79. Julia Perry - 11 September 2022

Twenty-forth Sunday of Ordinary Time - Luke 15: 1-32

Unfinished Business: It’s thirty years since Anglican women were first ordained as priests in Australia. Australian Women Preach celebrates this anniversary, while acknowledging there are still Anglican dioceses and other Christian denominations that limit or refuse to acknowledge women’s ordained ministry.

Rev. Julia Perry writes:

The first (and only time) I wagged school was to visit Deaconess house in Sydney to ask about ordination! I was 15, it was 1970, and ‘Scriptcha’ was my only experience of church and bible. I explained that I liked what I heard about God(the father), but didn’t warm to the sugary image of Jesus and hadn’t heard of the Holy Ghost. I’m still waiting for a return call from the Principal!

Via a science degree in zoology, and the generous hearts of people of faith and none, I came to know and experience the awesome hospitality, risk-taking love, respect and downright miraculous wholeness of God and world, the force of Jesus and reality of the Spirit. I was completely surprised by the hate and fundamentalism of some Christians which denied the use of our God-given brains and their disdain too for those who came to faith by being curious about the Creator, rather than millennia old stories.

I’ve been ordained 35 years now in the Anglican Church of Australia primarily in the Newcastle Diocese. That’s early enough that my first licence – before women could be Deacons, was as a ‘Licensed Lady’! Time as deacon-in-charge, Rector, Archdeacon and member of councils has undergirded my time as Chaplain to faith-based and secular agencies. Studying in San Francisco was a colourful urban buffet, a year in the Northern Territory was a red dirt feast mirage-far horizons.

I’m retired, which gives me increased scope to photograph, build nests for native bees and look outside institutions for our delightful God.