed and explained stuff that I'd known. I mean, why is it, you know,

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why is it that my brother could sing in a church choir and I couldn't? Why is it that it's only men who are ordained, which I was sort of beginning to think,

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but hadn't got very far with. So I think it was the previous year I had this, I can remember having a conversation with a contemporary in a pub in Cambridge or something.

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I think I was travelling around and I was staying and we were there and he was doing research and I was doing this and we were saying, so what comes next?

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And he was having to think, do I remain in research? And he said, well, I said, yeah, I mean, well, of course we all have to think whether we should be being ordained.

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And I just looked at him and I said, well, I can't think that. And I knew I couldn't and I knew it shouldn't because yes, I'd been in a family

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where my father was totally supportive and my aunt in Canada was a Methodist minister. And so it was, you know, it was there, but I think it was when,

00:32:10.480 - 00:32:28.660

but the language thing then just made me think, oh yes, feminism isn't, it's not, it's something much deeper than just being the same as, so that matter, you know, the doors being opened matters,

00:32:28.980 - 00:32:38.980

but it's deeper, it's who I am. I mean, the really funny thing was, I was then, after the conference, I was then worshipping in the chaplaincy in Manchester

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and that's where the conference had happened and most of the people who went to the Sunday services and the chaplaincy had been at the conference and we just couldn't sing any hymns

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for about the next six months because we'd start singing and then suddenly you'd come across a he and a him and everyone would go,

00:33:00.320 - 00:33:15.840

oh, to redo it. I mean, it was, it was impossible. I mean, it's hymns that were not quite so blatantly patriarchal began being written soon after that

00:33:16.940 - 00:33:33.160

or things like brother, sister were rewritten because it had been brother, let me be your servant and then it was rewritten. So, yeah.

00:33:34.200 - 00:33:46.780

That's amazing when you think about it though, how it's normalised, that was normalised at that time and just that lecture, that seminar,

00:33:47.500 - 00:33:58.460

created an awareness and really opened eyes, obviously not just yours. Oh yeah, it was ours because we were involved in doing the worship for the end of it.

00:33:58.960 - 00:34:09.260

I think this is something I told Grace as well and so we said, well yeah, obviously the reading will be the Magnificat because this is a woman saying,

00:34:09.260 - 00:34:21.520

this is how it is and so took away the Bible to read it and I knew the person who'd said she would read it and yes, a woman will read it

00:34:21.520 - 00:34:30.860

and then she came back to me half an hour before and said, I can't read like this because he keeps on saying he and we just had to get a pencil out with the Bible

00:34:31.500 - 00:34:41.600

and literally, because in that particular context, we had to change it. I can't remember how, I mean, so I never rubbed it out,

00:34:41.740 - 00:34:52.740

I left it in my new English Bible to remind me. Excellent, I think that's great but I think that's really telling too that you were all willing to do that,

00:34:52.860 - 00:35:00.620

just make that decision yourselves that this is not the way it should be and that we're going to change this and then you changed it for that particular service.

00:35:00.620 - 00:35:11.180

Well, in that context we could but I mean, in the context, in the chaplains here in Manchester because I think pretty well all the chaplains

00:35:11.180 - 00:35:23.340

and majority of those who'd been at the conference had been there and had seen it then the conference, I mean, I moved from Manchester about six months later

00:35:23.340 - 00:35:31.700

so I didn't follow it up but yeah, you suddenly realise that actually that conversation, well, of course I had the conversation,

00:35:37.340 - 00:35:48.060

but I wasn't scared of saying things and making my voice, I mean, when you're in your 20s you just say it, don't you?

00:35:48.100 - 00:35:59.680

You don't worry about other people. How, when you had those conversations with your parents who would have been of a different generation and perhaps a different way of thinking,

00:35:59.680 - 00:36:11.700

I mean, were they accepting? Were they understanding? Were they resistant to kind of these, what would have been perhaps new ideas for them?

00:36:12.780 - 00:36:27.400

Oh, I don't think they were, I mean, they wouldn't have been resistant to it and I think they would probably have asked me questions about, I mean, my dad would probably just have laughed,

00:36:27.400 - 00:36:45.440

I mean, not in a supportive way. So, I mean, my mother had always been quite strongly independent, so, you know, when they first got married

00:36:46.280 - 00:36:58.080

and they just moved up there to Preston, other side of the country from her family and they knew they needed to get established, they had no money, they had to get established,

00:36:58.180 - 00:37:07.020

they had to work things out, so they knew they didn't want children straight away, so she went off to get contraception and apparently the doctors or the nurses

00:37:07.020 - 00:37:16.100

or whoever was in the clinic said, well, you're married, aren't you? Why are you asking for contraception? She got it.

00:37:19.400 - 00:37:32.620

And so, yes, she was refused. She was, first of all, the minister's wife and then my father did become ordained in the Anglican Church when I was 13, so then she was the curate.

00:37:35.000 - 00:37:46.900

He was SSM, NSM, before it existed. He had to persuade the Bishop of Coventry to ordain him but he was going to carry on being a teacher because that's what he felt he was being called to work out,

00:37:46.960 - 00:38:02.500

though he did go, in the end, he went back into full-time stipendiary ministry. And so, she strongly resisted being the vicar, the minister's wife, the vicar's wife.

00:38:03.400 - 00:38:10.740

I mean, no way would she have done flower arranging or run the Sunday school. She interested me when they went into, in the end, in the village,

00:38:10.820 - 00:38:25.640

she did help do flowers because she chose to. But, I mean, they had this... I remember her and the vicar's wife and the other curate's wife going to something at the cathedral

00:38:25.640 - 00:38:36.720

to which it was possibly the clergy wives had been invited to, the bishop's wife had been invited. And I remember them sitting all together and saying, do we need to wear hats?

00:38:38.240 - 00:38:45.880

Because it was still... And they all said, if you won't, I won't, then we could all go without a hat together. I don't know.

00:38:49.260 - 00:38:59.820

I don't know how to do it. Yes. So, I mean, they probably would have just said, well, you can't have a conversation about the fact that you can't rewrite an entire hymn book.

00:39:02.820 - 00:39:14.640

But we'll just see. That's interesting. So, what happens to... I mean, I guess, where does the idea of ministry

00:39:16.120 - 00:39:29.480

and your kind of vocation to ministry, when does that come into being? When is that first spark, do you think? Well, I had entirely forgotten that when I went to Manchester,

00:39:30.480 - 00:39:44.400

I wondered whether to explore being a lay reader. It was literally just a few weeks ago because, as I explained to you, we might have loads of boxes around because we'd taken all...

00:39:44.400 - 00:39:50.560

I kept letters. My parents wrote to me, one of them almost every week. They just... You didn't...

00:39:50.560 - 00:39:59.860

No emails. Phoning was not easy. And they wrote to all of us every Sunday afternoon, nearly. So, you know, Dad one week, Mum next.

00:40:01.320 - 00:40:08.600

And I was... So, I was just going through all of these letters and it was some of the ones from the 70s. And I thought, I can't actually keep them all.

00:40:08.600 - 00:40:20.960

I don't really need to know what he had for breakfast every... But I found one where he said, I've had to wait to reply to you because actually I needed to talk to someone else to check it out.

00:40:21.320 - 00:40:33.140

And then it was all about trying to be a reader. And I thought, oh. So, when I went to Manchester and when I left Oxford, I was actually a bit washed up.

00:40:33.240 - 00:40:43.900

I didn't have the SCM groups. And so, I went to an ordinary church for... I actually gave up on it and went to the chaplaincy because it wasn't where I needed to be at that time.

00:40:44.800 - 00:40:57.820

And by then I already knew I was probably going to do teacher training, therefore not going to stay there. And so, I'd obviously written and asked him about being a lay reader. So, and I mean, the family jokes.

00:40:57.980 - 00:41:09.720

I mean, my second cousin sort of... I mean, I can remember at age about nine or ten, you'll be a bishop sometime, Rosalind, you know. But that was just kind of joke, you know.

00:41:10.380 - 00:41:31.000

I suppose the sense that it's in the family. But also this very clear conversation that I can remember. And the fact that I can remember meant that it obviously had an impact where I was so surprised that one of my male contemporaries

00:41:31.000 - 00:41:46.700

took it for granted that thinking about being ordained was something, if you'd been an active Christian at university, you had to do. Because I couldn't. I mean, and I think I had friends who were women,

00:41:47.000 - 00:41:58.840

and I certainly think at least one of them said to me when we were finishing our degrees, well, yeah, I guess if I were a man, then I might be thinking about whether I could be ordained.

00:41:59.640 - 00:42:22.160

But, you know, it doesn't exist. Interestingly, none of us wanted to be deaconesses. And I didn't know deaconesses existed then, I don't think, or not really. I may have... I lied a bit.

00:42:22.900 - 00:42:39.040

There weren't many obviously around in Oxford, and there hadn't been any obviously around in Coventry Diocese where we were. After Manchester, I moved to South East London because I started teacher training at Goldsmiths College,

00:42:39.360 - 00:42:59.940

so I only did one year in Manchester. And at the church I went to, there was a deaconess, but there was nothing about the way she was the sort of responsibilities and ministry. She was able to do that made me want to be a deaconess.

00:43:03.480 - 00:43:11.900

I moved into a house. We were trying to be a community. We had a house which had been... They actually set up a kind of trust fund

00:43:11.900 - 00:43:28.380

which enabled six of us to put money in on equal terms. And I remember us all saying, she's not exactly important, but she's not allowed... Isn't she quite meek and mild?

00:43:28.760 - 00:43:36.280

The vicar. And he was a lovely man. But did she preach? I can't remember.

00:43:36.500 - 00:43:54.420

I mean, I don't think she was a great preacher, even if she preached. She probably had a great pastoral ministry which I did not experience. Of course, Elsie Baker, in a few churches along the extension of Blackheath,

00:43:55.040 - 00:44:10.840

who was a very well-known deaconess, I got to know and... Yes, I mean, I respected her hugely, her ministry, but no sense of calling to be a deaconess.

00:44:11.100 - 00:44:31.580

Interesting. Even though I know some of my pretty well-connected friends. So, I mean, I think my calling became fairly clearly at that point to be someone who was able to voice the discrimination that existed.

00:44:32.960 - 00:44:43.380

And I can certainly remember... Because I mean, Mo began during the time I was in London, South East London, for four years. So, from...

00:44:43.380 - 00:44:52.000

When would it have been? So, 77 to 81, I think. Living in Hither Green. And were you teaching at that point?

00:44:52.200 - 00:45:00.000

I was... First year, I was training at Goldsmiths College, and then I was teaching. Living in South East London and teaching in North West London.

00:45:01.140 - 00:45:14.700

Because I chose to carry on... I mean, to be honest, it was only an hour's commute. It was sort of a London kind of journey. I mean, the problems happened if there's a rail strike,

00:45:14.800 - 00:45:35.640

because from South East London, you need the rail to get onto the other networks. And so, I can't quite remember what order everything happened in. I certainly remember coming across the order for the Christian Parity Group,

00:45:35.900 - 00:45:49.080

which was Una Crowell's group. Because Southwark was somewhere... Southwark had quite a lot of deaconesses, and Southwark has always been fairly radical,

00:45:50.320 - 00:46:02.440

or it certainly was at that point. It was Mervyn Stockwood was the bishop. Full of gay clergy. But interesting, there's gay clergy in Southwark on the whole,

00:46:02.900 - 00:46:15.460

not quite as misogynistic as some of the other ones. I mean, Bishop Southwark's chaplain was gay. I mean, we knew that. I moved in just after...

00:46:16.640 - 00:46:32.140

literally just after the big Lewisham National Front march, which had been opposed by... where the church and the diocese had actually been involved in a counter protest. Oh, wow.

00:46:33.500 - 00:46:47.360

Or in trying to organise to prevent the... I can't remember because actually one of the people in the house I moved into was personally involved in it. He had got some legal training and he was involved.

00:46:48.000 - 00:47:01.580

So, I was in South East London when Mo began, and I can remember going to some meetings, probably may even have been the first one, if not one of the second ones in,

00:47:02.300 - 00:47:20.200

I think in St Martin in the fields in the crypt. So then we started a small group. I can't remember if we called it a male group or whether it was just women involved in beginning to think about

00:47:22.600 - 00:47:36.020

getting involved in the campaign in Hither Green. So that's because the Deaconess came, and then Elsie Baker came, and then there was Ruth and me who lived in the house,

00:47:36.100 - 00:47:46.920

can't remember if it was Sam, and there was some other... So there was a group of half a dozen or so of us and had a... It was on one of those occasions that I really became aware of the cost

00:47:47.460 - 00:48:05.020

for people like Elsie Baker, because she suddenly began to talk. She was the Deaconess at the church where Paul Oestreicher was the vicar, and Paul Oestreicher of course was involved in

00:48:05.780 - 00:48:17.620

going all over the place and giving talks, and a very high profile one, and so he was frequently maybe not there or moving. And so she was the one who carried the pastoral ministry.

00:48:18.980 - 00:48:28.500

She was the one who was there all the time, and you're a Deaconess, you're not moved on, so she'd been there for probably 20 years, I don't know, maybe not quite.

00:48:33.200 - 00:49:01.740

And yeah, she must have been late 50s or even 60s then, and she suddenly began talking about what it felt like to be, in effect, the priest for these people, but you can't bless them, you can't celebrate the Eucharist.

00:49:04.100 - 00:49:15.720

I don't know if they could take weddings or not, I think because of the blessing you can't, and that just suddenly the thing, you'd be giving yourself as a priest for the people,

00:49:15.820 - 00:49:35.800

and then the block would be there, of the things that you should be able to do and you couldn't, and she wept, I think because she was in a fairly small group. And then I saw that it wasn't just about equality,

00:49:36.260 - 00:49:57.420

it was deeply about what people were giving, and who they were, that sort of thing. And so yes, but of course if women who were deaconesses, and then later on who felt the call to priesthood,

00:49:57.840 - 00:50:17.480

it was really, really hard for them to speak out, because of the way women are defined. So you are either a strident, aggressive person, or if you weep, and you see Elsie could only have wept in that context,

00:50:17.480 - 00:50:35.380

with other women, if you show that it hurts, you're just being an emotional woman. And I mean those things were, those were the two things that were thrown at women over and over and over.

00:50:36.580 - 00:50:57.020

And so actually I felt quite strongly that my calling was to be lay, because I could speak, I could describe pain, I could describe inequality, without having to say it's happening to me,

00:50:57.080 - 00:51:11.460

I mean it was happening to me, but indirectly. And if I was too forceful, I would just be criticised as being arrogant, or something like that,

00:51:11.720 - 00:51:28.980

rather than, if you are assertive and arrogant, if you are over emotional, you should not be, you are proving you're not fit to be ordained. Which was the, I mean there was that real catch-22 all the way through.

00:51:31.020 - 00:51:46.480

And so yeah. So how was Mo, so you've talked about, how was it structured in those early years, I guess? So you would go to meetings,

00:51:46.600 - 00:52:03.040

but you said you were able to kind of create a small group in your area to study? I think, yeah, I think, I mean I'm probably not the best person to know formally about it, because I wasn't involved in central Mo, and I don't think I was at all.

00:52:03.560 - 00:52:15.260

So I went to some early meetings, where it was being set up, and which was sort of central AGMs when I was in London. I can't, I got married in 1981,

00:52:16.000 - 00:52:24.280

and we moved to Reading, because my husband was working in Henley, and so Reading was kind of where I could get into work in London, he could get to work there.

00:52:24.980 - 00:52:41.940

And then when we had children two and a half years later, because my oldest daughter was born in 84, I didn't go back to work in London, and actually didn't go back into significant school teaching.

00:52:46.160 - 00:52:57.540

So I didn't, so from that point on, but there were, I think all the diocese had groups, so there was an Oxford Diocesan group, but Oxford Diocese was a big diocese,

00:52:58.880 - 00:53:15.580

and so we had a Reading and Bracknell group, and so I think my main contact with groups in person was the local Reading and Wokingham, Reading and Bracknell,

00:53:16.260 - 00:53:28.160

it's sort of down in that part of the diocese, sort of the southeast part of the diocese. And we met fairly, mostly we met, somebody had a big house,

00:53:28.260 - 00:53:37.680

which was actually just down the road from where I was living, so it was easy to get to, because I didn't have a car for most of that time, though I could probably have got lifts,

00:53:38.620 - 00:53:51.580

because there were quite a few members of Mo in the church we went to, there were quite a few in Reading, and there was another big group in Wokingham, because there was a woman there.

00:53:54.840 - 00:54:13.880

And so there were probably about 12 to 20 of us who'd meet, I mean I think there were more people who were members, because this is now the 80s, you know it grew very quickly from late 70s into the 80s,

00:54:15.620 - 00:54:26.080

so we would meet and we would talk through either things that were being discussed centrally, or I can't remember, the Bible, or how to persuade people,

00:54:26.300 - 00:54:36.840

or what to do, or is there a letter writing campaign, or do we have contacts, and so conversation was mainly that.

00:54:37.400 - 00:54:46.500

So that was my main involvement, there would have been, I think I probably went to a few diocesan ones, and there were sometimes diocesan services,

00:54:46.500 - 00:55:00.880

so I can remember going up to Christ Church for a diocesan Mo service, was that Lady Day or St Hilda, I can't remember, so I've probably still got some of the services,

00:55:01.140 - 00:55:16.240

so I wasn't significantly involved with central Mo, because I had some more children, and I was involved locally, and I was on Deanery Synod.

00:55:16.460 - 00:55:29.040

So the aim locally would have been to kind of educate yourselves, but also convince others? I think yeah, I mean to continue, yes, to spread it out within the congregations,

00:55:31.160 - 00:55:41.800

and particularly to ensure that when it was discussed in Deanery Synods, that there were enough people who were well informed, who could speak,

00:55:44.020 - 00:56:02.880

that if something was published in the newspaper to ensure that, I mean there were letters, I mean this is a time when people wrote letters to local newspapers quite a lot, and Reading had some very committed people who were opposed to women,

00:56:03.040 - 00:56:19.080

so Holy Trinity in Reading, just the other side of the river in sort of West Reading, was where Brian Brindley was the vicar, and Brian Brindley was one of the arch managers of Synod,

00:56:19.140 - 00:56:37.400

and on the business committee, and forward, well forward in fact didn't exist, but the Catholic, very strongly the anti-women Catholics, as it turned out also gay and closet gay,

00:56:38.100 - 00:56:52.620

I mean he was in the end, he was forced out by a sting, and the timing of that as far as things going through Synod, I sometimes thought I don't really think God is horrible to people,

00:56:52.820 - 00:57:08.860

but because he was a Synod manager, and I think it happened between the July and November, I mean we could look it up, but I think it happened between July and November in 1992,

00:57:09.620 - 00:57:19.400

that he was off Synod, and no actually no I think it must have been a year, it must have been before that, but it was when they were shortly before a crucial vote in Synod,

00:57:19.880 - 00:57:37.000

can't have been then because the bottoms were already in the vicarage by then, must have been a couple of years before, so yes it was that, I mean there was a lot of physical letter writing going on,

00:57:38.460 - 00:57:47.420

there was sort of trying to think who do you know, do you know anyone in the house of, who do you know in Parliament, how do you know in the House of Lords,

00:57:48.260 - 00:58:02.280

that when it is getting to the point of going through the ecclesiastical committee, who can you write to, I mean we had a woman curate from 1989, and that focused things within the church,

00:58:02.280 - 00:58:26.100

but there were already a lot of people in that church who were members of Mo and Pro. So in 89 there could be a woman curate? Yes, women were deacons, in 1987 is when women were deacons, and the rector was very supportive of women,

00:58:26.660 - 00:58:42.220

and so I think offering the curacy to a woman was a positive, it was positive, although I mean interestingly she'd been selected in London, because they were living in London at the time,

00:58:42.800 - 00:58:51.160

and the bishop said, well okay we will select you for ordination training, we can't not, but you will not be offered a stipendry post in this diocese,

00:58:52.400 - 00:59:04.080

so we will only select you for NSM, and she went to Salisbury and Wells, um the part-time course, and I think they soon said,

00:59:04.980 - 00:59:14.000

why aren't you on a stipendry course, and she explained this, oh right, and I think sent her back to Bapton to re-select for that,

00:59:14.300 - 00:59:23.540

and found her a curacy, where her husband could still get to his job. I mean it was, it was tough,

00:59:23.620 - 00:59:32.140

it was a small house, but a supportive parish. I mean I don't know if she's one of the people you've, who's being interviewed,

00:59:33.540 - 00:59:39.000

she's um, she's down in Newbury now, she wouldn't mind me saying, because she's got very,

00:59:39.240 - 00:59:48.340

they were members of Mo as well, so they were part of the Mo group. Did it feel, I mean I guess how does it feel,

00:59:48.420 - 01:00:00.140

you would have had support from those who were part of Mo, but probably a lot of anti as well, I mean how does that, how did that,

01:00:00.580 - 01:00:14.360

you know, how do you recall that feeling at the time? I think we just felt that the, we didn't know how long it would take,

01:00:14.500 - 01:00:30.380

but the momentum was with us. In some ways easier than it does now, because it was just very clear opposition, and we knew we just had to persuade enough people,

01:00:31.640 - 01:00:41.140

that they were wrong. So what made you, but so what, when was kind of the tipping point I guess,

01:00:41.300 - 01:00:48.400

where you thought okay, this is possible, it's just you know, as you say,

01:00:49.440 - 01:00:56.820

convincing enough people, I mean what, what's the event that, Well I think actually once Mo began,

01:00:57.500 - 01:01:04.460

okay, I hadn't thought, I probably, I think until I came up against the Christian Parity group and Mo,

01:01:04.800 - 01:01:13.080

and people saying we're campaigning for this, I had just thought this isn't, this isn't how it is, and it's wrong,

01:01:14.300 - 01:01:28.520

but I think I wasn't experienced enough in church at that point to, see that, to think how one might try and change it, so it kind of wasn't changing,

01:01:28.660 - 01:01:36.660

it wasn't on my radar, although, enabling women's voices to be heard, you know,

01:01:36.840 - 01:01:41.280

the thing that women should be on PCCs, and women can, you know, was very much on the radar.

01:01:43.900 - 01:01:47.940

And those were more doable, those were, yeah, and I mean I think that if,

01:01:48.280 - 01:01:56.520

if we'd had a different Deaconess, different personality Deaconess, we might have been pushing for different things, but I mean we,

01:01:57.400 - 01:02:08.860

because I was in a house of, in London, of six professional young people in their 20s, all committed to a fairly radical view of church,

01:02:08.880 - 01:02:19.620

and there were others living in the area, because that's where you can afford a house, we were just running all sorts of things, we were just creative,

01:02:19.700 - 01:02:25.600

we were just being creative within the church, we didn't, we didn't get, we weren't limited,

01:02:26.020 - 01:02:32.800

I mean okay, we couldn't take service, we couldn't formally take services, but we had,

01:02:33.240 - 01:02:39.820

that's right, we had a regular group in our house of, where we ran worship and had Bible discussions, and we led Bible,

01:02:40.180 - 01:02:46.020

we led length groups, Ruth and I wrote a passion play, and for the, for the church,

01:02:46.100 - 01:02:52.400

because we thought that's what we needed to do, that Holy Weekend, got it produced and organised, and we just did it.

01:02:52.940 - 01:02:58.280

So within your, the community that you were in, you could? Oh yeah, yes,

01:02:58.840 - 01:03:09.480

but I mean I think I would have chose, I think I was aware enough, to not be part of a church that wouldn't let me do that, I mean like,

01:03:10.000 - 01:03:25.180

I was aware enough to not even bother about OICU at university, I just got on where I could do things, and there were plenty of places where I could, and so when Rob and I knew,

01:03:25.320 - 01:03:30.100

we were going to move to Cavisham in North Reading, before we were married, and we were looking for houses, and we went to Evensong,

01:03:30.160 - 01:03:43.800

and the person preaching was a reader, and he was preaching about Third World Development, and how this linked up with faith, and actually I did have a vague memory of his name,

01:03:43.960 - 01:03:49.660

because I met him in, I realised I'd met him in WDM, when I was with Third World First, but we both of us came out and said,

01:03:49.660 - 01:04:05.100

if someone like that can be a reader in that church, and if he can preach that sort of sermon, then this is an okay church to go to, so, and so the previous rector had been,

01:04:07.140 - 01:04:14.540

I think had supported women's ministry, or the opening up of it, but that rector did, so actually where I was,

01:04:14.940 - 01:04:35.440

there were individuals within the church, who didn't agree with it, but I think the general mood was supportive. So, when the synod says,

01:04:38.360 - 01:04:43.300

yes, where were you? On that day. Oh, 1992? Where were you?

01:04:43.640 - 01:04:49.500

I was at home. Did you think it was going to happen? I mean, I guess, yeah. It was absolutely on the edge.

01:04:50.860 - 01:05:05.440

Because we had known that in July, there hadn't been enough votes. There wasn't a two-thirds majority in each house. I'd gone to the big service in Coventry,

01:05:06.040 - 01:05:14.320

and I think it was October. I mean, there were coaches from all over, went up when Cathy Milford and Rowan Williams had a sort of a dialogue sermon.

01:05:15.320 - 01:05:22.480

I mean, that was a service. And so, there was work. We were working. I mean, there was just a huge amount of

01:05:22.480 - 01:05:33.800

individual work on individuals, because it only needed a few key people. And so, the reader I talked about, who preached that sermon,

01:05:33.940 - 01:05:42.320

he became a great friend of ours, and he was on synod at that time. So, we knew people. I knew someone on the synod who was there.

01:05:44.780 - 01:05:57.400

And I know that he... So, there was someone just down the road, Philip Giddings, who was part of the evangelical church,

01:05:57.580 - 01:06:04.840

in big evangelical church in Reading, and not sure about the headship thing. I mean, I think he wasn't sure, even on...

01:06:04.840 - 01:06:10.800

He and John used to go up on the train together, and John was talking, and John said, I'm talking very hard to Philip.

01:06:10.800 - 01:06:21.340

And so, we'd been writing letters individually, and as members of the church. And so, I mean, basically, we didn't know that it would go through.

01:06:21.700 - 01:06:31.100

It was absolutely... It felt like knife edge. So, how did I spend that day? So, let me think.

01:06:32.860 - 01:06:41.600

Yes, I was teaching sessional work, doing adult literacy and sessional. And I think... I'm trying to think whether I was teaching

01:06:41.600 - 01:06:54.500

morning and afternoon, or only morning. So, I had the... So, driving between the sessions that I was teaching, I had the car radio on, listening.

01:06:55.440 - 01:07:02.000

I think actually... I think maybe I had to teach an afternoon session, because I think they didn't start broadcasting till the afternoon.

01:07:04.900 - 01:07:09.920

And so, going to work, and then coming back from work, I had the car radio on, and then I came home.

01:07:10.540 - 01:07:17.800

Um, well, it was on the TV, but I had two children by that stage. So, I had to... What are they?

01:07:18.040 - 01:07:26.660

So, 92. Anna was being eight. Elizabeth would therefore have been just six. So, they had to be occupied.

01:07:27.280 - 01:07:33.540

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I did not go round to a load... You know, I had to be at home. Yeah, yeah.

01:07:34.320 - 01:07:40.920

Now, our curate, Christine, said, I can't listen to this on my own. Oh, gosh, yeah. So, she came round.

01:07:41.600 - 01:07:49.180

So, the TV was on in the front room with children's BBC. I mean, you know, no, you can't put them on an iPad.

01:07:49.400 - 01:07:56.280

You can't put them on a computer. It's not... You know, you can't put the... You know, it's not even DVDs.

01:07:56.380 - 01:08:03.600

You know, it's all tape. I did tape it. So, I taped... I set the thing to...

01:08:05.040 - 01:08:13.780

I really ought to see if I could do it. So, I taped the debate. So, we were listening to it on the radio in the kitchen

01:08:13.780 - 01:08:23.760

while I was sort of half-cooking tea and sitting there with cups of tea and we were listening. Then, there were a couple of times

01:08:23.760 - 01:08:30.640

where we said, we need to watch this as well as listen. So, David Jenkins was about to speak and we ran in and we said,

01:08:30.860 - 01:08:37.100

sorry, girls, we've got to have five minutes. You can't watch it for five minutes. We put it on. Put on David Jenkins.

01:08:37.340 - 01:08:50.180

Okay, you can have it back. Then, they got to the summing up speeches and Christine said, right, well, actually, I've got to go now

01:08:50.180 - 01:09:04.020

because BBC have a studio in Caversham. Caversham Park is where the BBC monitoring... where the monitoring services were monitoring all the radio monitoring going on.

01:09:07.340 - 01:09:17.780

And so, they have a good quality studio there and so, they wanted someone to be able to react. I think this was local BBC. It wasn't the national

01:09:18.620 - 01:09:34.800

or else it was the radio, not the TV. But she knew she had to be in Caversham Park ready to react the moment the result was declared. So, she left and it was probably when they...

01:09:34.800 - 01:09:45.960

it was either when they did the summing up speeches. She could almost have done it when they started the count but not quite because, of course, this is when the count is done physically.

01:09:46.480 - 01:09:52.820

Yeah. So, it takes a lot longer then? Nearly 10 minutes. Of course.

01:09:53.860 - 01:09:59.700

If you've got 600 people and everybody was there because they have to... it's like parliament. Yeah.

01:10:00.280 - 01:10:21.540

The church house Westminster has got the doors which still say sort of Bishop's Aye and Bishop's No. And so, I didn't bother to go and make the children not do it. By then, I just had my bit of paper by the radio

01:10:21.540 - 01:10:31.500

because I was cooking and I hadn't then worked out the very simple way of working out a two-thirds majority. Which is where you double the...

01:10:32.500 - 01:10:46.420

you double the ante and see where you're at. So, I was sort of working out proportions and things and sort of literally writing down the numbers as they came. And I thought, I think we've done it.

01:10:46.640 - 01:10:54.180

I think this is what... I think I'd worked out what we... I think maybe I knew the numbers in each house and what we'd have to get.

01:10:55.620 - 01:11:01.940

And I was thinking, I think we're there. I think we're there. And then, the Archbishop said, so it is carried.

01:11:02.640 - 01:11:14.800

And of course, he said, silence on the radio. Because you're not allowed to... In synod, you are not allowed to react. They are told you have to keep silence.

01:11:15.480 - 01:11:22.760

And they did it all the way through. They did it with the women bishops vote. Wow. With the women bishops vote, interestingly,

01:11:24.860 - 01:11:37.360

Hilary Cotton and the watch people in the gallery in 2014, we'd been silent in 2012 and it didn't go through. And she and the others said, we're not meant to be silent, you know.

01:11:39.260 - 01:11:46.520

Because there's nothing they can do. So, when they announced it in York in 2014, in the gallery, there were three voices that said, all right.

01:11:47.580 - 01:11:53.600

And then they just left because all they could do was turn them out, but they didn't need to stay any longer. Those of us who were in synod,

01:11:53.660 - 01:12:01.000

because I was in synod at that point, just had to sit quiet. But however, back to 92. And so, I mean, I think I ran in and told the girls,

01:12:01.140 - 01:12:08.180

it's passed, it's passed. And they kind of said, oh, good. Does it matter? Well, they sort of knew it mattered.

01:12:09.520 - 01:12:16.840

But then the lovely thing that happened was, there was about four minutes later, there was a ring on the doorbell and our next door neighbour,

01:12:17.720 - 01:12:27.800

who was a lovely old lady, she was in her 70s or 80s at that point, quite sure, who was also a member of the church,

01:12:27.860 - 01:12:39.800

had been there, and we had had lots of conversations over the garden fence about women, you know, feminism and feminist theology.

01:12:40.020 - 01:12:49.180

It was sudden, she was a feminist. She'd always been a feminist. But it wasn't until then she began to discover she could have these conversations

01:12:49.180 - 01:12:56.400

we had wonderful conversations about it. And she came and she rambled and she said, I've been watching, I've been watching, but I'm on my own and I need to,

01:12:56.460 - 01:13:04.720

I need to give someone a hug. Oh, that's beautiful. Was she a churchgoer as well? Yes, yes, she went to the same church.

01:13:04.780 - 01:13:12.340

Okay. So we knew, yes. And so we talked and she knew all about it and was totally supportive.

01:13:15.900 - 01:13:25.960

And so, I mean, I think, after, so I don't think Christine called because I think she went home after that. But I mean, she was then stuck up at Cavisham Park

01:13:25.960 - 01:13:35.060

having to give this interview. And in the broad, sort of the little studio things where you're there sort of,

01:13:35.180 - 01:13:48.600

and you can't hear what's going on outside. And the sound, when the feed from the radio was either cut off or went down or didn't happen. And she didn't get the results.

01:13:49.560 - 01:13:56.660

And so, I mean, I think she opened the door, went out and apparently she was just telling me, because I saw her 10 days ago, that someone else at the church

01:13:56.660 - 01:14:04.520

who worked up at Cavisham Park on something or other, came, knew she was going to be there and came running along and said, look, I've written it down.

01:14:04.620 - 01:14:16.640

These are the numbers, this is on me. I wrote it down for you. Here we are. She went home and her phone didn't stop ringing

01:14:16.640 - 01:14:25.460

and people were turning up on the doorstop with bottles of champagne. And John, who was the Synod member that I'm talking about,

01:14:26.200 - 01:14:38.420

I mean, he commuted in from Reading each day. And so it was probably about eight o'clock or something. He came and we were at the top of the hill on the way to his house

01:14:38.420 - 01:14:44.980

and he would have cycled to the station. And so he stopped off at our house for a hug on the way home. So that was...

01:14:47.380 - 01:14:53.440

It was a happy day. Oh, it was amazing. It was brilliant. It was wonderful.

01:14:53.840 - 01:15:04.580

It's amazing. I mean, the following Sunday was slightly tricky because we knew the organist came from the Catholic wing

01:15:04.580 - 01:15:19.400

and did not think it was right. And he had to come because he played the organ. And he really respected the curate, you know, Christine. So of course we had to be joyful.

01:15:19.900 - 01:15:28.120

But there were several of us actually sought him out at the piece. I don't know whether he wanted the hugs or not, but he got them.

01:15:29.000 - 01:15:51.740

Yeah. So what happens to Moe then once the Synod approves? Well, it took two years for women to be ordained because it has to go through the Ecclesiastical Committee.

01:15:53.160 - 01:16:07.260

And the Ecclesiastical Committee got itself worried that there weren't enough provisions for those who could not accept women priests.

01:16:09.160 - 01:16:30.320

I still don't know quite why it got so... Well, I mean, I'm a suspicious person. And my suspicion is that some of these powerful opponents within the church,

01:16:30.700 - 01:16:45.160

possibly some powerful bishops, certainly powerful people like John Gummer, nobbled some of the Ecclesiastical Committee people to say, do you realise about, you know,

01:16:45.240 - 01:16:51.620

these people who've given their life and they're not provisioned. What about these villages where they can't accept a woman

01:16:51.620 - 01:16:58.920

and women will be forced on them? I mean, I don't know. Nobody knows. At least I have not come across anyone who knows.

01:17:00.500 - 01:17:14.940

One bit of me thinks, oh, if I had the energy, I'd go and ask if all the documents, since it's now 30 years, are all the submissions and documents

01:17:14.940 - 01:17:25.240

to the Ecclesiastical Committee open? I don't know if I've got the energy to do that. I mean, I assume there's somewhere other in the House of Commons library or archive

01:17:25.760 - 01:17:35.120

that if anyone wrote in, but probably quite a lot of it happened in clubs and that sort of thing. Interesting.

01:17:35.500 - 01:17:40.980

I mean, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. But I do know that I wrote to Frank

01:17:41.820 - 01:17:50.660

when it looked as though the Ecclesiastical Committee was being awkward. Mo got us to write to people on it and I wrote to various people

01:17:50.660 - 01:18:03.500

and I found a letter back I got from Frank Field. And Frank Field, you'd have expected, would have been predominantly supportive. And it was just weird.

01:18:03.920 - 01:18:13.040

I mean, I probably, I will still have it because I found it again. I don't throw things out. And it just didn't make sense.

01:18:14.220 - 01:18:22.040

That's what I just thought. It just doesn't make sense. But anyway, the pressure, that it was either the pressure

01:18:22.040 - 01:18:29.360

from the Ecclesiastical Committee or it's pressure from bishops who didn't want it to happen and others with power in the church

01:18:29.360 - 01:18:37.260

who didn't want to happen was then put on the bishops to say you've got to have more protection. And one of the other things

01:18:37.260 - 01:18:47.060

they were worried about is that some dioceses would be no-go areas because places like Chichester with Eric Kemp and London

01:18:47.060 - 01:18:54.480

were just saying, well, we just won't ordain women then. Women can't come here because there'd be no-go areas for women.

01:18:55.060 - 01:19:04.780

Well, actually, in many ways, there's still, you know, women can go but they have a much worse time in Chichester than they do in other dioceses and London.

01:19:07.580 - 01:19:17.460

And so, you know, the legislation goes through years of these really careful stages, the report stage,

01:19:18.740 - 01:19:28.720

pulling it apart, looking at careful legal investigations, challenging, questioning, working out something.

01:19:30.160 - 01:19:36.860

And there was plenty of protection in there. You've got A and B. You could refuse to have a woman as your incumbent

01:19:36.860 - 01:19:46.000

and you could refuse to have a woman celebrate the Eucharist. What you couldn't have was a flying bishop because they were not conceptualised

01:19:46.000 - 01:19:55.580

in the 1992 legislation. You couldn't have a flying priest. Well, a parish could make a decision that they didn't want a woman

01:19:55.580 - 01:20:05.020

as their incumbent and they could make a decision they did not want a woman to celebrate the Eucharist in their church

01:20:05.880 - 01:20:16.520

but they couldn't have arguments about their bishop. OK, that makes sense, yeah. And all clergy would be ordained

01:20:16.520 - 01:20:33.100

by the same bishops. And so this is when the Act of Synod was cooked up by John Howgood, basically, and supported, in the end,

01:20:33.260 - 01:20:40.040

persuaded the House of Bishops to support it. And on the whole, they were supported because they thought,

01:20:40.040 - 01:20:51.840

well, we can be generous. It was sold as a pastoral need. I mean, I analysed, I went through those debates

01:20:51.840 - 01:20:58.820

because 10 years down the line, or longer than 10 years down the line, people were saying, you promised us this.

01:20:59.200 - 01:21:08.800

And I went through the debates and nobody promised. I mean, I wrote it up. It was all pastoral.

01:21:10.040 - 01:21:18.940

We want you to feel pastorally secure. If they'd put a time limit on the Act of Synod, we wouldn't be having the problems

01:21:18.940 - 01:21:28.520

we have now. And interestingly, John Howgood, the person who was his chaplain at the time,

01:21:29.000 - 01:21:41.080

who became an assistant bishop in Wales when bishops were being debated in Wales, actually said, we did not intend it to be long term.

01:21:41.660 - 01:21:51.920

Why do you think the archbishop appointed old people to be fine bishops? But they didn't have the courage. I mean, there was a 10-year,

01:21:52.220 - 01:22:01.060

the legislation had a 10-year time lag whereby if clergy felt they had to leave the church on grounds of conscience,

01:22:02.460 - 01:22:09.460

they would be given financial compensation. So why they didn't have a time lag on that, I don't know.

01:22:09.880 - 01:22:17.140

Well, I kind of do know because of the way the church works and because of this boys' club mentality that's still there.

01:22:18.620 - 01:22:26.140

And so that's what took the time because until it was gone through the ecclesiastical committee, it can't then become an Act of Parliament.

01:22:26.460 - 01:22:34.460

Until it's an Act of Parliament, you can't ordain people because that's how the Church of England works. And it happened with the women bishops as well.

01:22:34.460 - 01:22:46.220

You couldn't have any women bishops until it had been through Parliament and then had been promulged again in Synod. But with the women bishops,

01:22:46.380 - 01:22:55.220

they did it very, very quickly so that it was promulged in Synod in November after July, whereas the Act of Synod wasn't passed

01:22:55.220 - 01:23:14.580

till November 1993. And I think the Parliament had said they wouldn't get the legislation until the Act of Synod was in place.

01:23:15.400 - 01:23:23.220

So after the Act of Synod, the legislation then had to go through Commons and Lords and be signed. And so it was signed.

01:23:23.380 - 01:23:31.860

So I don't know whether there was a Synod in February where they promulged it. But this is why the first ordinations were in Bristol in March

01:23:31.860 - 01:23:41.840

because it was pretty well the earliest he could legally do it after it had become legally possible to do it. It wasn't even legally possible

01:23:41.840 - 01:23:50.940

to ordain women in 1993 after the Act of Synod had gone through. So women were being trained, were going through the process

01:23:50.940 - 01:24:04.340

and then some were just waiting? Well, most of them were deacons. So women had been training as deacons in the same training from at some,

01:24:04.500 - 01:24:14.780

I don't know at what point in the 1980s where the deaconesses began then having the same training. But deacons, once women were ordained as deacons

01:24:14.780 - 01:24:24.060

and so obviously before then, they were in training colleges with men and women were training colleges together. And this was what, so a lot of men said

01:24:24.060 - 01:24:29.220

this is actually really hard. You know, we've done the same. We've even been ordained deacons in the same service.

01:24:30.140 - 01:24:37.760

There were one or two men, I think particularly if they were married to a woman deacon who refused to be ordained priest

01:24:37.760 - 01:24:50.780

until women could be. Not many, but just one or two. So the majority of the ordinations were sort of April onwards.

01:24:51.120 - 01:25:00.220

I mean, I think the Arch was the one in March in Bristol was the first. And they went through till about mid June.

01:25:01.360 - 01:25:12.620

We had a list of all the dates. I put it on the website in the 25th, 1919, the 25th anniversary. But we, I mean, so of course,

01:25:12.740 - 01:25:23.520

so we went, you know, it was lovely because Christine was ordained and they had them in Reading, in Buckingham, I think.

01:25:23.520 - 01:25:34.200

It may be somewhere else. Oxford, Bambury, I think. So you have several and we went to the, we went to hers in Reading

01:25:34.200 - 01:25:39.120

and it was lovely because there were people there who'd been in the Mo group with me because that had involved the deacons.

01:25:40.380 - 01:25:51.200

It was the most amazing, happy service. Brilliant. I bet. And then, so once women can be ordained,

01:25:51.640 - 01:26:02.880

then is- Then there's an official- So Mo officially closed and ended in summer 1994.

01:26:03.640 - 01:26:09.940

I'm not sure if I've got the exact date. It'll be that Margaret Webster will have it, I expect. And we had a service in,

01:26:09.960 - 01:26:17.420

I think in Dorchester Abbey for the Oxford Mo where we rejoiced in what we'd done, laid it down.

01:26:20.020 - 01:26:33.320

The fund, what happened with the funds? I can't remember whether the funds were possibly given to the Catholic Women's Ordination

01:26:36.200 - 01:26:47.160

or whether the Florence Lea-Timoy Foundation existed by then. I mean, but the funds that went to something, any remaining funds

01:26:47.160 - 01:26:57.440

went to something appropriate. So yeah, we had this. And then, of course, I think WATCH began particularly in London

01:26:58.000 - 01:27:10.000

because London had the London Plan. Well, London is still almost toxic for women, but very divided

01:27:10.560 - 01:27:24.020

and strong cliques and groups. Now, does it matter whether it's the London Diocese or the Southwark Diocese,

01:27:24.100 - 01:27:30.580

or it's just London? No, hugely different. Southwark has always been a supportive place for women.

01:27:30.900 - 01:27:44.040

That's interesting. So it is London as in the London Diocese? Yes. Yes, Southwark did have one or two

01:27:44.760 - 01:27:53.740

strong evangelical churches. I mean, the balance in the 1990s the Catholic wing was the one that was more powerful

01:27:55.420 - 01:28:00.960

and offering more opposition. Though to some extent, the evangelical wing wasn't that bothered about women

01:28:00.960 - 01:28:09.400

being ordained priest, because what they're bothered about is women as leaders. So, you know, a woman being,

01:28:09.680 - 01:28:15.500

it's the headship idea, a woman being the head of a man. It's not about, they're not bothered about sacraments

01:28:15.500 - 01:28:23.200

because they don't actually believe in it particularly. That makes sense. And so in a big church, a woman can be, you know,

01:28:23.260 - 01:28:29.620

a woman can be a priest or a deacon, it doesn't really matter. But the rector, the vicar, will be a man.

01:28:30.100 - 01:28:38.600

And so she is under a man. And as they continued in some, she is not allowed to teach a mixed adult group.

01:28:38.940 - 01:28:51.680

So in the strongly complementarian evangelical churches, even ordained women will still be restricted to taking women's groups

01:28:51.680 - 01:28:58.900

or children's groups. And when the boys get to be 16 or 18, they're told that they've got to be in another group led by a man,

01:28:58.980 - 01:29:06.860

and sometimes they object. And that sort of thing. So it can be contained. And you're not that bothered

01:29:06.860 - 01:29:16.760

if you're what your bishop believes, because if you're that sort of church, you ignore your bishop as far as possible. And every now and then he might come,

01:29:17.000 - 01:29:27.380

but, you know, it's... The arguments about women bishops, that element of the church has been growing in strength anyway

01:29:27.380 - 01:29:35.980

in the last 20 or 30 years. But it is far more significant, it was far more significant for women as bishops,

01:29:36.160 - 01:29:49.340

because women bishops are in charge. And you have to swear as a loyalty to them. And when you say, just to be clear,

01:29:49.480 - 01:29:55.460

when you say evangelical, evangelical within the Church of England. Yes. The evangelical element within it.

01:29:56.060 - 01:30:04.340

And not even the evangelical element, but the complementarian, or I would say fundamentalist. Some people say it's not fair

01:30:04.340 - 01:30:13.860

to say fundamentalist, but the conservative evangelicals, Connie versus the... Okay.

01:30:15.480 - 01:30:25.740

So how does... Back to WATCH. So how does WATCH get initiated? Yeah, I think I missed out on it

01:30:25.740 - 01:30:35.920

being initiated for the first year or so. I think it started from predominantly... A group was set up in London for the women, because they just saw

01:30:35.920 - 01:30:45.620

so much discrimination or bad... There was a huge amount of, what one would call these microaggressions, appalling behaviour going on.

01:30:48.020 - 01:30:56.480

And so they began to get together to try to challenge that. And then I think WATCH as an organisation was set up,

01:30:56.720 - 01:31:06.380

and I think it was to be 1996, I think. I'll have to check that back. Because suddenly realised,

01:31:06.380 - 01:31:15.520

actually, the job is not done. It's not over. Because the church has still got discrimination within it,

01:31:16.720 - 01:31:24.300

and it's still not a church. So WATCH had 10 things, which I could find somewhere, but would have to look up.

01:31:24.800 - 01:31:32.620

I don't think they're on the website now, though they're probably on a previous iteration of it. And in 2014, only one had been achieved,

01:31:32.740 - 01:31:43.860

which was women bishops. And it was things, a church without discrimination, a church where women are treated...

01:31:44.680 - 01:31:52.220

No, I'd have to look them up, but just all the normal things you would think of if you're trying to... Interesting.

01:31:52.440 - 01:32:05.300

Remove discrimination. So does WATCH follow the same kind of pattern, if we want to call it that, then mode that there are local...

01:32:06.100 - 01:32:14.600

It's shifted. When we were campaigning, when you're campaigning to get something who's synod, you need local diocesan groups.

01:32:15.860 - 01:32:26.860

So it had diocesan group, certainly diocesan groups, from pretty well from the beginning to 2014 or so,

01:32:27.040 - 01:32:38.820

because you need to be able to get people in a diocese together. You need to be able to speak to your bishop. You need to be able to campaign

01:32:38.820 - 01:32:50.780

for general synod reps, and you need people you know within the diocese to do that. From 2014, we were then in a different position,

01:32:51.860 - 01:33:04.180

except the pendulum is coming back again. So we got women bishops, but we also had these five guiding principles. And yeah, we did pass it with our eyes open,

01:33:04.180 - 01:33:14.360

but knowing what had happened with the act of synod, those who were involved in drafting really did try to tie it down.

01:33:15.240 - 01:33:23.380

And you'd think with the first one, saying anyone who serves in ministers must fully accept, must accept, that women are fully...

01:33:28.180 - 01:33:39.840

But it doesn't take long for the Church of England to... have a dominant interpretation, which is discriminatory.

01:33:40.340 - 01:33:52.720

And I think that's, I mean, for me, there were two key things which said, oh no, and they happened very quickly. One of them was that when Libby Lane

01:33:52.720 - 01:34:10.420

and Philip North were consecrated in 2015, they were consecrated in the same place in two different services a week apart. And Philip North only had consecrators

01:34:11.900 - 01:34:24.080

who were those who had not ordained women and would not ordain women. The consecration is normally presided over by the Archbishop of the province.

01:34:25.900 - 01:34:35.920

So Archbishop of York in York, Canterbury there, and then all the other bishops join in and lay hands. So when Libby Lane was consecrated,

01:34:36.020 - 01:34:46.900

that's what happened. Maybe a few bishops decided to absent themselves or didn't come or didn't... When Philip North was consecrated,

01:34:48.660 - 01:35:02.820

I think it was Chichester and was it Wakefield? Anyway, pure bishops did it. Bishops who had not ordained women and would not and believed the same as him.

01:35:03.620 - 01:35:16.640

The Archbishop was there and sort of introduced the service and said, isn't this wonderful that we're able... And I think, I can't remember whether they were the...

01:35:16.640 - 01:35:26.840

It was only three who laid hands, whether they just said, please no women or something like that. And I think, look,

01:35:27.480 - 01:35:37.000

the commitment was to do as much as we could for mutual flourishing, for the highest degree of communion possible. Surely they could have been...

01:35:38.140 - 01:35:50.840

And so these photos of Libby Lane and Philip North hugging each other, but could they not have been ordained in the same service? I mean, Sally Barnes wrote something,

01:35:50.980 - 01:36:06.280

wrote up something coming back from it, which actually republished in Outlook last summer. I've got a copy if you want to see. And there would have been ways of managing it.

01:36:08.240 - 01:36:19.980

Visiting women bishops who wanted to come and lay hands on Libby Lane would probably have been prepared to not lay hands on Philip North,

01:36:20.220 - 01:36:28.300

though the theology of it, there is no need, because the theology says you need three bishops to consecrate.

01:36:30.940 - 01:36:42.120

Now, if he had believed that only the bishops who had never... You see, this belief that by ordaining a woman, you've therefore invalidated your orders,

01:36:42.320 - 01:36:49.440

that's their belief. They say it's not taint, they say it's not that, but it's that you invalidate your orders

01:36:49.440 - 01:37:02.880

or you're not a properly collegiate. So, if he had still believed that he really needed to be ordained by three bishops who were sort of in total theological agreement with him,

01:37:04.060 - 01:37:16.480

he could have been. And if he thought the hands of all the other bishops are totally irrelevant, invalid, so what? If they're irrelevant, they're irrelevant.

01:37:17.260 - 01:37:27.180

What do you lose? It is only a problem if you think of taint. Now, they argue till they're blue in the face that it's not taint.

01:37:29.560 - 01:37:37.860

But I mean, you can find all sorts of... And if they'd been ordained together, that would have been a sign, yes, we are committed to working together.

01:37:38.480 - 01:37:47.740

What was it? What it said is, oh, well, for whatever we've said, the barriers matter more than the togetherness.

01:37:48.800 - 01:38:01.280

And then the other thing was that Watts put in... I mean, this independent reviewer was set up to adjudicate on whether the House of Bishops Declaration had been properly broken or not.

01:38:01.360 - 01:38:11.520

So, if you think that it actually is not being fulfilled, you can complain. And Watts sent a submission in. I wasn't on the committee at that point,

01:38:11.600 - 01:38:21.920

but they sent a submission in to say that chrism masses they're the ones that... Do you know chrism mass? Right.

01:38:22.320 - 01:38:30.820

It's the service on Maundy Thursday where the holy oils are blessed. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, of course. But certainly within the Anglican Church,

01:38:30.880 - 01:38:45.800

it is used as an occasion for the priests in a diocese to gather around their bishop and renew their vows. But of course, what had been developing is that the clergy who feel that

01:38:45.800 - 01:38:59.480

women are a bit unclean were then having separate chrism masses presided over by flying bishops and whatever. In Chichester, they could all go to the diocesan

01:38:59.480 - 01:39:09.640

because he was clean. So, we put in a submission saying, actually, separate chrism masses is not within the spirit of the five binding principles.

01:39:09.820 - 01:39:21.240

It does not lead to mutual flourishing. And in the end, the independent, the forward in faith people said, yes, but for our personal,

01:39:21.540 - 01:39:34.180

our theological integrity and so on, we need this separate one for our collegiality and the independent reviewer took that view. And so, those were two things that happened

01:39:34.180 - 01:39:47.500

within the first 12 months. And you think, ah, actually. And so, from now on, I think that Sentebou, I suspect that it was he who

01:39:48.940 - 01:40:05.720

probably was a guiding force in the York one. I mean, it's quite odd. He does totally support ordained women, but he also is quite patriarchal

01:40:05.720 - 01:40:21.440

and supports men, like just who he is culturally. And certainly does not like being challenged to bully. And so, the work continues.

01:40:21.780 - 01:40:33.800

So, the work, and so, for the first, so we actually tried very hard to actually work within, said, okay, we did vote for this. We did support this.

01:40:34.480 - 01:40:51.540

So, tried hard to try and rein in stuff and go in, you know, do, pull stuff apart. But, no, so Martine, whose chair is Jessica, we've got to challenge them.

01:40:52.000 - 01:41:04.300

I mean, I personally think that she's not quite aware enough of some of the nuances of the chair. I mean, in the end, if you work within the Church of England,

01:41:04.500 - 01:41:14.360

you have to be able to work politically within the Church of England. And I think there is a significant group of those who were on Synod

01:41:15.300 - 01:41:31.580

or who are sort of in decision-making roles or influential roles in the Church of England who are genuinely committed to trying to, this concept of mutual flourishing and working together

01:41:31.580 - 01:41:44.940

and that if you can have relationships with people, this is what matters. But all the examples they give are examples that could be given of ecumenical cooperation,

01:41:45.620 - 01:41:57.960

whereby you cooperate on the bits you can cooperate on. You respect people's theological differences. You don't, you know, I don't go to a Catholic church and demonstrate because I can't take communion

01:41:57.960 - 01:42:11.000

because I'm not a Catholic. Because I accept that those are the boundaries they set. It's not up to me to change the boundaries. And I can work very well with a local Catholic priest

01:42:11.000 - 01:42:26.720

and I can work well with independent evangelicals and have conversations about the Trinity. And I mean, I did make a fuss in Basingstoke when they tried to have a statement of faith

01:42:26.720 - 01:42:38.480

for some of the ecumenical stuff, which was basically a Church of England evangelical council which I said, no, sorry, that won't do. I'm afraid, you know, I can't, I'm not signing up to that.

01:42:38.940 - 01:42:54.800

It will not be helpful. We need, just have the creed, just have the Nicene Creed. So there, the Church of England, it's just been for the last,

01:42:54.980 - 01:43:10.100

basically since the Act of Synod, it has been ecclesiologically messy and will not accept that actually the Act of Synod doesn't make theological,

01:43:10.240 - 01:43:19.820

ecclesiological sense. And that the fire guiding principles, if they are used to define how you have bishops and relate to bishops, don't make sense.

01:43:21.660 - 01:43:32.920

And the chickens are coming home to roost with all this stuff. I mean, I can remember predicting this when I was training in the, because I trained 1999 to 2002,

01:43:33.300 - 01:43:40.740

and I can remember saying to some of my tutors, well, you know, this Act of Synod is rubbish and it's stupid. And they say it was quite, you know,

01:43:40.960 - 01:43:50.780

I said, no, it's doesn't make, you know, it is bad theology and it is discriminatory. And it's not helpful. And I said, and what will happen next?

01:43:50.860 - 01:44:00.740

You know, if you can choose your bishop without, it will soon be people demanding a bishop on the grounds of they don't want to gain. So it's only to do with women.

01:44:00.840 - 01:44:05.200

It's only women. It's safe. It's not anything else. Come on.

01:44:06.260 - 01:44:22.660

What is so bad about women? That they're the only ones you can choose your bishop on. Tell me a bit about your training. So when do you decide that, you know, to get to be trained?

01:44:22.820 - 01:44:32.540

Right. I suppose that, I think it was in about 94, actually, John, who was the lay reader, just said to me, he said,

01:44:33.180 - 01:44:39.060

why don't you train as a reader? We just, I mean, he was thinking we need more people who can help preach sermons and help with matters in the church.

01:44:39.140 - 01:44:48.080

And I sort of thought a bit about it. And I was doing a lot with children in Sunday school and things at that point and getting a bit frustrated because the rector wasn't,

01:44:49.640 - 01:44:59.540

just couldn't make space for children and families in services. And we had a family service and it wasn't a family service. And I sort of thought, I suppose, actually,

01:45:00.260 - 01:45:11.100

I'm getting to the point where I'm beginning to want to lead worship and do things. And maybe if I had the authority, it would help. So I followed that one through and was selected

01:45:11.100 - 01:45:30.120

and started training as a reader. I think by the time I was licensed, in fact, slightly before I was licensed, I kind of knew that it probably wasn't really what I,

01:45:30.580 - 01:45:40.260

I mean, I remember having a conversation with the warden of readers and saying, look, actually, I think I'm going to have to take this further because I think it might be ordination

01:45:41.700 - 01:45:57.600

that it's about not being a reader. I'm not a reader, so should I not be licensed? He said, oh, no, I mean, having authority to act as a minister is always good

01:45:57.600 - 01:46:07.840

and you will discover through it. So I went ahead within those terms. I mean, I think there was a bit of me, if I think back and sort of thought,

01:46:07.960 - 01:46:17.820

when I go to this election conference for a reader, do I really want them to say, maybe you should be ordination, but it wasn't strong enough.

01:46:19.660 - 01:46:32.900

Because you see, I'd always felt, I think by then I was also thinking, I can only be ordained if there's nothing else I can do. It's got, not nothing else in my life,

01:46:34.760 - 01:46:46.740

but if I can't, if I have to be ordained to go where I'm being called, but I can't be ordained until that point. I've got to push being lay as far as I can.

01:46:48.940 - 01:47:01.360

Because I believe quite strongly that, you know, this is the non-Catholic bit, you know, the calling of the vocation of all baptised believers,

01:47:01.680 - 01:47:14.260

sort of fairly Episcopal in that, and that the laity are the church. I mean, isn't the job of the clergy to be the church? Isn't the job of the clergy to enable the church

01:47:14.260 - 01:47:27.540

to be the church, the people to be the church? So, which was also partly, probably a spin-off from having to find a way in a church where I couldn't be ordained,

01:47:27.680 - 01:47:39.520

because I don't think I could cope, you know, so I'd spent 20 years being a lay person and pushing the church and pushing those boundaries as far as I could.

01:47:41.020 - 01:47:49.040

But yes, then it became clear that's actually what I had to do. Well, I mean, my spiritual director in then said, you've just got to go away and be silent for a week

01:47:49.040 - 01:48:03.720

on a retreat and be silent for a weekend and listen. And it became clear. But I went down, I trained part-time at Serum College. Well, it was Stets, Oxford,

01:48:03.940 - 01:48:14.660

Diocese had a training course, but I'd been doing a lot within the diocese, and within the diocese, not just within my parish. I'd been on, you know, diocesan committees and things.

01:48:14.760 - 01:48:33.220

And I just thought, if I'm going to train as me, I want to go somewhere where I'm me, not already known. And I reckoned it was a better course. And the structure suited me better

01:48:33.220 - 01:48:42.420

because it was a local tutor and tutorial groups, rather than having to go for lectures once every week. With small children, that's not great. I mean, I had a...

01:48:42.420 - 01:48:52.980

Were the tutors still small then? Well, no, they were, but they weren't, they were top, top primary, lower secondary. Still, I couldn't leave.

01:48:53.600 - 01:49:04.480

One of us had to be in. And they needed mum around when the homework fell apart. So yeah, I mean, I went out every evening, but instead of it being a three quarters,

01:49:04.580 - 01:49:12.780

four an hour, an hour's drive each way, and getting there for supper, it was go out for a tutorial that starts at about half past seven or something,

01:49:13.840 - 01:49:23.640

15 minutes drive away. And the weekends were in Salisbury, which I could get to by train, rather than the Oxford ones,

01:49:23.720 - 01:49:34.580

which were somewhere I'd have had to drive and you only had one car. And the people who trained on that course, I thought were good and had had a good course.

01:49:35.120 - 01:49:45.300

And Rob and I both went, and we both felt that he was valued as much as me by the staff there. And the staff on the whole took seriously

01:49:45.300 - 01:49:59.120

the fact that we all were there as adults and we had skills and experience that could all be put in. And the Oxford one was still a little bit,

01:49:59.120 - 01:50:11.040

you know, the way training sometimes devalues people. So was it, were there a lot of, sorry, in Birkbeck speak, mature students?

01:50:11.260 - 01:50:22.040

Oh yeah, we all were. The course I was on, because it was the part-time one, well, I think there was maybe one person

01:50:22.040 - 01:50:27.920

who was under 30, and he managed to persuade, he was about 29, they managed to persuade him.

01:50:27.920 - 01:50:40.980

But no, I mean, I was late 40s when I was, and then 50 when I was on the course, and I was probably an average age.

01:50:42.900 - 01:50:52.500

Most of us, I mean, there were a few people in their 30s, but the majority of us had children in their teens or young adults.

01:50:52.980 - 01:51:04.960

And there were people on that course who were trained, you know, there was someone there who was training the readers in her diocese, and huge amount of experience.

01:51:05.240 - 01:51:11.480

You know, when we were doing safeguarding, there was someone there whose job was within safeguarding, and this is in 2000,

01:51:11.900 - 01:51:20.860

and could put stuff in, and the majority of the staff respected that. I mean, sometimes we thought

01:51:20.860 - 01:51:30.480

they didn't respect it quite enough, but they, yes, then they valued us as people with all we brought with us, rather than trying to sort of,

01:51:31.220 - 01:51:38.720

nothing matters except this theology that we're doing with you. Unmold you in a particular... So it was, so in that sense,

01:51:38.820 - 01:51:44.420

I felt it worked well, because it integrated, I mean, my team, my work, my daily work,

01:51:45.000 - 01:51:53.900

my weekday work, and my theological training were integrated. So how long was the part-time course? Three years.

01:51:53.900 - 01:52:03.440

Yeah, I mean, if it's... If as a mature student you do full-time, you can do it in two years, but you know, you need that.

01:52:03.720 - 01:52:10.780

It takes that time to sort of... And of course, we had the joy of having Salisbury Cathedral around the corner, which liturgically was wonderful.

01:52:12.680 - 01:52:19.060

So good place to be. And so when you were ordained, was it at Salisbury? No, in Oxford,

01:52:19.220 - 01:52:28.680

because I did a curacy within the diocese. So yeah, I did a... I'm not in my parish. I mean, the vicar sort of said,

01:52:28.760 - 01:52:35.620

well, we'll be a curacy. I said, I can't be a curate and learn in the parish where I've been for 20 years.

01:52:36.260 - 01:52:42.880

But it ended up the other side of town, because at that point, my younger daughter was... She'd got to a point

01:52:42.880 - 01:52:48.120

where she was doing GCSEs, and it would have been halfway through her GCSEs, so I couldn't move her.

01:52:48.120 - 01:52:59.160

Yeah. So... So then how long were you a curate? Probably nearly four years,

01:52:59.340 - 01:53:08.100

because getting the right job took... that would work for me and for the husband. And in the end,

01:53:08.160 - 01:53:16.800

I moved down to Basingstoke and Winchester, because that's actually where his job was. I would have liked to have stayed in Oxford Diocese,

01:53:16.800 - 01:53:23.680

because Winchester was not a brilliant one for women, and it became quite a bad one for women. But I became the...

01:53:24.560 - 01:53:34.760

I linked up with the Moe group there, well, the WATCH group there, and then became the WATCH rep, and then got elected onto General Synod

01:53:34.760 - 01:53:40.500

for Winchester, which I probably wouldn't have done from Oxford, so... I quite enjoyed it, actually.

01:53:42.820 - 01:53:52.500

Sort of the political bits came out. And what did it... On your ordination day, what did that feel like?

01:53:53.020 - 01:54:07.100

Well, it's odd. The diaconal ordination wasn't anything very special, because I was already a lay reader.

01:54:08.660 - 01:54:14.300

And the difference between what I could do as a reader and what I could do as a deacon was minimal,

01:54:15.060 - 01:54:23.980

I think. I think they'd let me baptise as a deacon. And I wasn't going into full-time

01:54:23.980 - 01:54:33.260

ministry at that point, because they messed up a little bit. In fact, they couldn't find me... I became a stipend jury,

01:54:33.440 - 01:54:40.760

but I couldn't be stipend jury straight away, because there wasn't a stipend jury place that worked for me.

01:54:40.860 - 01:54:46.720

I mean, I spent all my time through Curacy saying, I need one, and I need one with public transport.

01:54:47.000 - 01:54:52.700

My daughter was at school in the middle of Reading. So I said, as long as there's a decent public transport route,

01:54:52.820 - 01:54:58.980

it's fine. But they didn't find them. So they found this one the other side of Reading

01:54:59.620 - 01:55:04.180

with a curate who was looking for new jobs. And so basically, yes, but we haven't got the money

01:55:04.180 - 01:55:11.440

till next September. Okay, so I'll do SSM. An SSM? SSM is you're not paid

01:55:11.440 - 01:55:17.760

and you do part-time. I was teaching, all my adult teaching was session on,

01:55:17.840 - 01:55:25.920

it was half time. So I could do Curacy. In fact, I went stipend jury in March during the year.

01:55:27.960 - 01:55:32.700

So yeah, I wasn't, it wasn't going to be hugely different. I could wear a dog collar.

01:55:35.300 - 01:55:41.600

I mean, a couple of friends from university that I kept up with came and it mattered on the end.

01:55:41.600 - 01:55:51.180

And I sort of felt, you know, I had to plan the party. The church I was moving from didn't do anything to say goodbye.

01:55:51.520 - 01:55:58.660

I felt a bit bad about that. I mean, yes, we had a party. We invited people and they came and it was great.

01:55:58.760 - 01:56:10.680

My daughters organised it because I was on retreat. But the priest ordination a year later mattered.

01:56:12.660 - 01:56:22.320

And it mattered in all sorts of ways. So it was in Reading Minster, which was, I don't know if I've thought of this now,

01:56:22.400 - 01:56:29.600

but I now realise, of course, that was where the first women in the diocese were. Well, they probably were in Christchurch.

01:56:30.400 - 01:56:40.960

So it was more real, personal to me. People I'd been teaching could come. The bishop, it was a bit odd. It should have,

01:56:41.720 - 01:56:49.480

the Bishop of Reading would have ordained. I mean, on the whole, priests were ordained. The Diocesan Bishop of Oxford

01:56:49.480 - 01:57:00.620

ordained the deacons in the cathedral, all his deacons. And then the area bishops ordain the priests in their areas

01:57:00.620 - 01:57:06.560

because the assumption is if you've been doing a curacy, it will, people from that area will want to come, so local.

01:57:07.200 - 01:57:14.860

They all make sense. But actually, there wasn't a Bishop of Reading at that point because Geoffrey John had been appointed

01:57:14.860 - 01:57:25.720

and then forced to resign. I don't, you remember Geoffrey, right, Geoffrey John was appointed as a Bishop of Reading in early 2003.

01:57:28.420 - 01:57:36.280

He was gay as a partner and the event, all the conservative churches in the Oxford diocese

01:57:36.280 - 01:57:47.820

began making a big fuss. The Bishop of Oxford stuck by him, said, I think he'd be a good bishop. He was prepared to go with it.

01:57:48.600 - 01:57:59.760

We all discussed it. But Rowan Williams had only been an archbishop for a short while and although he was friends with Geoffrey,

01:58:00.800 - 01:58:09.040

forced, basically forced him to resign, he couldn't, he couldn't remove him. He hadn't been consecrated at that point.

01:58:11.860 - 01:58:17.140

I mean, I think that was a mistake. I think that was Rowan being bullied. I think that laid, however.

01:58:17.660 - 01:58:23.080

So there wasn't a bishop, they'd expected that he would be imposed in order to do the ordinations and he wasn't.

01:58:24.780 - 01:58:33.440

So lovely retired Bishop of Reading, John Bone came out and I had known him well because he was,

01:58:33.700 - 01:58:41.200

he'd been a bishop when I was doing things with children's days. I had made him with children mitres and coats

01:58:41.200 - 01:58:48.860

that he had, the lovely man had worn these painty mitres and sticky. I thought we'd had problems

01:58:48.860 - 01:59:00.860

with some significant problems with the rest and he'd been incredibly supportive through some really tough times

01:59:00.860 - 01:59:09.140

in the parish. So I felt I have a bishop here who actually knows me. A lot of the other curates

01:59:09.140 - 01:59:15.940

of course didn't know him at all. And so that, that was a great gift. And actually that,

01:59:16.160 - 01:59:24.860

it was an amazing moment. I had not expected to feel the weight of the hands at the moment of ordination,

01:59:25.040 - 01:59:36.500

but I did. So yeah, that was good. Oh yes, and I was ordained in the stole of a very dear friend

01:59:37.160 - 01:59:46.700

who'd been a curate, not the one who was curate in 1992, but she'd become a curate after her and we'd done a lot together

01:59:47.560 - 01:59:56.400

and been to Tessay together, actually brought in a decent children's service together that worked

01:59:56.400 - 02:00:09.540

as an all age service. Um, she died in, yeah, 2003. She was at my deaconing,

02:00:11.440 - 02:00:20.440

but I was ordained in her stole. I did actually ask, I think some friends were clearing, so I was there and I said,

02:00:21.180 - 02:00:31.980

what are you doing with her stoles? I said, I don't know, the white one, I would love it. And if you think it's all right,

02:00:32.160 - 02:00:38.840

you know, if her family want it, if you think it, but actually, yes, I got it. Well, it was.

02:00:41.840 - 02:00:53.780

So in your ministry then, when you're curate and when you're a priest, I mean, how, in the parishes you were in, how were you received?

02:00:54.620 - 02:01:05.040

Oh, no problem. But these were then already parishes that, yes, for them, it was not a, yeah. I mean, I, um, where I would,

02:01:05.560 - 02:01:14.780

interestingly, where I was a curate, I think the, I think the vicar probably worked better with women as curates than men.

02:01:16.200 - 02:01:33.520

Um, I don't know, but he'd had, I was about his third woman curate. And I think that we could possibly relate in ways that,

02:01:34.740 - 02:01:46.560

I mean, I just had that feeling. Yeah, and I think he had a woman after me again, and I think that one didn't work quite as well. And then the church I went,

02:01:47.000 - 02:01:54.080

when I moved out of Basingstoke, the team rector was a woman, and she was actually one of the 1994 ordination cohort.

02:01:54.600 - 02:02:06.680

She'd been a deaconess in London, though she was a bit younger than me. And the church I went to had, had a,

02:02:08.260 - 02:02:17.100

well, a member of the congregation had become a priest, and she was ordained in 1994. And the church had, so,

02:02:17.600 - 02:02:27.540

I mean, because it was quite handicap, some in the church had found it difficult. But they were incredibly, nobody was,

02:02:28.220 - 02:02:36.640

they weren't barrier sort of people. One of the people, older servers who was lovely said, well, yeah, Elizabeth's ordained.

02:02:36.780 - 02:02:46.140

I couldn't quite work out how women could be priests. I just sort of didn't feel it was right. But then I realised that actually

02:02:46.140 - 02:02:54.500

the old Catholics have women, and if they could, then I, he found a way through. And he was, I mean, such a lovely man.

02:02:56.600 - 02:03:08.260

Deep faith, knew how he liked doing it, but would never get in other people's ways. I mean, it was always there. And so it was that sort of church.

02:03:08.400 - 02:03:18.040

I mean, I wouldn't have gone to one where, well, I certainly wouldn't have gone anywhere to have a fight. So it was there.

02:03:18.040 - 02:03:31.900

And they were incredibly supportive in 2012 when the women bishops measure was voted down. And I was on synod and I came back and they were wonderfully supportive.

02:03:35.620 - 02:03:43.500

To the point that we wrote, I think I wrote something, put it on the Facebook page and it was just me writing it.

02:03:43.580 - 02:03:51.380

I was careful, but they looked at it and said, I think we need to make this into a poster. So we just put it on a, you know, we made it into a poster and put it up.

02:03:56.340 - 02:04:00.840

And so then you eventually retired? Yes. Yes. As a priesthood.

02:04:01.080 - 02:04:05.520

Yes. Well, not from being a priest, but from a full-time ministry. Full-time ministry.

02:04:05.560 - 02:04:11.580

And we came here. Yes. So when I came off synod, then I said to Hilary Cotton,

02:04:11.680 - 02:04:19.600

who was chair, do you think, would it be helpful if I joined the committee? Because I thought, okay, I have this time.

02:04:21.140 - 02:04:32.460

I haven't been re-elected to synod. So I have got this little bit of time in my life that was synod and I can give it to the watch committee because there's still work to do.

02:04:32.660 - 02:04:41.380

So I joined the committee then. I will come off this year because I would have done not only six years, but I then had an extra year or two

02:04:41.380 - 02:04:51.080

because I became vice chair when I would have done that. But I mean, I felt, and I am now thinking,

02:04:52.060 - 02:05:03.980

actually, there's a lot of what happened in that time in synod where we were getting the legislation through, that watch needs to know.

02:05:04.160 - 02:05:19.240

And I mean, historical memories are very, very short. They are indeed. And I wish we did not have to keep these memories alive, but when you're challenging decisions that have been made,

02:05:20.040 - 02:05:32.780

you have to remember how they were made. Yeah, that context is awfully important. So I am having to think what to do because I'm one of the only people now on the committee

02:05:32.780 - 02:05:49.860

who's got that memory. And yes, this tension between saying, so we're moving on to another generation matters. But where we've come from does.

02:05:50.560 - 02:05:57.580

Very much so. So we've been chatting a long time. I know, I realised that you're going to miss yours. No, that's okay.

02:05:57.820 - 02:06:06.980

That's absolutely okay. This has been very worth it. But before we end, we've gone through a lot of material,

02:06:07.420 - 02:06:17.120

but I mean, is there something that I didn't ask that you think is important? I mean, we've talked to, yeah, we've talked a lot about lots of things,

02:06:18.400 - 02:06:28.580

but is there something you think, oh, Carmen didn't ask me about this or? Right, one of the things that I think was really important to me in Mo,

02:06:29.520 - 02:06:43.700

I hope is still there with WATCH, and I think actually is really important to women in a church that is still patriarchal. And that is actually being able to be a woman

02:06:43.700 - 02:07:02.200

within liturgy and worship. And there's also quite interesting questions about laying ordained and the balance. So Mo was really good at using liturgy.

02:07:03.780 - 02:07:12.380

And Mosley at liturgies, of course, were wonderfully creative because we couldn't have Eucharists. At least if we'd had a Eucharist,

02:07:12.380 - 02:07:22.420

we'd have had to run in a band. So nearly all the worship that I remember being created for Mo was, well, it may have been Eucharistic,

02:07:22.740 - 02:07:33.560

but it wasn't Eucharists and it was using different symbols. And there's a huge amount of writing, of liturgy, liturgical stuff.

02:07:34.680 - 02:07:49.700

I mean, I wasn't part of the St Hilda's community, which, because it was in London, I just couldn't get in there to it. But it was always just being far more creative

02:07:49.700 - 02:08:01.320

with liturgy in a way that I just, as a teenager, well, I suppose I did try to be creative. I mean, I suppose things I did as a teenager were liturgy and I did write a Eucharist

02:08:01.320 - 02:08:09.580

for our, a sort of agape Eucharist for our SCM group in Oxford. And I did, so actually, yes, I did quite a lot of that. But that was incredible.

02:08:10.720 - 02:08:22.020

We needed it for feeding. It was incredibly important. And it was then important to see women leading Eucharists. And I mean, the first time I,

02:08:23.680 - 02:08:36.960

well, there were a couple of firsts. One of them was, because before women could be ordained, after Christine had been a curate for a couple of years, the rector basically said,

02:08:37.040 - 02:08:47.280

look, if you were a man, you'd be ordained by now. So when I go on holiday, I will leave reserved sacrament. Plenty of reserved. And you can take the Eucharist with the reserved.

02:08:47.800 - 02:09:04.440

So we were legal. But even just seeing her at the altar was incredibly powerful. I can't now remember the first time I actually heard a woman say the words of the institution, the Eucharist.

02:09:04.980 - 02:09:16.380

It may have been her, it may have been other. I don't know. That has now become too common for me to remember. But I can remember that sort of gut feeling of,

02:09:16.760 - 02:09:30.000

oh yes, this is why it matters. So watch, we've been able to have people do that. They're still carried on trying to be creative with liturgy. It's one of the things I'm having to continue to remind people about.

02:09:30.480 - 02:09:35.340

No, it does matter. Does matter. Does matter. And we're still trying to do it because it does.

02:09:35.980 - 02:10:00.520

And because the church has not caught up with that. And there is still, you know, it's very difficult in an ordinary parish church to use a female pronoun for God. I mean, I rarely do it because I kind of know that it would get gut responses.

02:10:02.300 - 02:10:22.920

And yet I feel I'm sort of letting myself and others down if I don't. I mean, I do. When I was a vicar, I was more inclined to use, in my church where I was known, to use the blessing that wasn't Father, Son and.

02:10:23.260 - 02:10:35.900

Yeah. I know this, but I know there's a lot of argument, discussion about if you use creator, redeemer, giver of life, for example, which is one of, you know, there are various.

02:10:36.880 - 02:10:52.920

There's a lovely one just called the womb of creation. Have to look it up. You're slipping away from person, God as person to God as function. But I kind of think, do you know what?

02:10:54.140 - 02:11:08.480

Father is, are you talking about Father as a person or a function? Function of parent, you know. So when I was in the vicar and I was in charge, and the congregation knew me and we could have these conversations,

02:11:09.420 - 02:11:33.040

I used that kind of thing much more. I didn't do it every week, but it was part of what I wrote things. If I'm taking a service here now, sort of one-off cover, I am less likely to do it. Because when people are shocked, but I do.

02:11:36.380 - 02:11:50.940

I mean, I will sort of use Janet Morley-Collett sometimes, and I will be careful about the language and, you know. Well, that's fascinating. Sort of, so it's a, but I mean, I think, you know,

02:11:52.480 - 02:12:08.680

if the Anglican Church is formed, if its theology is formed by its liturgy, I mean, I don't know if it is now, but that's the traditional view. You believe, you know, you are what you pray. It is still very patriarchal.

02:12:10.360 - 02:12:25.940

And we need more options. We need more ways of, I mean, I miss words out. This sort of thing, and quietly. I changed, you know, this prayer.

02:12:26.240 - 02:12:39.800

Again, when I was doing Baptists and Prayers, the sort of the simple creed, God the Father, do you believe in him? The questions as read are, do you believe in him?

02:12:40.060 - 02:12:45.580

I believe in him. Do you believe in him? And even, do you believe in the Holy Spirit? Come on.

02:12:47.200 - 02:12:58.220

So, I change it, and the question, instead of it, do you believe in him? It's a little tougher, but it's, do you believe in God? And the answer is, I believe in God. Do you believe in God the Father or Creator?

02:12:58.340 - 02:13:05.940

I believe in God the Father. Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in Jesus. Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

02:13:06.020 - 02:13:16.320

I believe in the Holy Spirit. And I just, just those slight shifts. Yeah. So, the words, the liturgy, and the church matter,

02:13:16.420 - 02:13:30.380

but it also matters having space to do the creative stuff. So, yeah, I'll be more feminist, and when I'm doing creative things, you know, we have a silent, an hour of silence with some resources leading into it,

02:13:30.440 - 02:13:41.860

and I will use more feminist stuff. And I mean, there's such riches, such riches. That's interesting. And that, that is really, I mean, I do think that the,

02:13:42.920 - 02:14:01.140

the reading the Bible as a woman, worshipping in language as a woman, using images that are fed, that are from women's experience matter. And yeah, Mo has done that, Watch has done that.

02:14:01.220 - 02:14:09.320

I'm having to hang on to it at the moment. That sounds wonderful. That's a lovely way to end too. So, thank you very, very much.

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Thank you, all the time.