Remembering Rev Venice Guntley-McKenzie

THE EDITOR, Madam:

The death of Rev Venice Guntley-McKenzie closes a chapter in the history of women, the Anglican Church and Christian ministry.

Guntley-McKenzie was a pioneer before the word became fashionable. She was the first woman to study at St Peter’s College, from 1962 to 1964, before Jean Forbes joined her. At a time when women in theological training were regarded with suspicion, Venice persevered, understanding that a calling from God could not be confined by the expectations of her generation.

In 1968, she and Jean Forbes were ordained deaconesses and served as missionaries in Central Africa. In 1977, she was conditionally ordained deacon, and, in 1984, was ordained priest in Canada by Bishop Lewis Samuel Garnsworthy, after study at the Anglican Women’s Theological College.

Her journey held obstacles. She recalled working harder than men for the same recognition; even completing her studies required special permission, and she was not initially assigned a parish. Yet, she continued and broke another barrier, becoming the first black woman and first Anglican woman commissioned as an Air Force chaplain in Canada.

I recall Christmas 1998 when, at St Augustine’s Church Mountainside, with the approval of Fr Tulloch, I helped organise the first Midnight Mass of the Nativity held in the Cure, a historic service at which Rev Venice Guntley became the first female priest to celebrate in the Cure.

Her life reminds us that women’s history in the Jamaican Anglican Church cannot begin with their ordination to the priesthood in the 1990s. The first Jamaican woman ordained priest was the Rev Winnie McKenzie Hoilette Bolle, in Florida in 1982. Women like Venice had already shown that the question was never whether women could minister, but whether the Church was prepared to recognise a ministry already exercised.

Theirs is a story of women who were the spine of the Church long before they became its pages.

Let us remember her courage, her perseverance, and the doors she opened for others. Venice Guntley-McKenzie refused to accept that the door was closed. May her pioneering spirit challenge the Church to recognise the gifts and leadership of women, not as accommodation, but as essential to the Body of Christ.

By faith, Guntley-McKenzie worked in Zambia. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

DUDLEY MCLEAN II

dm15094@gmail.com