161. Tanya Wittwer - 7 April 2024

Australian Women Preach

Second Sunday of Easter - Divine Mercy Sunday - John 20:19-31 Tanya Wittwer lives on the lands of the Peramangk people with her songwriter husband, Leigh Newton, two alpacas and four chickens. Their elastic-sided family live within semi-regular Sunday-night-family-meal distance.

Sixty-three years ago Tanya perceived herself as being called to pastoral leadership in her church. When she was twelve she discovered ordination was not possible in the Lutheran Church of Australia and New Zealand. Her subsequent dream of being a ballerina was probably delusional, and God has continued to keep her early calling alive. So she has the broad and shallow working life of one who cannot enter her vocation, having had coordination and management roles in community service, domestic violence prevention, nature conservation, chaplaincy and public health, and academic roles in counselling, community health and theology. Most recently she was holding administrative roles and teaching preaching, pastoral care, and research topics at the Adelaide College of Divinity.

After degrees in arts, education and religious education, Tanya completed a Master of Divinity at Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and a PhD in homiletics through Flinders Uni.

She has been working with many others towards the ordination of women in the LCANZ church for the past forty or so years, and this effort has intensified in recent years. In late 2022 she edited “unless they are sent”, a collection of writings from the past forty-five years, affirming the ordination of women.