A 'perverse and mischievous tradition' By Margaret Kirk

Some years ago, a past member of Dover Unitarian Church where I attended in my teens, reminded me that I had posed the question: could women become ministers? He recalled that even at that age I had some interest in the role. I'd forgotten this.

Observing the recent Church of England Synod debates in York around the issues of women bishops and gay clergy and the brouhaha surrounding those debates, I feel a sense of relief mingled with gratitude. Could women become ministers? I might have asked that question many years ago but, for longer than I can remember, I have taken it for granted that a woman has every right to stand alongside her male colleagues in a ministerial capacity. And how anachronistic to believe otherwise!

There is so much that appears incredulous and absurd about the disputes that wrack the Church of England at the moment. "Wake up! Wake up!" we might have shouted from the roof top of our York Unitarian chapel to the assembled delegates meeting at York University. "This is the 21st century; this is England; women are equal partners . where have you been all this time?"

In response to all the rumblings about traditionalist clergy splits, Vatican dismay that women bishops will jeopardise ecumenical dialogue, suggestions about creating a tier of super-bishops to appease the critics, one letter in the Guardian put it rather well I thought: `the time has long past to stop wrapping their misogyny up as theology as if women are the faulty part of God's creation` (Sally Barnes 7th July `08)

How would I feel if I was having to fight that battle in the 21st century; having to counter the argument that, because the ministry of women bishops deviates from scripture, it is has no legitimacy? In one sense, this is not a challenge that any Unitarian man or woman needs to be concerned about. My religious sensibility tells me the apostolic succession is an interesting historical and political construct that hasn't got much relevance for contemporary society. Dressing up is for theatre, and hierarchies are for flattening - the argument isn't worth engaging with. But, in another sense, it is.

Misogyny has stained the Christian tradition throughout its history so as a woman I delight in seeing other women in positions of power. I'm pleased to hear that other momentous acts of defiance have been going on throughout July - that in Boston USA three women were ordained Roman Catholic priests despite the threat of excommunication. I'm delighted that Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori is Primate of the Episcopalian church - a biologist, an oceanographer, a pilot. I'm delighted to read Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, chaplain at University College Durham, is part of a group fighting for equality and that Lucy Winkett, Canon Precentor of St. Paul's, writes of her concern and sense of shame that the Established Church is still debating on what basis it can admit women to its leadership when the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975. These women are thoughtful, articulate and deserving of high office and I believe that sense will prevail in the Anglican Communion - eventually.

But I'm even more delighted that I come from a tradition where the first woman minister in England, Gertrude von Petzold, was a Unitarian one, inducted into ministry at Norborough Rd, Unitarian Church Leicester in 1904. It took the Church of England another 90 years to ordain women priests. I wonder what it must have felt like when she trained for ministry over 100 years ago, the only woman amongst male students. We know that one man, Fred Hankinson, described how male students refused to sit next to her at the refectory table. He says "I championed her and talked them round so that she was able to eat with the rest of them"

Unitarian women of my generation take it for granted that there is nothing whatsoever about being female that should act as an obstacle, disallowing us from the office of ministry whilst Catholic and Anglican women fight hard for equal status. Some of these women must feel like Gertrude von Petzold -more like pioneers breaking the male stranglehold on the church with that heady mixture of determination, excitement and anxiety that all pioneers feel.

Unlike them, Gertrude had few models to look to when she chose her vocation. Perhaps she knew that Glasgow Universalists had ordained Caroline Soule in 1880 and gained courage and conviction from that. She must have been a truly exceptional person to venture forward at that time and in that climate, conditioned into believing that ministry was an inappropriate calling for the female sex. At her induction at Leicester in 1904, Joseph Wood said "We recognise the courage of her who tonight breaks a perverse and mischievous tradition." In 2008, how much more 'perverse and mischievous' does it seem to hold women back from full partnership in ministry? There is much that I find indefensible about a tradition of male succession that has excluded women and I would want no part of it, but my heart goes out to those women fighting for what is just. I admire them and I wish them well.

The Rev Margaret Kirk is minister with York and Whitby Unitarian congregations.