Chapter 35: Lopsided Women’s Ministries = Lopsided Churches?

Judging from many responses to my last blog post, Anglican women's ministry in the Sydney Anglican Diocese is growing. Archbishop Glenn Davies has opened a door to asymmetrical female Anglican ministry, with an intriguing new theology of women's ministry. Archbishop Davies maintains that this new theology of Anglican female ministry is based on divinely accredited assymetric order, not on failed assumptions of patriarchal hierarchy. This distinction is untested, nor has it been proven to be effective.

Unbalanced lopsidedness (asymmetry) in Christian ministry is something that never crossed my mind until I read Archbishop Glenn Davies' recent advocacy for asymmetrical women's ministry. Silly me! I always imagined that Anglican ministry of all kinds is firmly grounded in a balanced relationship with the Holy Trinity, combined with balanced Christian human relationships that are equal under God, as mandated by the founder of Christianity.

So how is a trained, diaconally ordained Sydney Anglican woman expected to carry out her non-hierarchical, but assymertically ordered, supposedly Christian ministry, lopsidedly, in Sydney and beyond? Lopsidedness in ministry sounds like a difficult act to maintain. But we may have nothing at all to worry about. Sydney Anglican women ministers are overseen by an army of thoughtful asymmetrical male ministers who ensure that women deacons and their lay female assistants carry the lopsided weight of their ministerial tasks, while their male colleagues make all the decisions and get all the glory.

But I forget - Sydney already has a well recognised female role model for asymmetrical Anglican women's ministry. The Rev. Lucille Piper, an ordained Anglican priest who has willingly served as a Deacon in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, is also a respected missionary in Papua New Guinea. This saintly Anglican woman priest will, in all likelihood, be disrespectfully dubbed "Lopsided Lu" by the AAAWM (Archepiscopal Advocate for Asymmetical Women's Ministry)! But perhaps she will sensibly flee Sydney, before Archbishop Davies’ misogynistic displeasure descends on her.

The Rev. Lucille Piper: Prophet, Preacher, Missionary and Priest.

Anglican minister Rev. Lucille Piper OAM, known to her friends as Lu, is an outstanding witness for Christ in Australia, and beyond, as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. She has had a wonderfully varied church ministry. Finding herself faced with constantly changing circumstances, she did not hesitate to adapt her ministry flexibly to whatever God and her church communities required of her. 

After becoming a teacher, and being awarded a BA Honours from the University of New England in 1977, Lu went on missionary service in Papua New Guinea during 1968-73 and 1978-81. She served as an Anglican Church Army Officer in the Mosman area during 1984-90. This was followed by study leave and the award of a Bachelor of Divinity from Melbourne College of Divinity in 1994. Lu was deaconed in the Sydney Anglican Diocese in 1991, and priested in the Newcastle Anglican Diocese in 1995, From 1995-2004 Lu ministered at Stroud in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. She returned to church missionary service in Papua New Guinea in 2004-2012. 

Lu's valuable contribution of nearly 20 years service in Papua New Guinea was recognised when she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. After her return to Australia in 2012, Lu was appointed Assistant Minister at St Luke's Anglican Church, Mosman, where she ministered for several years before retiring from that parish and applying for a general licence to minister and preach in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. She is still awaiting the Diocese's response to her application.

In 2013 Lu was elected Convenor of the Sydney Branch of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, where she meets regularly with young and mature committed Anglican women engaged in Anglican church ministry all over Sydney. In January 2016 Lu returned briefly to Papua New Guinea to oversee the completion of church building works there. She will soon be returning to Sydney. 

Lu is much loved and admired by all who meet and know her. Please support her valuable, outstanding Anglican church ministry, and include her in your prayers.

Chapter 34: Paige Katay’s Go Girl Ministry in the Sydney Anglican Diocese

The Sydney Anglican worm has turned! Paige Katay's brave defence of women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches has overturned the corrupt merchants' tables in God's Temple. On the 18th February 2016, Paige Katay, a Meriden College student, proclaimed that the Bible is not sexist, and that Archbishop Glenn Davies has never said anything that restricts women's ministry in Sydney Anglican churches. Bravo, Paige! Paige has bucked the misogynist Sydney Anglican system: she has persuaded us that God wants women to be ordained as Anglican women priests to minister in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. 

Women priests have arrived, and they're staying. Via Paige, God has declared "GO GIRL!", revealed that the Bible imposes no limitations on women's ministry, and has ordained brilliant women preachers to serve the Sydney Anglican Diocese. Many Anglican women preach in Sydney, and their reasonable, inspired teaching and preaching, like Paige's teaching and preaching, is attentively heard. Last Sunday (21/2/2016) I witnessed a brilliant team of Sydney Anglican women lead the worship at St Barnabas' Church Broadway. Many women exercise powerful Christian leadership and management in Sydney Anglican churches, and the vast majority of Sydney Anglican men respect and defer to them, just as all Sydney Anglicans defer to Paige's reasonable judgement and proclamation. 

It is certainly a fact that Sydney Anglican parishes could not function without their current women leaders, administrators and managers. In fact, gender discrimination against women's priestly ministry in all its forms has fallen flat on it's face in the Sydney Anglican Diocese since journalists revealed how prejudiced churchmen exposed church women to domestic violence by endorsing rampant male misogyny. Ordained Anglican women priests from outside Sydney visit many Sydney parishes regularly, and Holy Communion has been celebrated by an Anglican woman priest (a senior Australian Defence Force military chaplain) in Sydney, without the heavens falling in. Sydney Anglican discriminative male dogmatism has collapsed in shame at its excessive hubris. The army of offensive Sydney Anglican male misogynists who invaded Sydney Anglican churches and dominated them for many years are definitely on the way out. However, they're kicking and screaming all the way down the nave to the church door. The Sydney Anglican Synod is still dominated by men who disagree violently with Paige. Their latest coward punch is to use indoctrinated, clearly good-hearted, but confused babes in arms as human shields.

Scared out of their wits by being consigned to misogynist hell and damnation by the community at large, these Sydney Anglican churchmen scrambled to rewrite their anti-women-priest dogmas. Rapidly backing away from their insistence on exclusively male church headship coupled with righteous male subordination of church women, they (and a cohort of well rewarded, subordained female deacons who have signed away their right to female priesthood) are now teaching two convoluted, unattractive red herring heresies about women's ministry that distract and confuse parishioners.

Complementarianism - otherwise known as Plugging the Gaps Ministry

Ironically, Sydney Anglican mob bosses couldn't find a word in the Oxford English Dictionary to describe it, so they invented a new buzzword - complementarianism. This convenient invention illogically asserts that trained and subordained women ministers, however capable, should do only what male ministers can't do, or don't want to do. Women get the ministry crumbs that fall under the table, the leftovers, and are supposed to lick them up gratefully. Like cleaning the church. It's so completely in tune with Vatican male misogyny that even Pope Francis is promoting it!

Egalitarianism - otherwise known as KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) Ministry

This heresy involves replacing the word "equal" with "egalitarian", in order to control discourse about women's ministry. "Egalitarianism" is reductive, but the equality of women with men under God, preached by Jesus Christ, raises us all up to enjoy the riches of God's glory together. Egalitarian churches are anti-equality: the egalitarian church system reduces ministry to a lowest common denominator, promotes pseudo-ministry TAFE level adult education courses, and denigrates tertiary education in Christianity, reserving it for senior males. Egalitarian churches claim to honour women's ministry, while avoiding the issue of women ministers' equality with male ministers under God, and the right of women to be ordained to sacramental priestly ministry. Celebration of Holy Communion (Eucharist) is minimised and sometimes abandoned in egalitarian churches. Overworked, undereducated male and female Deacons carry out a greatly simplified public egalitarian ministry, while a selected caste of ordained male priests avoid the limelight, celebrate Holy Communion privately and regularly, and reserve all power to themselves and their selected, well paid, silent lay allies. This is the same system used by the Pharisees in Jesus' time on earth. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for parading themselves as holy and sinless, while condemning others to perpetual servitude.