Jenan Taylor
29 January 2024
A noted Anglican who struggled with low confidence says her Australia Day honour is an award for all lay and ordained women leaders in the Church.
The Reverend Canon Professor Dorothy Lee was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2024 Australia Day Honours for her significant service to the Anglican Church of Australia.
Professor Lee’s citation highlighted her contribution to New Testament scholarship at Trinity College, and to the Melbourne diocese where she is a canon at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Professor Lee said she was surprised when she was notified about being nominated and completely shocked when it was successful.
The award was a wonderful validation of how much women in the Anglican Church are able to accomplish, she said.
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Professor Lee said the recognition was particularly important to her because few women were in theology and very few women were being ordained, when she started out.
She said the Melbourne Anglican Church’s earlier stance against women’s ordination led her to ordained ministry in the Uniting Church instead, where she served from 1984 to 2008.
Professor Lee said she viewed being among the first women to fulfil her priestly vocation, and studying and teaching the New Testament among her major achievements.
But her biggest personal feat was overcoming imposter syndrome, Professor Lee said.
She said she traced that poor self-confidence, especially early in her priesthood, to her childhood in the Free Church of Scotland.
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Its conservative, disapproving view of women made any aspirations she had to lead or help make the Scriptures come alive for people seem unlikely.
“In my upbringing, women didn’t do this sort of thing. We had to wear hats to church. We couldn’t pray, we couldn’t even read, not officially,” Professor Lee said. “It gave me a sense of tentativeness about whether I should be doing this, and whether anything I did would be as good as what men did.”
She said even today many young women wrestled with a lack of confidence because they didn’t think they were as substantial as men.
But the constrained environment at the Free Church of Scotland inspired rather than dampened her sense of spirituality and God, Professor Lee said.
It eventually drove her to break free and find a home in Anglicanism instead.
Do you know of any other Melbourne Anglicans who have received Australia Day Honours? Email us at editor@melbourneanglican.org.au.
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