Joyce Bennett (priest)

Joyce Mary Bennett OBE (Chinese: 班佐時; 22 April 1923 – 11 July 2015) was the first Englishwoman to be ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion in 1971.^[1][2]

Biography

Bennett was born in London.^[1] She was educated at Burlington school, Westminster, which was evacuated during the Second World War, to Milham Ford School in Oxford. She then took a degree in history and a diploma in education at Westfield College.^[1][2]

In 1949 she went to Hong Kong for the Church Mission Society to work at St. Stephen's Girls' College, and was eventually ordained a deacon in 1962.^[1]

Bishop Gilbert Baker petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, for permission to ordain women. Hong Kong had already ordained a woman priest, Florence Li Tim-Oi, during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War.^[1] Along with Jane Hwang, Bennett was ordained a priest in December 1971.^[1]

She was the founding principal of St Catharine's School for Girls, Kwun Tong.^[1]

Bennett served as an Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 1976 to 1983.^[3]

She was made an OBE in the 1979 New Year Honours,^[4] and in 1984 received an honorary doctorate from Hong Kong University.^[2][5] In 1994 she was made an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary University of London.^[6][7]

Works

• Bennett, Joyce Mary (1991). Hasten Slowly: The First Legal Ordination of Women Priests. London: Little London Associates. ISBN 978-1-872178-01-1.
• Bennett, Joyce Mary (2003). This God Business. Hong Kong: Religious Education Resource Centre.

See also

• Ordination of women in the Anglican Communion