Women’s Voices:

A day conference for women in ministry - clergy, lay ministers, ordinands, and women exploring ministry. Time to be stimulated, reflect together and network with women in ministry from both the Church of England and other denominations. This conference seeks to invite reflection on Biblical hermeneutics, feminist and womanist theological perspectives and homiletics. It aims to combine academic rigour with reflective practice.

This conference is grateful for the support of Hymns Ancient & Modern, and the Diocese of London.

Revd Dr Liz Shercliff  established the Women’s Voices conference in 2014. It began as an annual event in the Diocese of Chester, but has since taken place in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Bury St Edmunds and Manchester.

PROGRAMME

9.30am Arrivals and Registration with refreshments

Revd Lucy Winkett & Revd Sarah Lee  

10.00am The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE  

Opening Address and Prayers

10.30am Revd Dr Liz Shercliff 

 Hurting and Abandoned: Preaching and Interpreting the Women of the Bible

11.15am Coffee

11.45am Chine McDonald 

Unmaking Motherhood: Rethinking Race, Gender, and Divine Maternal Imagery 

12.30pm Lunch

1.30pm Dr Karen O’Donnell  Thicc Theologies Save Lives:

Exceeding the Limits of Idealised Women's Bodies in Christianity

2.15pm Revd Dr Mariama Ifode-Blease – Body Contortion?:

The Body in Institution and Ritualised Practice

3pm Tea  

3.30pm Revd Dr Ayla Lepine - Liturgy and Liberation:

Altarpieces by Women Artists (including time of prayer)

4.15pm Plenary: Revd Dr Liz Shercliff and Revd Lucy Winkett 

4.30pm Finish  

Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally – Bishop of London

Opening Address and Prayers

Bishop Sarah is the most senior bishop in the Church of England after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. She is Diocesan Bishop of London and Area Bishop for the Two Cities. Prior to ordination Bishop Sarah was a nurse, and from 1999 to 2004 was Chief Nursing Officer for England and the National Health Service’s Director of Patient Experience for England. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Bishop of Crediton in the Exeter Diocese. Bishop Sarah is Chair of Trustees of Christian Aid and a trustee and patron of several charities. Bishop Sarah seeks to shape her ministry around three key themes: Hospitality, Wellbeing and Hope.

Revd Dr Liz Shercliff  Hurting and Abandoned :

Preaching and Interpreting the Women of the Bible

Liz’s quest to rediscover the stories of Bible women began in Covid when her granddaughter asked her, “why are Bible women so weak?” It seemed that compliant, silent and meek women were icons of female faith, while strong women were denounced. In this talk we will examine afresh the stories of Bible women that resist traditional interpretations and offer powerful images of women’s faith.  

Liz is the author of several books about preaching and women in the Bible, including, Preaching Women: Gender, Power and the Pulpit (2019), Out of the Shadows: Preaching the Women of the Bible Volume 1 (2021) and Volume 2 (2024); The Present Preacher (2021). In 2021 she was nominated for the Women of Power: North West award. She currently teaches at the Luther King Centre, Manchester and is a visiting lecturer at Emmanuel Theological College, Nazarene Theological College, the College of Preachers and Derby Diocese.  

Chine McDonald  Unmaking Motherhood:

Rethinking Race, Gender, and Divine Maternal Imagery 

For two thousand years, the Virgin Mary has been depicted throughout art, literature and culture as symbolising the perfect mother: chaste, beautiful, meek, mild and white. These supposed virtues and symbols have penetrated not just Christianity but wider popular culture; and contributed to harmful views about motherhood and what it is to be a woman. In this part-memoir, part social and theological commentary, Chine McDonald deconstructs the myth of perfect motherhood and reconstructs a more authentic, grace-filled way forward for the most important job in the world.

Chine McDonald is a writer, broadcaster and director of the religion and society think tank, Theos. She is the author of God Is Not a White Man: And Other Revelations (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) and Unmaking Mary: Shattering the Myth of Perfect Motherhood (Hodder & Stoughton, March 2025). She is Canon Theologian at Chester Cathedral, vice-chair of Greenbelt Festival, and a trustee of Christian Aid. 

Dr Karen O’Donnell  Thicc Theologies Save Lives:

Exceeding the Limits of Idealised Women's Bodies in Christianity

The Christian tradition has long presented the ideal Christian woman as slender, serene, and fertile. This is not only a historical trope but also a contemporary reality. Drawing on autoethnographic reflections of my experience in conversative Christian circles, I articulate the problems being emotional, infertile, and fat caused in this context. I turn to the Shulammite woman in the Song of Songs as offering a model for a body-loving revolution that might enable the development of thicc theologies—theologies that delight in abundance and embodiedness and resist patriarchal and colonial dominations—that might just save (spiritual) lives.

Dr Karen O'Donnell is a theologian with particular interests in the ways in which bodies intersect with theologies. This has led to work in trauma and feminist theologies with an emphasis on women's bodies. Her most recent publications include a co-edited volume Pregnancy and Birth: Critical Theological Conceptions (SCM Press, 2024) and Survival: Radical Spiritual Practices for Trauma Survivors (SCM Press, 2024). Karen is Academic Dean at Westcott House, Cambridge and Associate Lecturer in Gender and Theology in the Divinity Faculty, Cambridge University, UK. 

Revd Dr Mariama Ifode-Blease Body Contortion?:

The Body in Institution and Ritualised Practice

Using the stories in Luke 8:41-end as a starting point, Mariama explores the relationship between institution and the physical body. How do our corporeal identities and experiences within institution speak to our understanding of God beyond it? In examining different aspects of institution, Mariama discusses how we can deepen our embodied experience of the divine as well as our understanding of ritual and ritualised practice.

Mariama is a priest, educator, and author. Her book Inequality and Flourishing: A Theology of Education (SCM Press, 2022) explored the challenges and potential of the state secondary education system and how it can better serve all students. She has been a contributor to the Canterbury Preacher’s Companion since 2023. Mariama is Associate Priest at James’s Piccadilly, where she also served her title, and combines this with working at the Football Association for the England’s Women’s Teams. She is committed to human flourishing and the empowerment of women and girls.

Revd Dr Ayla Lepine  Liturgy and Liberation:

Altarpieces by Women Artists

Winifred Knights’ 1920s Canterbury Cathedral altarpiece on the life of St Martin of Tours, and two 2024 altarpieces at St James’s Piccadilly by Nancy Willis and Florence Okoye, provide unique ways of exploring feminist visual theology in the context of the Eucharist. These works of sacred art made for small chapels within a cathedral and a parish church speak boldly into the heart of Christian social justice and women’s lived experience. A discussion of these altarpieces will conclude with a short service, in which art by women forms a contemplative liturgy of visual prayer.

Ayla is the Associate Rector at St James’s Piccadilly. She has a PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and has held academic posts focusing on theology and the visual arts at Yale and the National Gallery. She was ordained in 2018  and combines parish ministry with being a Visiting Scholar at Sarum College, and a Visiting Fellow at King’s College London. She is also a member of the Church of England’s Contested Heritage Committee. Her book, Women, Art, God, will be published with SCM Press in 2026.

Your Hosts:  We at St Pancras are delighted to welcome the conference to London for the first time, as part of our St Pancras Church Festival Weekend.    Revd Lucy Winkett & Revd Sarah Lee 

Revd Lucy Winkett is Rector of St James’s Piccadilly in London, and priest-in-charge of St Pancras Euston and a writer, broadcaster and musician. Formerly Canon Precentor of St Paul’s Cathedral, she was among the first generation of women ordained priest in the Church of England. A regular contributor to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, her latest publication is Reading the Bible with your Feet (Canterbury Press 2021).

Revd Sarah Lee is one of the priests at St Pancras Church, London. After a career teaching RE, parenting three children and doing much church volunteering in both cathedral and parish settings, Sarah felt the call to the priesthood. She trained in Bristol, completed curacy in Northampton and is delighted to be working with the team from both St James Piccadilly and St Pancras.

 How to find us: We are opposite Euston Station and only minutes walk from St Pancras and Kings Cross Stations.  We are well served by buses from central London which stop right outside the church, and by nearby tube stations at the mainline railway stations and at Russell Square. 

Church Address

St Pancras Church

Euston Road

London

NW1 2BA

​

Find us at the corner of:

Euston Road, A501

and

Upper Woburn Place, A4200

Please bring a keep cup with you for refills of tea/coffee throughout the day. 

Hymns Ancient and Modern are supporting the conference and providing a bookstall with specially discounted books for the day of the conference.  Cards preferred please.