A CONGREGATION gathered in St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London, on Thursday of last week, to commemorate the Eightieth anniversary of the ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi, the primary woman priest within the Anglican Communion.
She was ordained on 25 January 1944, in wartime, by the Bishop of Hong Kong, the Rt Revd Ronald Hall, having been born and grown up as an Anglican within the British colony. By then, it was, with southern China, under Japanese occupation, which meant that the people were being deprived of holy communion. In later life, her ordination was recognised, and she or he was awarded honorary doctorates of divinity before her death in Canada in 1992.
The Bishop of Dover, the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, in her sermon last week, described the courage that Li Tim-Oi showed throughout the occupation, but in addition within the face of opposition to her vocation.
At a reception, Bishop Hall’s son Canon Christopher Hall recalled the Church Times headline on its editorial objecting to his father’s motion — “A Bishop in Insurrection” — and the pressure that was placed on him to resign, which relented only when Li Tim-Oi opted to return her licence.
Canon Hall is the founding father of the Li Tim-Oi Foundation, which has helped greater than 700 women within the Anglican Communion to receive theological education.
“For a long time, women have needed to be the generous ones,” Bishop Hudson-Wilkin said in her sermon. The hierarchy of the Church “showed no respect for her: all they might consider was that they were right. . . The respectable leaders of the Church did not recognise the Lord at work.”
Bishop Hall’s granddaughter, the Revd Frances Shoesmith, who’s a Team Vicar of Wigan, presided on the service, attended by around 150 people — most of them women — whom Bishop Hudson-Wilkin urged to be faithful to their calling.
After the service, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, reflected on the experience of singing in unison with a mainly female congregation, and the position of ladies priests and bishops within the Church of England.
“Rightly, churches are mixed, with an amazing diversity, but there’s something about having the ability to hear the ladies’s voices which is at all times moving. I feel it’s because there are such a lot of voices, and a few of them have struggled to be heard over a few years, and to listen to them is only a joy.”
Bishop Mullally said that it was necessary to “have a good time the gift” of ladies’s ministry on this 12 months’s thirtieth anniversary of the ordination of ladies within the C of E, and to recognise the “difficult journey” that some had faced, while at the identical time valuing those that didn’t agree with the ordination of ladies.
“The settled position of the Church of England is that we accept that we have now the orders of priests, deacons, and bishops into which women are capable of be ordained, and seeing the flourishing of all,” she said.
Speaking to the Church Times on the reception after the service, nonetheless, Bishop Hudson-Wilkin said: “It was an error of judgement, and I feel history will prove it.” She reiterated her concern, made eventually summer’s meeting of the General Synod, that the C of E might attempt a comparable settlement in relation to blessings for same-sex couples (News, 14 July 2023).
Others on the reception, including the primary woman to be ordained priest within the Church of England, Prebendary Angela Berners-Wilson, then one in every of the Bristol cohort of ordinands, spoke of warm memories of encounters with Li Tim Oi. They also recalled stories of those helped by the muse in her name: priests, including the Revd Purity Munyiri, whose theological education helps to encourage teenage girls in the neighborhood to which she ministers (News, 12 January).
Li Tim-Oi’s cultural heritage was also celebrated throughout the service; the Lord’s Prayer was read in Cantonese by the Vicar of St Francis of Assisi, North Radford, in Coventry, the Revd Agnes Palairet.
One of the trustees of the Li Tim-Oi Foundation, the Revd Mark Nam, who formerly ministered in Hong Kong and, in 2021, founded the Teahouse network for Chinese-heritage clergy within the C of E (News, 20 August 2021), has launched a petition calling on the Church of England’s calendar to incorporate Li Tim-Oi. She is remembered with a minor feast within the Episcopal Church within the United States on 24 January, and a commemoration within the Anglican Church of Canada on 26 February.
