Elizabeth Barr

Elizabeth Brown Barr (2 October 1905 – 23 June 1995) was a British minister. She was the first woman to be a Presbyterian minister. She was the first female moderator of a general assembly of a Scottish church.

Elizabeth Barr
Born2 October 1905
Dennistoun
Died23 June 1995 (1995-06-24) (aged 89)
Gartnavel General Hospital
NationalityUnited Kingdom
EducationGlasgow University
OccupationMinister
Known forfirst woman to be a Presbyterian minister

Life

Barr was born in Dennistoun in Glasgow in 1905.[1] Her parents were Elizabeth (born Brown) and James Barr. Her father was a minister who would lead the United Free Church of Scotland and become a member of parliament.[2] During the first world war her parents took in a refugee Belgian family. Barr became friends with them and this friendship continued all her life. She attended Bellahouston Academy and then was a model student at Glasgow University where she was a keen member of the Student Christian Movement. She won academic prizes culminating in a first class masters degree in 1925.

The United Free Church, Auchterarder had the first woman minister in Scotand

In 1929 (another source says 1930[3]) the first meeting of the new church (that would be the United Free Church of Scotland) passed an important resolution. At a time when women under 30 were not allowed to vote the meeting agreed that "any member of the Church in full communion shall be eligible to hold any office within the Church" The path was open for a woman to be a practising minister.[4] She was accepted as a candidate and she returned to Glasgow University to study the New Testament and to become a Bachelor of Divinity. She gained the churches license to preach on 12 September 1933.[1] In 1935 she was ordained and left to run the parish of Auchterarder in what is now Perth and Kinross. She was the woman to be a minister after nearly 400 years of a men-only Presbyterian clergy.[3] In 1943 she moved parish to Clydebank and in 1955 she led the parish of Glasgow Central. In 1966 she went to her final parish of Miller Memorial Church in Maryhill. She retired from there in 1975.[1]

She had became a leader in the church starting with the "Perth United Free Church Presbytery" where she was the moderator in 1939. In 1950 she was the moderator of the Glasgow presbytery in 1950 and ten years later she led her church's general assembly as its moderator on her church's 400th birthday.[3] She was the first female moderator of a general assembly of a Scottish church.[5]

Barr died in the Gartnavel General Hospital in Glasgow.[3]

References
  1. Ewan, Elizabeth L.; Innes, Sue; Reynolds, Sian; Pipes, Rose (2007-06-27). Biographical Dictionary of ScottishWomen. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2660-1.
  2. "Barr, James (1862–1949), minister of the United Free Church of Scotland and politician". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/40286. Retrieved 2020-10-21. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. "Barr, Elizabeth Brown (1905–1995), minister of the United Free Church of Scotland". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48834. Retrieved 2020-10-21. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. Choi, Eun Soo (1996). "The religious dimension of the women's suffrage movement: the role of the Scottish Presbyterian churches, 1867-1918" (PDF). Glasgow University. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
  5. Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church 1900–2000 (Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 387–88.


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