Women's Community Completes Week of Witness
Episcopal News Service. July 28, 1988 [88168]
CANTERBURY, England (DPS, July 28) -- Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning was one of many U.S. bishops who visited the Women's Witnessing Community at the Dominican Priory here during the first week of the Lambeth Conference. The priory is located about a mile and a half from the conference site.
Browning and his wife, Patti, attended a Bible study session on women's stories in Scripture, one of the daily activities offered to Conference participants by the multinational community of women.
"Our primary purpose in being here is to highlight the gifts and concerns of women from throughout the world," said Sally Bucklee, co-chair of the Episcopal Women's Caucus committee that organized the witness. The Rev. Fran Toy was the other co-chair.
The week-long series of programs at the priory reflected this intent. On the first night, women from Uganda and Kenya presented stories and songs that left the crowded room of participants "inspired and moved," as the Rev. Tanya Beck from the Diocese of Indianapolis put it. A role-play depicting a true situation in a barrio of Brazil was enacted in the Tuesday program by Simea Meldrum, a postulant from the Province of Brazil, and the Rev. Nilda Lucca-DeAnaya from Puerto Rico, whose talks described the similarities women face in situations of poverty everywhere. "We simply have to find ways as a Church," Meldrum said, "to put bread in the mouths of our children...and in so doing, to win friends for Jesus."
The evening programs concluded on Thursday with a visit from the Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, ordained priest 44 years ago in China and the first ordained woman in the Anglican Communion. Quietly recounting the circumstances of her ordination while working with refugees during World War II, Li's words brought a stillness over the crowded priory room. The evening concluded with a worship service, led by Li and others, which included the renewal of baptismal and ordination vows.
With the evening presentations and Bible studies, the priory's week-long program featured a daily prayer vigil, attendance at the noonday service at the nearby cathedral, and special liturgies coordinated by the Rev. Vienna Cobb Anderson, rector of St. Margaret's, Washington, D.C.. Dozens of bishops, bishops' wives, lay and clergy women and men had tea, coffee, fruit and sweets at the priory, and stayed for informal conversations in a low-key setting.
On the conference's "London Day" July 26, members of the Women's Witnessing Community joined supporters of the English and Australian Movement for the Ordination of Women for song and prayer outside St. Paul's Cathedral after the huge Lambeth service. They spent the afternoon at a nearby church where speakers recommitted themselves to working for the opening of Holy Orders to women in all provinces of the Church.