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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
The controversy over the ordination of women as priests in the Church of the Province of Uganda has been going on for a long time. Today, there are a few women priests in a good number of dioceses in the Church of the Province of Uganda. But this revolution against the conservative order of male domination has not come without a price. Women who feel called by God to the ministry in the Church of the Province of Uganda are usually discriminated against even when they eventually become ordained. One wonders whether women are called by God but ordained by men. This article looks at the work and ministry of one of those women who opened the door to the ordination of women in the Church of the Province of Uganda. In her response to the challenges of the time, Njangali not only refused the old definitions of women’s involvement in church ministry but also guided the whole church to rethink and renew its leadership policy.
Christopher Byaruhanga is Professor of Historical Theology at Uganda Christian University.
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10. For a detailed record of the thirty students see, ‘Records of Students of 1942’, Uganda Christian University Archives.
11. A copy of Njangali’s Lay Reader’s License is in File LR 1/1944, Bunyoro-Kitara Diocesan Office.
12. One of the emphases of the East African revival movement is the equality of men and women before God in the revival fellowship meetings but not in formal church leadership. For more information on this point see, Osborn, H.H., Pioneers in the East African Revival (Winchester, UK: Apologia Publications, 2000), p. 266Google Scholar.
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17. As women were not allowed to be ordained as deacons even at the outcome of the ordination course, they were called ‘church commissioned workers’.
18. Njangali’s feminist theology is found in her notebook entitled ‘Itwena tuli omukisiisani kwa Ruhanga’ (We are all made in the image of God). This notebook which has no date is with Amooti Katebalirwe, one of Njangali’s relatives whom the author interviewed on December 10, 2006.
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21. Gal. 3.28 says, ‘There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus’.
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24. In 1971, the Synod of Hong Kong and Macao became the first Anglican Province to officially permit the ordination of women to the priesthood. In 1976, the Episcopal Church became the second province within the Anglican Communion to adopt canonical changes, formally allowing the ordination of women. The Anglican Church of Canada followed the Episcopal Church and ordained its first women on November 30, 1976 and New Zealand in 1977.
25. For the background information on Barbara Harris’s election to episcopate see, Darling, Pamela W., New Wine: The Story of Women Transforming Leadership and Power in the Episcopal Church (Cambridge: Cowley Publications, 1994)Google Scholar.
26. Wilson Turumanya, former Diocesan Secretary and Bishop of Bunyoro-Kitara, interviewed by the author, August 1, 2008.
27. For a detailed background on this point see, ‘Orubazo rw’Omurolerezi wa Bunyoro-Kitara’ (The Bishop’s Charge) in File BGC/1/197, Bunyoro-Kitara Diocesan Office 4.
28. The issues this paragraph highlights are not just for Uganda, but for other places in the Anglican Communion as well.
29. The first three women to be ordained priests are the Revd Canon Monica Sebidega, the Revd Canon Deborah Micungwa Rukara and the Revd Margaret Kizanye Byekwaso.
