Jean Gledhill is a member of the

Uniting Church in Australia The Uniting Church in Australia (UCA) is a united church in Australia. The church was founded on 22 June 1977 when most Wiktionary:congregation, congregations of the Methodist Church of Australasia, about two-thirds of the Presbyterian Church o ...

and a former member of the

Commission on the Status of Women The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW or UNCSW) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), one of the United Nations System#Six principal organs, principal organs of the United Nations. CSW has bee ...

of the Australian Council of Churches. She was associated with two publications that contributed to the development of religious feminism in Australia. These were the Christian feminist magazine '' Magdalene'' and '' Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion''.

Career

Gledhill is a member of the

and was a member of the

of the Australian Council of Churches. She convened the commission's task group on Domestic Violence and the Church. During the late 1980s she was a part time faculty member at the United Theological College in

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, a theological college for the training and education of ministers for the Uniting Church. In 1987 she was appointed as the Co-ordinator of a team of people to introduce a new programme of pastoral studies at the college over a three-year period. Gledhill was made a Companion of the college in 2003. Gledhill spoke at the launch of '' Women-Church: an Australian journal of feminist studies in religion'', which was distributed internationally and published between 1987 and 2007 by the Women-Church Collective. The journal was launched at the first

Women and the Australian Church Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) is an Australian ecumenical religious organisation that was founded in 1984. It was originally a Catholic initiative, being a national project of Australian religious men and women. It is now an ecumenic ...

(WATAC) National Conference that was held in Sydney in August 1987. Gledhill's speech at this event placed the launch of the journal in the context of Australian religious feminism. She spoke about an earlier publication with which she had been associated. '' Magdalene'', an Australian Christian feminist magazine, had been published from 1973 to 1987 and Gledhill was a member of the collective that produced the magazine. Gledhill noted that Magdalene "started as a vehicle for women to tell their own stories – stories growing out of the oppression which they had experienced in the church, in domestic life, in their work and in society at large." Gledhill's speech was published in its entirety in the second issue of ''Women-Church''. In 1990 a conference was held in Melbourne to consider whether gender equality was a reality in the Uniting Church in Australia. The published proceedings included brief biographies of significant women in the church. Gledhill contributed a biography about Lilian Wells, the first moderator of the New South Wales Synod of the

Select publications

* Gledhill, Jean. "Launching Women-Church." ''Women-Church: An Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion'', no. 2 (Autumn 1988): 6
Digitised version of no. 2 (1988) available on JSTOR Open Community CollectionsUniversity of Divinity Digital Collections
 

Mannix Library Mannix Library is an academic theological library located in East Melbourne, Australia. The library specialises in the areas of theology, philosophy, biblical studies and associated disciplines, and supports teaching and research at Catholic Th ...

. * Gledhill, Jean. “Women Ministering in the Uniting Church: A Personal Reflection.” ''Women-Church: An Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion'', no. 40 (2007): 25–27. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.20070948
Digitised version of no. 40 (2007) available on JSTOR Open Community CollectionsUniversity of Divinity Digital Collections
 

. * Gledhill, Jean, ‘Lilian Wells’, In Elizabeth Wood Ellem, ed., The Church Made Whole: National Conference on Women in the Uniting Church in Australia (Melbourne: David Lovell Publishing, 1990) pp. 271–2. 9781863550062

References

External links

Women-Church Complete Archive on JSTOR Open Community CollectionsUniversity of Divinity Digital Collections

Magdalene on JSTOR Open Community CollectionsUniversity of Divinity Digital Collections

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gledhill, Jean Australian feminist writers Australian Christian theologians Australian women writers Uniting Church in Australia people Living people Year of birth missing (living people)