Rev Dr Mary Levison

Mary Levison, who has died aged 88, was responsible more than any other for persuading the Church of Scotland that women should be ordained to the ministry.

It is difficult now to imagine what struggle there was to achieve a goal which has unquestionably changed the Church of Scotland for the better.

The year after he was moderator for the celebrations to mark the reformation, Professor JKS Burleigh said of the ordination of women: “It’s coming. But not in my lifetime, I hope. It won’t be in this century, anyway.”

Prof Burleigh was a better historian than he was a prophet. The fact that he was proved wrong is due to Dr Levison. As Margaret Forrester, who befitted from what Dr Levison was to call her wrestling with the church, has written: “It is difficult to overestimate the debt that all women ministers owe to her.”

In 1963, Mary Lusk (as she then was) had been a deaconess for nine years and assistant chaplain at the University of Edinburgh for two years. She petitioned the General Assembly to be allowed to be ordained.

A packed General Assembly, which ought to have been at the Holyrood Garden Party, spent the whole of a Saturday afternoon debating the petition.

One of the galleries was filled with students and supporters. Occasionally they boisterously cheered those who spoke in favour of the petition, and twice the Moderator, Professor James S Stewart, had to threaten to have the gallery cleared.

One of those in the gallery then recalled that “while some of the arguments against granting the crave of the petition had an attempt at theology, some bordered on the insulting. Clearly there were those who feared the Church would change forever”.

The extraordinary thing is that she was far better qualified and intellectually far superior to the vast majority of the then ministry of the church.

She was born in Oxford, where her father was the Church of Scotland chaplain. She went to St Leonard’s School in St Andrews and then to Oxford University, graduating with first class honours in philosophy, politics and economics. She then studied divinity at New College in Edinburgh, and did post-graduate study at Heidelberg and Basle.

She represented the Church of Scotland at the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, US, and returned, determined to ensure that the Church of Scotland would recognise deaconesses as deaconsd as equal with ministers and elders in the courts of the church.

In 1954 she became deaconess at St Michael’s Musselburgh, and later was given the job of training deacons and deaconesses and lay workers at St Colm’s College in Edinburgh. In the early 1960s she became assistant chaplain of Edinburgh University.

In 1965 she became Mary Levison, when she married Fred, who was then minister of St Bernard’s Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter he moved to the Borders, and although she continued to be heavily involved in the councils of the church, she was first and foremost the minister’s wife.

She was devoted to Fred, and when he retired in 1977 they moved to Edinburgh, and he encouraged her to pursue a ministry of her own.

She was ordained as Assistant at St Andrew’s and St George’s, with special responsibility for the outreach to the retain trade and offices of the parish which had been pioneered by the minister, Andrew Wylie. An office worker told Mr Wyllie’s successor, Dr Andrew McLellan, “Mrs Levison always told you what she thought, but she was always interested in what I thought. I wasn’t used to that in ministers.”

She retired in 1983, but retirement was far from idle. She served on the Assembly Council, and tried to make the church prioritise its work.

She was proposed as Moderator of the General Assembly for 1993 but to the regret of many she failed to secure the nomination. The Presbytery of Edinburgh however did elect her as Moderator.

In 1991 she became the first woman to appointed a Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland, appropriately on the recommendation of the Dean of the Chapel Royal, Profesor Robin Barbour, who had seconded the move in 1967 which resulted on the ordination of women to the ministry. In 1994, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity by the University of Edinburgh. Her husband Fred died in 1999.

Her autobiography, Wrestling with the Church, was published in 1992. In it she explains that although “wrestling there has been, but that is surely a different thing from fighting and campaigning”.

She was forthright, clear in what she believed was good and what she saw as bad in the Church of Scotland. But she never wavered in her loyalty to it. It is not only the women who became ministers who owe her an enormous amount.

Church minister;

Born: January 8, 1923; Died: September 12, 2011.

Mary Levison, who has died aged 88, was responsible more than any other for persuading the Church of Scotland that women should be ordained to the ministry.

It is difficult now to imagine what struggle there was to achieve a goal which has unquestionably changed the Church of Scotland for the better. The year after he was moderator for the celebrations to mark the reformation, Professor JKS Burleigh said of the ordination of women: “It’s coming. But not in my lifetime, I hope. It won’t be in this century, anyway.” Prof Burleigh was a better historian than he was a prophet. The fact that he was proved wrong is due to Dr Levison. As Margaret Forrester, who befitted from what Dr Levison was to call her wrestling with the church, has written: “It is difficult to overestimate the debt that all women ministers owe to her.”

In 1963, Mary Lusk (as she then was) had been a deaconess for nine years and assistant chaplain at the University of Edinburgh for two years. She petitioned the General Assembly to be allowed to be ordained. A packed General Assembly, which ought to have been at the Holyrood Garden Party, spent the whole of a Saturday afternoon debating the petition. One of the galleries was filled with students and supporters. Occasionally they boisterously cheered those who spoke in favour of the petition, and twice the Moderator, Professor James S Stewart, had to threaten to have the gallery cleared. One of those in the gallery then recalled that “while some of the arguments against granting the crave of the petition had an attempt at theology, some bordered on the insulting. Clearly there were those who feared the Church would change forever”.

The extraordinary thing is that she was far better qualified and intellectually far superior to the vast majority of the then ministry of the church. She was born in Oxford, where her father was the Church of Scotland chaplain. She went to St Leonard’s School in St Andrews and then to Oxford University, graduating with first class honours in philosophy, politics and economics. She then studied divinity at New College in Edinburgh, and did post-graduate study at Heidelberg and Basle. She represented the Church of Scotland at the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, US, and returned, determined to ensure that the Church of Scotland would recognise deaconesses as deaconsd as equal with ministers and elders in the courts of the church.

In 1954 she became deaconess at St Michael’s Musselburgh, and later was given the job of training deacons and deaconesses and lay workers at St Colm’s College in Edinburgh. In the early 1960s she became assistant chaplain of Edinburgh University.

In 1965 she became Mary Levison, when she married Fred, who was then minister of St Bernard’s Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter he moved to the Borders, and although she continued to be heavily involved in the councils of the church, she was first and foremost the minister’s wife. She was devoted to Fred, and when he retired in 1977 they moved to Edinburgh, and he encouraged her to pursue a ministry of her own.

She was ordained as Assistant at St Andrew’s and St George’s, with special responsibility for the outreach to the retain trade and offices of the parish which had been pioneered by the minister, Andrew Wylie. An office worker told Mr Wyllie’s successor, Dr Andrew McLellan, “Mrs Levison always told you what she thought, but she was always interested in what I thought. I wasn’t used to that in ministers.”

She retired in 1983, but retirement was far from idle. She served on the Assembly Council, and tried to make the church prioritise its work. She was proposed as Moderator of the General Assembly for 1993 but to the regret of many she failed to secure the nomination. The Presbytery of Edinburgh however did elect her as Moderator. In 1991 she became the first woman to appointed a Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland, appropriately on the recommendation of the Dean of the Chapel Royal, Profesor Robin Barbour, who had seconded the move in 1967 which resulted on the ordination of women to the ministry. In 1994, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of divinity by the University of Edinburgh. Her husband Fred died in 1999.

Her autobiography, Wrestling with the Church, was published in 1992. In it she explains that although “wrestling there has been, but that is surely a different thing from fighting and campaigning”.

She was forthright, clear in what she believed was good and what she saw as bad in the Church of Scotland. But she never wavered in her loyalty to it. It is not only the women who became ministers who owe her an enormous amount.