Beyond the Walled Garden: Anglican Women and the Priesthood

A.J. Pell is the rector of Holy Trinity Cathedral, Diocese of New
Westminster in British Columbia.

Wendy Fletcher-Marsh’s examination of the ordination of women to the
Anglican priesthood begins in 1920, the year that the international
Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops first formally brought the issue
into the courts of the church. By 1978, women had been ordained priests
in Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and the United States. Fletcher-Marsh
describes the establishment of the order of deaconesses and its eventual
inclusion in the diaconate (the first of the three ordained Anglican
orders); the path to ordination of the first women priests in Canada;
and the reasons for England’s failure to ordain women after the 1978
Lambeth Conference. Her evenhanded and well-written history is
particularly telling in its account of how decisions are made within the
church.