WOMAN PREACHER

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21185, 4 November 1938, Page 12

WOMAN PREACHER

‘ CITY TEMPLE PULPIT The City Temple, famous Nonconformist centre of London, is to have a woman preacher. Miss Dorothy F. Wilson, B. Litt., daughter of Sir Courthope Wilson, K.C., vice-chancellor of the County Palatine, of Lancaster, has been appointed as pulpit associate for a year to the Rev. Leslie D. Weatherhead. Miss Wilson will begin her duties on October 2, and will, at intervals, preach in place of Mr Weatherhead, who is still *in need of rest consequent on a , breakdown in health in February. Miss Wilson was at one time Sunday school organiser for the Presbyterian Church of England. She was trained for the Ministry at Mansfield College, Oxford, one of the few theological colleges open to men and women on equal terms. In January, 1928, she was appointed assistant pastor of Carr’s Lane Church, Birmingham. The following year she was appointed Congregational minister at Hest Bank, Lancaster. In 1931 she went to California, and in 1936 went on a preaching tour of Australia, New Zealand and Honolulu.

For a time, Miss Wilson was chaplain and lecturer on religion at Mill’s College, California. Speaking at Brighton of psychoanalysis in the Church, Miss Wilson said she did not consider that she herself was fitted for this branch of work. “I think there is a great future for properly-qualified psycho-analysts in the Church,” she added. “The trouble lies in the superficial practitioners who are with many churches. Ido not think, however, that psycho-analysis will ever supersede human kindness and common sense.” It is stated that for the past ten years Miss Wilson has suffered considerably from arthritis of the spine, and she left a sick bed to preach at Brighton’s leading Nonconformist church—Union Church, in Queen’s Square.