The first woman ordained to the Anglican priesthood practiced sacrificial ministry in a Chinese labor camp.
January 25 marked the 80th anniversary of the day that Florence Li Tim-Oi became the first woman ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion. Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London both marked the date with special services. Further commemoration will follow in February and May.
“Li Tim-Oi’s call to the priesthood and life of ministry can teach us three things,” the Rev. Dr. Paula Nesbitt preached at Grace Cathedral. “First, a divine call is to serve God’s purpose, not our own. Second, a call is personal, but not solitary — Bishop Hall of Hong Kong first had to be called so that Tim-Oi could answer her own call. Third, a call often involves suffering.”
The Rt. Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Suffragan Bishop of Dover, sounded a similar note at St. Martin-in-the-Fields: “The life of Li Tim-Oi teaches us what it means to say yes to God, despite what the world says.”
The service at St. Martin’s was led by the Rev. Frances Shoesmith, the granddaughter of Bishop Ronald Hall of Hong Kong, who ordained Li Tim-Oi in 1944. Shoesmith is team vicar at All Saints’, Wigan, in greater Manchester. The London service was organized by the Li Tim-Oi Foundation, a U.K.-based charity that provides grants for women across the Anglican Communion to pursue their vocations.
The woman now celebrated across the Anglican Communion began her ministry quietly.
Li Tim-Oi (her name meant “much beloved daughter”) was born in Hong Kong in 1907. While a schoolgirl, she joined the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (the Hong Kong Anglican Church). She took Florence as her baptismal name in honor of the revered English nurse Florence Nightingale.
While studying at Union Theological College in Canton, China, Tim-Oi attended the ordination of an English deaconess. She remembered that the celebrant said: “Here is an English woman answering the call to serve the church. Might there also be a Chinese woman who will do the same?”
Tim-Oi was ordained a deaconess on Ascension Day, 1941. Her first placement was in an Anglican parish in Macau, and many of her parishioners were war refugees from Hong Kong. Though unable to administer Communion, Tim-Oi led her parish in many other ways — performing baptisms, marriages, and funerals, offering spiritual counsel, and walking with her flock through perilous times.
Inspired by her work, Bishop Raymond Hall of Hong Kong sought to “make official what the Holy Spirit had already seen fit to call up.” In 1944, when priests were no longer able to make the journey to Japanese-occupied Macau to offer the Eucharist in her parish, Bishop Hall and Li Tim Oi met in unoccupied Free China under the cover of night. There, Bishop Hall ordained her to the priesthood.
After the war, amid debates about the validity of her ordination, Tim-Oi decided to set aside her priesthood until the wider Anglican Communion recognized women in the order. Still, she continued working in South China, establishing a new church, school, and maternity hospital. Not long after, communists in China forced her to stop even that work. She was sent to a forced labor camp after her books and Bible were publicly burned and her vestments were destroyed. For more than 30 years, Tim-Oi’s ministry was to her fellow prisoners.
In 1983, Tim-Oi was freed to visit Canada, where members of her family were living. In 1984, on the 40th anniversary of her ordination, she was reinstated to the priesthood by the Anglican Church of Canada. For the next eight years, she ministered to Chinese Anglicans in Toronto. She died on February 26, 1992.
Warren Wong, one of the principal organizers of the Evensong service in San Francisco, said he hoped this year’s events “will help build the foundation for future celebrations of Li Tim-Oi, her ministry, and the advent of women’s ordination across the Anglican Communion.”
“I looked for the gaps where the church might best bring awareness to the issues of our time,” he said. “After learning about the life and ministry of Li Tim-Oi, I thought, Here is a person the church should be commemorating. Not only does she inspire women in ministry, but also Asians, Asian Americans, refugees, and so many others.”
During General Convention in 2022, Wong and other deputies presented Resolution D079, which completed her commemoration and designated January 25 as a day of celebration across the church.
The Li Tim Oi Center will present an art show and panel discussion February 10 at Church of Our Saviour, a bicultural parish in San Gabriel, Calif. Former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will reflect on women in ministry during a panel discussion. The art show will feature works of Chinese visual artist He Qi that show women from Scripture.
A Holy Eucharist scheduled for the next day will begin with a Chinese lion dance. The service will honor both Li Tim-Oi and the Chinese Lunar New Year.
The Diocese of New York has scheduled a commemorative Holy Eucharist for 5 p.m. May 10 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Rev. Fran Toy, the first Asian American woman to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, will be the celebrant, and Bishop Diane Akiyama of Western Oregon will preach.
