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Obituary: The Revd Elizabeth Mary Tyndall

by
09 June 2017

From Nonconformist to C of E Priest: the Revd Elizabeth Tyndall

From Nonconformist to C of E Priest: the Revd Elizabeth Tyndall

A correspondent writes:

ELIZABETH TYNDALL, who died on 13 April, aged 86, was born in Bristol, into a staunchly Noncon­formist family. Her maternal grand­father was the Orcadian theologian John Oman, and her father, Frank Ballard, was a Congregational minister, who had been Moderator of the National Free Church Federal Council. She was the youngest of six children of Frank and Isabel.

Elizabeth attended St Paul’s Girls’ School, in London, and studied French at St Andrews University, grad­­u­­ating in 1951. At Homerton College, Cambridge, while training as a teacher, she met Nicholas Tyn­dall. Although they had both been brought up in Christian homes, their backgrounds could not have been more different.

It is hard for us today to under­stand the tension involved in the marriage of a High Church An­­glican to a woman from the Manse. The question where the wedding should take place was solved by com­promise, and, on 29 December 1953, they were married in the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge, where Nick had been an under­graduate. Elizabeth taught in a vari­ety of schools and prisons, and be­­came mother to four children.

Her ministry started in her fifties while living in Rugby. She spoke to her brother-in-law Tim Tyndall (a senior selection secretary of ACCM) about helping in her church’s office. With his encour­agement, she was admitted to the office of deaconess in 1983. How­ever much her min­istry was ap­­preciated, people found the post of deaconess very con­fusing: the family of Vera Purchon, whose funeral she had taken, took out an advert in the local paper to thank the doctors and nurses of the local hospital and “those who had taken the lovely ser­vice, the Rev D Smith and D Keness Tingle”.

Elizabeth embraced the Move­ment for the Ordination of Women and gently worked to bring about the change that would enable wo­­men to be ordained. Not only was this not universally popular, but it also demonstrated a complete volte-face from her Protestant upbringing. If studying on the course at Queen’s College, Birmingham, was a for­mat­ive experience for her, being a par­ticipant and leader of Julian meetings shaped her theology and prayer life. Mother Julian of Norwich was a quiet contemplative, and this spoke to her heart and soul.

On Julian’s Day, 8 May 1987, in Coventry Cathedral, where for some years she and others had stood in silent witness at the font during ordinations, Elizabeth was one of the first group of women to be ordained deacon.

She held a stipendiary post at St Dunstan’s, Feltham, for four years. Despite opposition, she con­tinued to follow her calling to the priest­hood. She re­­ceived affirma­­tion from the Revd Alan Cold­wells, who asked her to help with in-service clergy train­ing courses at St George’s House, Wind­sor.

On 16 April 1994, Elizabeth was priested in St Mary’s Abingdon. Three months later, in July, she assisted in the ordination to the priest­hood of her own child, Daniel: quite probably a first.

As Elizabeth and her husband moved into official retirement, she worked as an NSM from 1994 until 2002 at All Saints’, Faringdon, Ox­­fordshire, where her ministry was appreciated in the church, local com­­munity, and deanery. It was here that she presided at the eu­­charist for the first time. The service, after all the debate and struggle, was characterised by its sense of “right­ness”, and was greeted by a huge round of applause.

It was not just the idea of being equal with men that made Elizabeth rejoice in the ordination of women, but the conviction that women also had a vital part to play in God’s ministry.

Elizabeth outlived her husband, Nick, by more than a decade, and her funeral was held on the same day of the week, on the same date of the same month, at the same time and in the same church as his 11 years later. She is survived by her brother, John, four children, Simon, Sally, Rebecca, and Daniel, eight grandchildren, and two great grand­children.

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