Jenan Taylor
22 October 2024
Christian women leaders will discuss violence, abuse, and coercive control of women in the church as part of an upcoming national conference.
The Movement for the Ordination of Women 40th anniversary gathering aims to examine women’s experiences in Christian ministry, including the obstacles they face and how that affects their progress and leadership.
MOW president Dr Elaine Lindsay said the need to support lay and ordained women leaders was important particularly given a recent gender disparity report describing the barriers they experienced in the Canberra and Goulburn diocese.
She said concerns raised in the report, including about theologically trained women being overlooked for leadership roles in favour of men from outside the diocese, attested how progression wasn’t as open to women as it was to men.
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Dr Lindsay said violence, abuse and coercive control of women in the church and wider community had also generated strong discussion at the MOW annual general meeting.
She said the ecumenical conference was an opportunity for women who faced these and similar experiences to form support networks, share resources and get a sense of solidarity.
Māori Anglican Church priest and Vocation and Violence: The Church and #MeToo author the Reverend Dr Miryam Clough will present on sexual violence in the church.
She planned to discuss the church’s need to recognise that bullying, harassment, and sexual violence in its broadest sense was not the responsibility of a few “bad apples”, but systemic.
“Until we reappraise and reform our theology, language, and church structures, particularly around power, and commit to reading scripture responsibly, this won’t change,” Dr Clough said.
The conference will take place at St John’s Cathedral Brisbane from Thursday 28 to Saturday 30 November.
For more details and to register, see here.
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