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The Twelve Theses

The Twelve Theses was a poster blu-tacked to the door of St Andrews Anglican cathedral, Sydney in 1983 by members of the Movement for the Ordination of Women on the eve of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia. The poster was modelled on Martin Luther's Ninety-five thesis and in its 12 statements called for reform of the male hierarchy in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and drew church and media attention to the issue of the ordination of women.

Background

In the 1970s and 80s the Anglican Church in Australia was moving slowly towards the ordination of women to the three orders of deacon, priest and bishop. In 1977 the Anglican Commission on Doctrine published a majority report confirming there were no theological problems concerning the ordination of women to the three-fold order of ministry and the 1977 General Synod resolved "the theological objections which have been raised do not constitute a barrier to the ordination of women to the priesthood or the consecration of women to the episcopate" although that Synod put off passing legislation to enable the ordination of women.^:147 Influential Sydney Anglicans at General Synod, in the Sydney diocese Synod and on the Doctrine Commission opposed the ordination of women, citing "male headship" theology as the created order whereby men were in authority over women who were to willingly submit to that authority in the church and home.^:136 Canon Broughton Knox of Sydney wrote a minority report to the Doctrine Commission which in part stated, “God’s Word makes clear that in creating humanity, God gave a headship to man which he did not give to woman".^:68-69.

After some resistance most other dioceses gradually began ordaining women to the diaconate (from 1986) and to the priesthood (from 1992). The Sydney diocese held its own Doctrine Commission and Synod debates and drew its line at ordaining women only as permanent deacons (from 1989). Men were in the majority on Synods and so were making decisions for women in ministry.^:135 There were male archbishops, bishops, deans, priests, theologians and laymen voting in the General and Sydney Synods who supported the ordination of women but the Sydney Synods were unable to gather the three-quarters majority to pass the required Canon to endorse the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate (as bishops).

In the 1970s women (with some male supporters) began organising protest groups to rally public and church backing for the ordination of women. Some smaller groups began to prepare women for ordination through theological study or talking with bishops about prospects for their ordination.^:135 Colleen O’Reilly had been involved in the Australian Council of Churches ecumenical Commission on the Status of Women. She co-founded an Anglican women's group with Zandra Wilson, Anglican Women Concerned, in Sydney in 1975. From 1977 Anglican Women Concerned demonstrated, sometimes silently, outside the General and Sydney Synods using placards and pamphlets to send their message that women should be ordained. Photos and articles about the protests appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald showing placards stating "Equal rites for women".

The 1981 General Synod was set to discuss the constitutional and legal questions on the ordination of women. Again Anglican Women Concerned protested outside St Andrew's cathedral, Sydney with placards.^:137 In 1982 and 1983 Patricia Brennan was in contact with Anglican Women Concerned. Brennan, as member of a Sydney committee on women in ministry had surveyed women in church ministry in Sydney and found much dissatisfaction.

In the 1980s in the secular press "most leading church news items have been on the passionate and vexed debate over the ordination of women".^:133

1983 was the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's birth. It was also the year the Movement for the Ordination of Women was founded in Sydney. It's main aim was to "move the Anglican Church of Australua to admit women to the ordained ministries of the church" (MOW Constitution, Aim 1) Monica Furlong, the moderator of the English MOW, visited MOW in Australia in 1984 saying "It seemed to me that it was the adamant, wounding kind of opposition within the Sydney diocese that got MOW started".^:148 Three women wanted to commemorate Luther and "imitate his prophetic action" by calling for reform of the male hierarchy in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. Posting the theses on the cathedral door was regarded as an "act of witness" by MOW as a way of drawing attention to the issue of the ordination of women during Synods in Sydney.

Legacy

In 1987 a special General Synod was called specifically to debate and resolve a Canon to allow women to be ordained as Anglican priests.

The poster was taken to the 1988 Lambeth conference and displayed by the unofficial MOW Australian women's delegation.^:146

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Background

Constitution of MOW

In 1977, prior to the General Synod, the Commission on Doctrine published its full report. The majority report confirmed that there were no insuperable theological problems concerning the ordination of women to the three-fold order of ministry. Again there was a minority report, this time under the signature of Canon Broughton Knox of Sydney. His statement claimed that “God’s Word makes clear that in creating humanity, God gave a headship to man which he did not give to woman, so that the report is fundamentally wrong in the basic assumption on which it proceeds, namely that in the relationship between men and women there is no difference between the sexes in their status towards each other.” Thus the main objections were raised by Evangelical rather than Anglo-Catholic theologians.

– known to many of us  ­at least by name – was actively involved in the Commission. But she yearned for something distinctively Anglican in composition and focus, so she with Zandra Wilson set up Anglican Women Concerned in Sydney in 1975. General Synod did debate women’s ordination in 1977, and Anglican Women Concerned organised a demonstration. This was probably the first public action by women in Australia against the Anglican Church’s practice of an exclusively male ordained ministry. General Synod in Sydney. Held placards calling for the ordination of women. Also Church Scene 1977. The 1977 Synod agreed that theological objections were not a sufficient barrier to women’s ordination. At its next meeting in 1981, General Synod debated the constitutional implications. Anglican Women Concerned organised another protest at the next General Synod in 1981.According to the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘… most of the reporters were … interviewing women supporters of women’s ordination at an impromptu press conference on the grass outside. Anglican Women Concerned certainly sparked media interest but it was always very small. Another group emerged in Sydney that started attracting members, locally and nationally. The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) was formed in 1983 in Sydney, with Patricia Brennan as its public face. Patricia had been involved in Anglican Women Concerned – she was a key figure in the protests and the press – but she wanted something more focused – ‘Anglican Women Concerned about what?’ she challenged. The name of the new group – the Movement for the Ordination of Women – left no one in any doubt about its objective. Despite the Anglican pedigrees and involvement, MOW’s approach was not conventional. Its activities and statements were challenging, and showed a keen sense of ritual and theatre. Its first protest involved attaching (with blue tak) twelve theses for the ordination of women to the door of St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney before the 1983 General Synod in the manner of Martin Luther’s 95 theses. )

blutacked We were celebrating the ending of the three year moratorium the re-opening of the women's ordination debate in the Sydney Synod after more than a decade (or century) of truggle, and demonstrating, symbolically, how women' voice have been excluded from the debate about themselves. And there we tood, pioneers, priests and protester , where 12 year earlier MOW had blutacked its 12 These and Call for Reformation on the Door of St Andrew Cathedral.

Reaction

Much could be said about the Debate between The Australian Church record and MOW. It must first be said that it was not a public one. No one in svdney has yet taken up that challenge. This was t~e closest, a private debat~ .behind clo~ed door~which was subsequently transposed to a written oneby The Church Record. SG in https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.35218478 "Moreover the Editor of A.C.R.worked extremely hard to enthuse his readers with his own opinions of it via strong and often mis-leading editorials....The major obstacle to women's ordination in Sydney, the doc-trine of headship was barely touched on.

Content

The poster was inaccurately reproduced in The Movement for the Ordination of Women newsletter, Balaam's Ass in 1995.

Legacy

DEACONESS CENTENARY

The Deaconess Institution in Sydney marked its centenary with a celebration of women's ministry at Darling Harbour on 8 June, attended by seventeen

hundred people. Speakers included Archbishop Donald Robinson, the Revs Dianne Nicolios and Maureen Cripps, and Narelle Gatenby. A foundation has been launched to support new initiatives in women's ministry; donations would be most welcome (contact: The Rev Maureen Cripps, co-ordinator of women's ministry, St Andrew's House,

Sydney Square, Sydney)Various organisations and religious communities each contributed two photographs to a display of women in ministry.MOW included in their section a photograph of Colleen O'Reilly,the Rev Julia Perry, and Dr Patricia Brennan attaching the MOW theses to the door of St Andrew's Cathedral several years ago. Recalling a previous historic event, the caption read "At their Wittenberg's end".

Patricia Brennan/Activist" Bulletin 12 July 1988 p132

Barbara Field "The Rite Time: Women and Ordination" Women-Church 5 Spring 1989 p.6

Kirsty Magarey " Discrimination and the church" Reform Winter 1991 No.62 p.10

Nerida Drake "Women beyond Ordination - the hidden journey" National Outlook July 1988 p.12

Dr Arthur Patrick "The Ordination of Women in Australia - an 'Enduring Problem' in Historical Perspective" Church Heritage Vol 5(4) Sept 1988

p.247,261

The Australian quote

(This document is now in the Museum of Australian Democracy, Canberra.

SMH 28 September 1983. MOW formed and held its opening dinner, inaugural meeting Crystal Ballroom, West Ryde, that night. A/g Dean St Andrews guest of honour, Rev Dr Stuart Barton Babbage.

Ordination of women newspapers

Kensington Tharunka

1 Sep 1986

27 Apr 1987

5 Sep 88

3 Mar 92

31 Mar 92

13 Oc 92

27 Oc 1992

7 Jul 93

29 Aug 95

07 Jul 1993

Page 11

3 Mar 1992

17 Mar 92

Victor Harbour Times

17 Nov 89

The Age 13 Oct 1987 Penman, Robinson, General Synod

The Age 3 Sep 1985 Penman and others.

Theses

“women protest outside cathedral”

The Sydney Morning Herald 5 Oct 1983 p5

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=j4ZWAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA3&dq=ordination+women+theses+cathedral+door&article_id=6921,2143144&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjX26fUt8CNAxW_h1YBHTxjAVQQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=ordination%20women%20theses%20cathedral%20door&f=false

Ruth Jones, Colleen Stewart, Julia Perry. Written on parchment.

ABC Religion and ethics 11 Mar 2011

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/remembering-patricia-brennan/10101626

The Movement for the Ordination of Women in Australia began when a group of women nailed their theses to the door of the Chapter House at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney, demanding the ordination of women in a diocese governed by leaders who believe profoundly in an all-male priesthood. Twenty-five years later, there were over 400 women priests, 200 Deacons and 2 Bishops in Australia, although no women Priests or Bishops in Sydney.

I began the conversation by suggesting to Patricia Brennan that this was quite a legacy.

Patricia Brennan: Yes, fortunately it's that of many, many people, and if I'd envisaged it that long, twenty-five years, before this was going to come about, I might have been more or less resonant that night.

“But it was a deep conviction that something was extraordinarily wrong, and that was what was put on the door of the cathedral, "A great wrong is being done in the name of God."

Equal rites for women 1977 demonstration. Colleen.  Bishops for and against. Headship theory.

The Sydney Morning Herald 19 Aug 1981

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-qhWAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA4&dq=ordination+women+theses+door+cathedral&article_id=6810,8030031&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwir7ef4lcGNAxURsFYBHYoTDnc4MhDoAXoECAwQAw#v=onepage&q=ordination%20women%20theses%20door%20cathedral&f=false

Theses taken to Lambeth, given to MOAD 2012

Ang women concerned protest 1981

https://mowatch.com.au/mow-in-sydney-40-years-of-activism/?highlight=theses

Names of CR and JP blutacked to door

https://mowatch.com.au/mow-in-sydney-40-years-of-activism/?highlight=theses

Request at library

Changing Women, Changing Church

Festschrift to Patricia Brennan

https://www.lectitopublishing.nl/download/feminist-complaint-collectives-and-doorway-disruptions-in-australian-christian-traditions-16013.pdf

pp4-5

FORMING COMPLAINT COLLECTIVES In the 1960s and 1970s, built on the successes of the second wave women’s movement, Christian complaint activism grew, and complaint collectives were formed. Christian women gathered in church-based, feminist movements and produced publications that generated understandings of feminist agendas in Christian traditions, Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, 9(1), 03 © 2025 by Author/s 5 / 13 including the ordination of women and the lack of inclusive language in the liturgy (Madigan, 2021; McPhillips, 2016). One prominent example is the Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW). Early leaders of the movement positioned themselves and their activism as feminist (Scarfe, 2007). In 1983, MOW engaged in what we might, retrospectively, term feminist doorway activism. Calling to mind Martin Luther’s alleged doorway protest, members of MOW gathered at St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney and glued their ‘protest against the Church (12 propositions for the ordination of women) to a door of the Cathedral’ (Scarfe, 2012: 122). MOW’s protest was penned by then theology student, Susanne Glover (Piggin and Linder, 2020). Glover named the complementarian principle of male headship as an errant theology which was being used to limit women (Piggin and Linder, 2020). In gluing Glover’s (theological and feminist) complaint against headship to the cathedral door, MOW brought public attention to the long-standing problem of sexism with the Anglican Church of Australia. In the words of Patricia Brennan (1996: 28), ‘The Movement flushed the debate out of the back room.’ However, the history of MOW begins before this complaint, indeed, while ‘a complaint might be the start of something … it is never the starting point’ (Ahmed, 2021:20). According to historian Stuart Piggin (2012), MOW Australia was formed in Sydney by Brennan after a collective complaint she had assembled was silenced, yet, that collective complaint continues to arise from gendered exclusion within the church. Prior to forming MOW, Brennan was part of the ‘Sydney diocesan committee on the question of women’s ordination’ (Piggin, 2012: 180). Piggin (2012) writes that to open conversation, Brennan had collected the written testimony of 19 women and presented it to a fellow committee member, Peter Jensen. Piggin (2012) does not elaborate on the content of these collected testimonies; he simply notes that Jensen ‘returned all of it to [Brennan] without comment’ (180). Over the course of the next 20 years, Jensen would become the Archbishop of Sydney. He would advocate that complementarian ministry was good, biblical, and rewarded by God. In his final address to the Sydney Synod, Peter Jensen (2012) declared: [O]ur complementarian position is Biblical and has never Prior to forming MOW, Brennan was part of the ‘Sydney diocesan committee on the question of women’s ordination’ (Piggin, 2012: 180). Piggin (2012) writes that to open conversation, Brennan had collected the written testimony of 19 women and presented it to a fellow committee member, Peter Jensen. Piggin (2012) does not elaborate on the content of these collected testimonies; he simply notes that Jensen ‘returned all of it to [Brennan] without comment’ (180). Over the course of the next 20 years, Jensen would become the Archbishop of Sydney. He would advocate that complementarian ministry was good, biblical, and rewarded by God. In his final address to the Sydney Synod, Peter Jensen (2012) declared: [O]ur complementarian position is Biblical and has never held us back ... I urge you to recognise that it is the clear teaching of scripture and remain loyal to it. God will bless such costly, counter-cultural obedience to his word, and he has done so already. (14) In contrast, Brennan (2007) would later write of herself as ‘counted among those MOW leaders who are not part of a local Anglican congregation’ (61). Engaging in complaint activism against the complementarian principle of male headship does not open doors to the centre of diocesan life. Assembling a collective complaint led Brennan to a more marginal space in the diocese, however, it also ‘gave birth to MOW’ (Piggin, 2012: 180). This should remind us that, ‘complaint activism can lead to forming new kinds of collectives’ (Ahmed, 2021: 285). As a complaint collective, MOW gathered many who would engage in complain activism. By 1985, MOW ‘had attracted over 800 members around the country’ (Scarfe, 2012: 120). In the story of MOW’s activism, a door had multiple and contradictory effects. By co-opting a physical Cathedral door MOW’s protest was loud, public, and unavoidable. The action amplified the collected arguments of many Christian women, as well as male clergy who supported women’s ordination. This protest eventually opened the door to women’s ordination in most of the Anglican Church of Australia. However, the door to ordination remains closed in the Sydney Anglican Diocese, and feminist women, like Brennan, and intentionally feminist women’s groups such as MOW continue to occupy a marginalised space in the Diocese.

https://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0098b.htm

Scarfe, J. (2014). Changed rules, changing culture? The ordination of women. St Mark’s Review, (228), 51–58. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.378724957428780

The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW), of which I wasa part, maintained that the issue was never simply about admitting womenas deacons, priests and bishops. Rather, women’s ordination was about theway the church regarded all women, its culture. The church excluded womenfrom its ordained ministry but also to all intents and practical purpose from53Changed rules, changing culture? 1e ordination of women.its language, lectionary readings and liturgy and from its decision-makingbodies. The exclusion and invisibility of women, and most especially justi-fications and defence of the indignity, were hurtful and offensive.

https://search.informit.org/doi/epdf/10.3316/ielapa.378724957428780

Diesendorf, Eileen. "Ordination of Women: A thorn in the side of the Anglican Church in Australia." Social Alternatives 7.3 (1988).

Doctrine Commission report on the matter. In 1973 that Commission reported unanimously that the theological objections to the ordination of women did not constitute a barrier to such ordinations. This opinion was strongly endorsed by the General Synod's (Federal Church Parliament) decision of 1977 which agreed with the report...In 1983, Dr Patricia Brennan convened a meeting in Sydney which adopted the name Movement for Ordination of Women (MOW) taken from the corresponding English movement. Ordination, a single understandable target, was made the focus even though there were and are much broader issues involving Church structure, hierarchy and patriarchy which the group is challenging. A National Network of MOW was formed at the end of 1984 when women from state groups met and agreed that a national, concerted initiative was needed. Since then, MOWs prime objective has been "To move the Anglican Church of Australia to admit women to the ordained ministries of the Church", and to support such women...As MOW had no voice within the church, one effective way to get its case heard nationally was via the media. Actions which were both consistent with MOW aims as well as media attractive were chosen or taken up: — for example, 'nailing' (with Blu-tac) a 'reformation' document to the door of St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney at the opening of Synod; the invitation to Patricia Brennan to debate the issue on ABC's 'Pressure Point'; and sendingout controversial media releases. The issue of women's exclusion from full participation in the church became eminently newsworthy. A systematic strategy was adopted of exposing the Anglican Church's decisions to the scrutiny of the public via the media.

Women challenging the Anglican church, Eileen Baldry in Actions speak: Strategies and lessons from Australian social and community action 1991