I thank all the women have helped the Church flourish - Lord Sentamu

I asked the congregation, “Is it your will that she should be ordained?” a priest in the congregation shouted very loudly, “No”. I gave him three minutes to state his reasons why. He did, I then gave a legal judgement which annulled all his objections. I continued the liturgy and asked one more time, “Is it your will that Libby Lane should be ordained?” The congregation answered resoundingly “Yes it is”. That loud affirmative reply nearly blew off the Minster roof.

The astonishing and unique Christian conviction is that a young Hebrew woman was marked out by God to bear His Beloved Son. We call her the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose courage, humility, obedience, devotion and selflessness shine out across the centuries. She brought Jesus to birth in troubled times and watched him develop and encounter opposition for his uncompromising teaching of love and actions of mercy. Mary, with two other women and one man, was an observer when he was crucified. As a verse of the Hymn, “There is a Green Hill far away, without a city wall”, “We may not know, we cannot tell, what pains he had to bear, but we believe it was for us he hang and suffered there”.

Another woman, Mary Magdalene, was the first witness to Christ’s resurrection. That makes her an apostle, the one who is sent, which today we would call a bishop.

So why has it taken so long for the Church to admit women to be priests and bishops? Part of the answer lies in the prevailing culture of the past, when men occupied almost all positions of leadership, while women were expected to be mothers and homemakers and rarely progressed beyond primary education. That sounds extraordinary now, yet women didn’t get the vote in the UK until 1928 and are still regarded as second fiddle in many countries. Despite the obstacles, women have always had an immense impact in the Church.

The New Testament names a number of women, including Anna, who prophesied about Jesus when Mary and Joseph brought him as a baby to the Temple in Jerusalem, Priscilla who led a church with her husband, Phoebe a deaconess and Lydia, a successful businesswoman who supported the church with her resources and hospitality.

Among the early Christian martyrs, we revere the memory of Blandina, 15-year old slave who, in the 2nd Century, suffered the most gruesome torture and death in the French city of Lyon because she remained steadfast to her faith. There is also a story of a young Maori girl named Tārore age ten, who in 1838 was murdered because of her faithfulness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As they tortured her, she forgave her murders.

In England, St. Paulinus and St Augustine were sent by Pope Gregory from Rome in 597AD, as missionaries to rekindle the Christian faith. St. Augustine was welcomed in Canterbury, by the local King’s wife, Bertha, who was already a Christian.

Paulinus accompanied Ethelburga from Kent to marry the pagan King of Northumbria, King Edwin. Paulinus baptised the king in York on Easter Day in 627AD.

Yorkshire folk will be familiar with the ruins of Whitby Abbey. It was there in 664 AD that the Abbess Hilda helped to reconcile differing parties in the church, at a gathering which was to mark its future direction.

Fast forward to more recent times, stopping en route to mention the 14th Century Lady Julian of Norwich, a theologian and spiritual guide whose influence has lasted to the present day. Her saying, “All shall be well. All shall be well, All manner of thing shall be well” is known all over the world.

The 19th Century saw a number of pioneering Christian women. A Vicar’s wife, Josephine Butler, campaigned for women’s suffrage, the end of child prostitution and trafficking of sex workers. She was described as “the most distinguished Englishwoman of the nineteenth century”.

That title could also have been applied to Florence Nightingale, popularly known as ‘The Lady of the Lamp’, because of her nightly care of wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. More significantly, she was the first to develop medical statistics and founded the first nursing school. Less well known was her prodigious writing, often on religious subjects.

Similarly, Mary Jane Seacole, born in Jamaica on 23 November 1805 was a British Nurse and business woman. She was famous for her Nursing work during the Crimean War and for publishing the first Autobiography written by a black woman in Britain. She died in London on 14 May 1881.

Another great Christian social reformer of that period was Octavia Hill who, from the age of 14, worked tirelessly for the welfare of working people, developing social housing and making open spaces available to all, as well as pioneering a home-visiting service which led to the establishment of modern social work. For good measure she was also a co-founder of the National Trust.

Mary Sumner, also a Vicar’s wife, started a meeting in 1871 for mothers of all social classes to offer mutual support. This was to become the Mothers’ Union and membership had reached 169,000 by the turn of the century. Today, it’s spread across 83 countries, promoting Christ’s teaching on marriage and supporting family life world-wide. In addition to mothers, its membership includes parents, men, widows, singles and grandparents.

My wife Margaret and I are members of the Mothers’ Union and we can testify to the impact it has in Uganda, the country of our birth. We have also visited Malawi and were hugely impressed by the Mothers’ Union many projects including meals for school children, and building proper kitchens from local materials. The delightful thing was encountering members as young as six years old.

All this testifies to the influence women have had on the Church down the centuries, long before they could be priests and bishops. They were and are its backbone.

It is 31 years since women were first ordained priests in the Church of England. Now, 32 per cent of priests are women and recent figures suggest over half of those training to be priests are now women.

On this international women’s day I give thanks for all of those women who have responded to God’s call on their life – whether as lay or ordained – and pray for their flourishing in the life of our church, our county and our nation.