Cluster Publications

The Calling

The Story of a Pioneering Woman Priest

by Nancy Charton

Edited by Dr W H Meyer

AVAILABLE FROM:  CLUSTER PUBLICATIONS

Tel:  033 345 9897  Email:  clustersales@essa.ac.za

ISBN:                         9781 875053 79 7

Price:                          R 99.00  or US$ 10.00

Format:                      210 x 148mm; 298pp

                                    Paperback

Interest:                      Biography

Rights:                        World

Publication Date:       2009

The issue of women’s ordination still occasionally makes the news. The controversy over women Bishops in the 2008 Church of England synod is a case in point. Within the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches the struggle continues despite growing evidence of the full ordination of women to the diaconate during the first four centuries of Christian history.

Yet it is in personal histories such as this one that the true nature of women’s struggle with the Church to claim their full humanity becomes apparent. This is also a quintessentially South African story of a woman struggling against the multi-layered obstacles put in her way; sexual abuse, class prejudice, cultural chauvinism patriarchy and Apartheid have all played their part in trying to keep Nancy Charton from achieving her destiny, but like a rock, the mbokodo of the slogan, she has been weathered but not broken and emerged fully into her calling as a Priest and Canon of the Anglican Church in South Africa.

This book charts Nancy’s life from the moment of the calling by God in the garden of a miner’s cottage on the Witwatersrand, through her painful growing years when she lost her faith, to her re-emergence into faith with a mission as a community activist, campaigner against forced removals, crusading academic and finally as a pioneering advocate of full ordination for women in the Anglican Church

Nancy Charton has been a pioneering South African woman in many fields from social activism to academia. She is a priest and canon of the Anglican Church of South Africa, one of the first women to be ordained as both a deacon and a priest.

Dr Wilhelm Henry (Billy) Meyer (BA [Rhodes] BTh, MTh, PhD [Natal]) is a senior lecturer and teacher of Academic Writing and Biblical Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

P.O. Box 2400, Pietermaritzburg 3200, South Africa             Tel: +27 (33) 345 9897                           Fax: +27 (33) 345 9894

E-mail: clustersales@essa.ac.za                               http://www.clusterpublications.co.za