The following has been adapted from a series of speaker’s notes I’ve put together and delivered in various forms.  It is not meant to be any form of expert view or academic piece, merely a collection of thoughts from my own experience which some have apparently found helpful. 

Ordsall, in the late 1960’s during slum clearance (Manchester Evening News)

I’m a parish priest in the Anglican Church and I’m going to dive straight in with a story showing why, I believe, class is such an issue for us in terms of Church of England culture.

A couple of years ago I was in a women’s regional church leadership meeting.  One of the female clergy there relayed the true account of a phone call she had recently received from a young woman who’d called her to ask if she could discuss a strong call to ordination she was feeling.   When she…