Book Description

This book charts the aspirations of women towards priesthood and the resistance that they have encountered. It brings together a record of official documents and debates on the issue that takes place over the last two hundred years in the English Methodist Church, the Church of England, and the Roman Catholic Church. These debates are interpreted at a number of levels, and the author draws on sociology, history, biblical studies, theology, and psychoanalysis in the course of her presentation. In the author's view it is the patriarchalisation of ecclesiastical structures, and the subsequent theological and christological justification given over to this, which emerges as a recurring pattern in the debate. Dr Field-Bibb offers a feminist analysis of such resistance to the ordination of women, in an attempt to break down what she sees as the false consciousness engendered by the propagation of subversive symbols.