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The Ordination and Ministry of Li Tim Oi: A Historical Perspective on a Singular Event

Philip L. Wickeri

in Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story

The ordination to the priesthood of Florence Li Tim Oi (1907–1992) in 1944 was an extraordinary event. She became the first woman priest in the Anglican communion but from the very beginning her ... More

The ordination to the priesthood of Florence Li Tim Oi (1907–1992) in 1944 was an extraordinary event. She became the first woman priest in the Anglican communion but from the very beginning her ordination was full of controversy. This chapter is a detailed historical reconstruction of her ordination and related events, drawing on letters and other documents written by Li Tim Oi and others that have not been used before.The ordination of Li Tim Oi helped start the process leading up to the ordination of women in the Anglican Communion. Her license to the priesthood was withdrawn, but four decades later wasrestored. She has been rightly hailed as a forerunner in the movement for women’s ordination.Less

A Distinctive Chinese Contribution: The Ordination of the First Five Women Priests in Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui

Wai Ching Angela Wong

in Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story

Wong Wai Ching Angela takes a closer look at the groundbreaking ordinations of the first five Anglican women priests in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau, originally a part of the CHSKH. She ... More

Wong Wai Ching Angela takes a closer look at the groundbreaking ordinations of the first five Anglican women priests in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau, originally a part of the CHSKH. She examines the controversy surrounding the debate of women’s ordination in the province before and after the war, tracing the roles of Bishop R. O. Hall and Bishop Gilbert Baker. This chapter highlights the “Chinese factor” that specially made the four first ordinations of the Anglican Communion possible. Wong argues that this distinctive Chinese contribution to women’s ordination in Hong Kong took place at an ambivalent crossroads, where cultural transition and the transformation from an English to a Chinese church, endowed with a Chinese reformist spirit of the time, met. The Chinese church decided to take the right opportunity at the right place at the right time and so made a distinctive decision in the Anglican Communion.Less

The Study of Chinese Women and the Anglican Church in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Kwok Pui-lan

in Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story

This chapter presents a cross-cultural study of gender, religion, and culture, using the history of Chinese women and the Anglican Church in China as a case study. Instead of focusing on mission ... More

This chapter presents a cross-cultural study of gender, religion, and culture, using the history of Chinese women and the Anglican Church in China as a case study. Instead of focusing on mission history as previous studies usually have done, it treats the missionary movement as a part of the globalizing modernity, which affected both Western and Chinese societies. The attention shifts from missionaries to local women’s agencies, introducing figures such as Mrs. Zhang Heling, Huang Su’e, and female students in mission schools. It uses a wider comparative frame (beyond China and the West) to contrast women’s work by the Church Missionary Society in China, Iran, India, and Uganda. It also places the ordination for the first woman in the Anglican Communion—Rev. Li Tim Oi—in the development of postcolonial awareness of the church.Less

Deaconesses in the South China Missions of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), 1922–1951

Peter Cunich

Wai Ching Angela Wong and Patricia P. K. Chiu (eds)

in Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story

The ancient Christian order of deaconess, reintroduced into the northern European churches from the 1830s, had grown to include nearly 60,000 women around the world by the 1950s. The Church of ... More

The ancient Christian order of deaconess, reintroduced into the northern European churches from the 1830s, had grown to include nearly 60,000 women around the world by the 1950s. The Church of England set aside its first deaconess in 1862, but the potential benefits of deploying deaconesses in the southern China missions was not appreciated so quickly by the Church Missionary Society. The Fukien mission ordained the first six deaconesses for southern China in 1922, and another three were ordained in the Kwangsi-Hunan diocese in 1932, but these were all European women. Seven Chinese deaconesses were ultimately ordained in Fukien before 1942, but the only other mission field where the female diaconate rose to prominence was Hong Kong, where Florence Li Tim-oi’s ordination as a deaconess in 1941 led to her controversial ordination to the priesthood in 1944. This essay examines the slow growth of the deaconess movement in the CMS south China missions up to 1950 and evaluates the achievements of these women before the closure of China to Western missionaries. It also suggests some reasons why the widespread hopes that the female diaconate would provide an ‘enlarged sphere of service’ for women missionaries in south China ultimately proved elusive.Less