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A Theology of Women's Priesthood

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

When I was offered the chance to review this book, I jumped at it, partly because the author is a priest in the Church in Wales, where I also serve and where there is still some reticence among clergy towards women priests, even among those who would not espouse the Forward in Faith/Credo Cymru position, but also because the cover blurb promised that Ali Green would offer a fresh perspective on the subject.

I was not disappointed. The uniqueness of this book is in the way in which the author relates the issue of the ordination of women to the central event of the Eucharist. An introduction sets the scene for the rest of the book. In that introduction, Green sets out the arguments about how men and women serve as symbols, and in particular as symbols of both the masculine and the feminine, with the result that the male priest has come to be associated with the patriarchal past of the Church, whereas the woman priest represents something different, although what that something is remains presently unresolved. She states that “a woman priest breaks the male monopoly on representing the divine, and so opens up possibilities for a female symbolic” (p.15). This is the thesis of the book, that a woman at the altar not only brings the feminine into our understanding of the transcendent, but also offers a symbol of social renewal in the wider culture.

This Introduction is followed by three pairs of chapters: In the image of God; Broken body, broken world; New covenant, new confidence. Each pair of chapters looks first at “The story so far”, then at the role of “the woman priest”.

Space forbids a full exposition of Green’s arguments, and anyway, this is too good a book for readers of Ministry Today to be content with reading the review instead, but perhaps I might give a little flavour of how she uses this structure in the first pair of chapters. In the first half of the “Image of God” pairing, she explores the history and development of the almost exclusively masculine symbolism used by the Church, right up to the present day, to speak about God. In particular, she questions whether the relative neglect of the Holy Spirit in the more male-dominated parts of the Church is linked to the discomfort felt by the somewhat feminine roles of the Holy Spirit in the godhead.

The author then moves on to describe how the sight and sound of a woman at the altar challenges those masculine symbols: “A theology of women’s priesthood ... provides us with a route for exploring the transformative potential of sexual difference in the Anglican tradition” (p.48) and I would add ‘in all traditions’.

As I read, I found myself at times being deeply challenged by the narrowness of understanding imposed on me by my maleness; then at times saying a quiet ‘Amen’ as I sensed the author putting into words concepts of gender liberation which had been lurking unspoken in my male psyche.

Ali Green's book should be required reading for anyone who still labours under the misguided impression that leadership at the Eucharist must remain exclusively male. They may not change their minds, but they will be forced to ask the most challenging of questions about the ordination of women.

Sadly, I suspect that those are the very people who will not read it, which means that it is incumbent on the rest of us to do so, master (male imagery again!) the arguments and recognise that it takes men and women together to bring the children of God to new birth.