InterviewBlog | NT Wright Why I changed my mind about female church leadership
NT Wright Why I changed my mind about female church leadership
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 10.12.19
New Testament scholar and former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright is one of the most influential voices in biblical studies today. He sat down with Justin Brierley to explain why he changed his mind about the ordination of women and how he interprets passages in Scripture that are often used to oppose female church leadership.
A few decades ago, the Church of England began to ordain women. It’s only more recently that women have been ordained as bishops. As an Anglican, how has your own thinking changed on the issues over the years? I grew up in a church where clergy were male and the most that a woman could do was to be a deaconess, which was like a deacon but probably not actually presiding at services (except occasionally at rural churches when there wasn’t a vicar around). One of my aunts was actually an Anglican nun, very active in the church and a deeply prayerful person of great personal spiritual leadership. People used to go to her for counsel. So I had been used to women taking quite an interesting role rather than just [being] passive – but not being ordained.
I started thinking about it more seriously when we were in Canada in the early 80s as I was in Montreal and they had just decided they were going to ordain women. That was quite a challenge for me, and forced m
