Almost Evangelical Personal Development

Anne Dyer
unpublished
Anne Dyer looks at the difficulties in being an ordained evangelical woman within the church today. She considers choices about visibility and what one wears, motherhood and ministry, theological formation, and finally the possibilities and challenges for the evangelical constituency were it able to be truly hospitable to women's ministry and leadership. This article is a short reflection on being female and ordained and evangelical in the Church of England. Throughout 2003 evangelical identity
more » ... has been much discussed. When I have wondered out loud about my identity and how evangelical I am, some colleagues have been quick to comment that they never think of me as evangelical. Why is this? Should I be concerned? I realise that what follows is personal and anecdotal. This article is a reflection on my experiences, and in some small degree those shared with me by ordained women friends, who rarely use 'evangelical' to describe their identity but whose spiritual formation took place in evangelical contexts and who trained for ordained ministry in evangelical colleges. Female, ordained and evangelical-I hope that it is possible to be all three, yet quite often I seem to manage two but be on the edge of the evangelical constituency. There are a number of reasons for this relating to my person, the way I take up ministerial roles, and the process and content of my theology. None of these are gender specific, and yet their number taken together seem to place me on the edge of things.
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