Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 38:1 (Winter 2024)
Article: From Exception To Norm? Women In Theology
Author: Ann Loades

PP 38:1 (Winter 2024) p. 4

From Exception To Norm? Women In Theology

Ann Loades

Ann Loades (1938–2022) was Professor Emerita of Divinity at Durham University, England, and Honorary Professor at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

This article was delivered as the St Andrews University School of Divinity 2022 Smith Lecture and was first published in the Scottish Episcopal Institute Journal 6/2 (2022) 5–20. It is reproduced here, lightly edited, with kind permission.

This essay arose from my contribution to the lecture series which commemorates the remarkable achievements of the Smith sisters, known in the course of time as Dr. Margaret Gibson and Dr. Agnes Lewis. My tactics in this essay are to offer a look, both retrospective and prospective, via a narrative with comments which may, I hope, stimulate some discussion. I am hoping that women in this day and age may continue to contribute to theology and religious studies, as they have for some considerable time both without and within an institutional base of some kind. In other words, in engaging with the past I am looking and hoping for stimulus for the present and the future. It is recognised, however, that there will be problems to face in engaging with theology and religious studies, since some of these relate to issues intrinsic to Christian tradition in much need of reform. Since this particular lecture series is the gift of the University of St Andrews, I relate my essay to connections there so far as possible.

The Smith Sisters As Independent Scholars

Since some readers may know little or nothing about the Smith sisters, I would urge those of you unfamiliar with their story to track down the book about them by Janet Martin Soskice, Sisters of Sinai (2009). She delivered the first Smith lecture. Her lecture-presentation on her book is available online as delivered in the Mullen Library of the Catholic University in Washington, DC. I will be returning to this book by Soskice at the conclusion of this essay, since she continues to be a redoubtable contributor to constructive discussion of theology and the new situation in which women have found themselves, as theology has developed in a variety of locations in the last century.

Let us recall a little about the twin Smith sisters, and by doing so alert ourselves to why and how it was that well into the twentieth century a few women were able to contribute to theology, following in the footsteps of those who had previously put their energies into social reform. To understand the situation in the era of the Smith twins it is, I think, helpful to remember that through the first part of the twentieth century, children in Britain left school to enter the world of work by the ages of eleven or twelve, and even by the middle of ...