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- SHEPHERDS
OR SHEEPDOGS?
- Women
pioneers in the Church in
Australia
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- The
first women's religious order in Australia was
founded by Archbishop Polding in 1857. Named the
Good Shephered (later the Good Samaritan)
Sisters, it was founded primarily to care for
Sydney's poor neglected women, many of them
ex-convicts.
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- The
first woman minister of religion in both
Australia and the British Commonwealth has been
said to be Martha Turner, who became the first
permanent lay minister of Melbourne's Unitarian
Church in 1873.
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- However,
it was the Rev'd Winifred Kiek who became
Australia's first woman ordained minister - in
the Congregational Church in Adelaide in 1927.
Although the Methodist Church first allowed
deaconesses in 1944, their first woman ministers
Margaret Sanders in Perth and Coralie Ling in
Melbourne were not to be ordained for another 25
years. Pam Bowers and Robin Haskell were the
Churches of Christ first women ministers when
ordained in Melbourne in 1973 although there had
been earlier women ordained for missionary
service. The first woman ordained for ministry
in the Presbyterian Church was Marlene ("Polly")
Thalheimer in 1974 while Marita Munro was the
Baptist Church's first woman minister when
ordained in Victoria in 1978.
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- The
first Australian woman Anglican priest was
Alison Cheek who was among the "Philadelphia
Eleven" ordained in the USA in 1974. In
Australia, the Movement for the Ordination of
Women (MOW) was founded in 1984 by Dr Patricia
Brennan and Colleen Stewart. In 1986,
Australia's first woman deacons were ordained in
Melbourne and the following year, the Rev'd
Marjorie McGregor was appointed Australia's
first female archdeacon.
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- The
first women in Australia were ordained into the
priesthood in Perth in 1992 followed by others
in other Australian dioceses culminating in the
first national conference for ordained women
"Astonishing Women" (1995).
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- In
the Anglican Church, women's right to vote for
members of Synod (church government) was first
achieved in Melbourne in 1913. In the following
decade the Perth diocese was the first in
Australia to allow women to become Synod
representatives. The Sydney diocese was the
first to allow women to serve on parish councils
in 1921, denied to Melbourne women until
1956.
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- In
1977 the Congregational, Methodist and
Presbyterian Churches amalgamated to form the
Uniting Church and became the first major
denomination to establish an affirmative action
policy for women, guaranteeing for six years a
significant percentage of places for women on
church councils and committees.
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- Some
first ordained women in the Church in
Australia...
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 - Courtesy
of Revd Winifred Kiek's daughter, Mrs Margaret
Knauerhase
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- WINIFRED
KIEK (1884-1975)
- Pictured
here at her daughter's graduation in 1934,
Australia's first female Christian minister was
ordained at the Congregational Union Church,
Colonel Light Gardens, Adelaide in
1927.
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 - Courtesy
of Revd Coralie Ling, Fitzroy Uniting
Church
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- CORALIE
LING (b1939)
- Victoria's
first and Australia's second woman Methodist minister, seen here
in the photograph on the order of service pamphlet at her ordination
at the Wesley church, Melbourne on 23 October 1969. Margaret Sanders
was ordained two weeks prior in Perth.
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 - Courtesy
of Anglican Media,
Melbourne
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- AUSTRALIA'S
FIRST WOMEN DEACONS
- Eight
women - Marjorie McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Alfred, Angela Carter,
Olive Dyson, Kay Goldsworthy, Carlie Hannah, Bessie Pereira and
Kate Prowd - were ordained on Sunday 9 February 1986 at St Paul's
Cathedral, Melbourne.
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 - Courtesy
of Perth Diocese
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- AUSTRALIA'S
FIRST WOMEN PRIESTS
- Ten
women - seen here on either side of the Rev'd Bob Milne, from
left to right - Elizabeth Couche, Kay Goldsworthy, Jenny Hall,
Judith Peterkin, Robin Tandy, Joyce Polson, Cathy Pinner, Tess
Milne, Pam Halbert and Betty Arney were ordained in Perth on Sunday
7 March 1992.
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- Some
first women in the Roman Catholic Church in
Australia...
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- MARY
MacKILLOP (BLESSED MARY OF THE CROSS)
(1842-1909)
- Destined
to become Australia's first saint, she was
beatified by Pope John Paul II in Sydney on 19
January 1995. In 1866 she co-founded with Father
Julian Tenison Woods the Sisters of St Joseph on
the Sacred Heart, one of Australia's earliest
religious orders and the first in South
Australia.
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- Some
first women in Church government in
Australia...
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 - Courtesy
of Irene Florence
Jeffreys
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- IRENE
JEFFREYS (b1913)
- South
Australia's first female Chartered Accountant was also the first
woman to become a member of the General Synod of the Church of
England of Australia in 1962. She was also the first Australian
woman to be appointed to the world-wide Anglican Consultative
Council in 1971 and the first woman licensed as a lay Preacher
in the Anglican Diocese of Adelaide in 1977.
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