40th Anniversary of the foundation of Sydney MOW at Christ Church St Laurence

40th Anniversary of the foundation of Sydney MOW

SERVICES at Christ Church St Laurence — 9am and 10.30am 

Guest preach­er: The Arch­bish­op of Perth, The Most Rev­er­end Kay Goldsworthy AO

LUNCH

The Dr Patri­cia Bren­nan AM Lec­ture: The Ven­er­able Dr Colleen O’Reilly AM

Click here to read the Lec­ture by the Ven­er­able Dr Colleen O’Reilly AM

                                                                                              

   

Pho­to­graphy by Julie Crow­ley

SYDNEY MOW

The Move­ment for the Ordin­a­tion of Women was birthed in Sydney in 1983 by women and men pas­sion­ately com­mit­ted to the Anglic­an faith but des­pair­ing of the Aus­trali­an Church’s exclu­sion of women from ordained min­istry on the grounds of their gender.

The pivotal text for MOW mem­bers was, and is, Gala­tians 3:28: There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. We believe that, in Christ, we are all equal with one anoth­er.

In most dio­ceses, women clergy are now a giv­en – dea­cons since 1986, priests since 1992 and bish­ops since 2008. In 2018, Bish­op Kay Goldsworthy was installed as the first female arch­bish­op in the Anglic­an Church in Aus­tralia.

Over the last forty years, twenty of the twenty-three dio­ceses of the Anglic­an Church have moved to ordain women priests, the most recent being the Dio­cese of the Mur­ray (South Aus­tralia) on 12 August 2023. The Anglic­an Church of Aus­tralia Dir­ect­ory 2022/23 shows there are 154 act­ive women dea­cons, 410 act­ive women priests and 7 act­ive Epis­copal bish­ops.

There are many provinces in the Anglic­an Com­mu­nion world-wide that per­mit the con­sec­ra­tion of female bish­ops. GAFCON Aus­tralia notes, ‘ordained women have been involved in GAFCON from its incep­tion, and ordained women serve in our lead­er­ship’ (hhps://www.gafconaustralia.org/faq/). There are 3 female bish­ops in GAFCON.

MOW is not only about secur­ing the ordin­a­tion of women. From its early days it was also con­cerned about the way the Church regarded all women – in its lan­guage, lec­tion­ary read­ings and liturgy and in exclud­ing them from its decision-mak­ing bod­ies.

MOW con­tin­ues to encour­age the Church to make full use of the min­is­tries of women, to pro­mote women’s per­spect­ives in theo­logy, to hon­our the breadth and diversity of women’s min­istry and to pro­mote theo­lo­gic­al learn­ing and dis­cus­sion. Above all, MOW remains com­mit­ted to chal­len­ging and trans­form­ing the Anglic­an Church of Aus­tralia and its role in the com­munity.

To learn more about MOW or to sup­port our activ­it­ies, vis­it hpps://mowatch.com.au/ or con­tact the Sydney Con­ven­or (convenor.sydneymow@mowatch.com.au) or the nation­al Pres­id­ent (president@mowatch.com.au).

A major con­fer­ence will be held in Bris­bane in Novem­ber 2024 to mark the 40th anniversary of MOW as a nation­al organ­isa­tion.