We are pleased to announce that this year's Whitley lecture is returning to Cardiff next week.
The lecture "Wrestling with the Word - a woman reads Scripture" will be given by Anne Clements at SWBC on Wednesday 23rd March, beginning at 3pm. All are welcome to attend, and the lecture will end by 4.30pm.
This lecture grapples with the issues raised when a committed Christian woman comes to the biblical text and realises that not only are there the verses from Timothy to negotiate but far deeper hermeneutical problems. How does a woman who does not wish to reject the authority of Scripture but who increasingly becomes aware of the androcentric, male centred, nature of the text and the patriarchal character of many of its stories come to terms with the Word ? Not only the text itself but patriarchal interpretation of these texts has caused anguish for many women called in different ways into God’s work. The lecture traces one woman’s journey from a call to ministry that led to an intellectual engagement with issues of interpretation and the formulation of her own hermeneutical stance. Out of this came her revisionist work on the women in Matthew’s Gospel in the conviction that the Biblical text contains a self-critique of patriarchy. The gender issue is now a mainstream topic both within the academy, the church (the BUBG Council 2010 debated the issues surrounding women in ministry) and at popular cultural levels. It is increasingly important to be able to articulate and develop a hermeneutic that both recognises the Bible’s patriarchy for what it is, whilst at the same time hearing God’s Word speaking to us within the complexities of lives lived in the 21st century.
The Rev Anne Clements is minister of West Kingsdown Baptist Church, Kent. She has been happily married for thirty years and is the mother of three grown daughters. She originally trained as a teacher and she and her husband spent ten years teaching in mainland China (1986-1996). She was called to the ministry in 2002, trained at Spurgeon’s College and was ordained in 2006. Anne is currently completing her PhD on the women in Matthew’s Gospel.
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