Dr Morna Sturrock honoured for women’s advocacy

Prominent Anglican Dr Morna Sturrock has won the annual Dame Phyllis Frost Award in recognition of her work promoting the role of women, including in the Church.

Dr Sturrock, a journalist and author, received the award at a National Council of Women Victoria function to mark International Women’s Day last month. Bishop Barbara Darling, who after her consecration last year wore vestments embroidered for her by Dr Sturrock, wrote a reference supporting Dr Sturrock’s nomination for the award, for which there were six nominees.

Dr Sturrock knew Dame Phyllis, a Victorian welfare worker and philanthropist who died in October 2004, through the involvement of both women with the then Fairlea Women’s Prison in Fairfield. She described Dame Phyllis as “a most interesting and compelling personality who, journalistically, was always willing to talk to the press and to do so eloquently”.

A public speaker on women’s issues for 50 years, Dr Sturrock, a Member of the Order of Australia, has worked with a number of women’s organisations and was one of the founders of the Embroiderers’ Guild. She was active, too, in promoting women’s involvement in local government and served on Waverley City Council from 1984-90.

She worked for Melbourne’s former afternoon newspaper, ‘The Herald’, for about 10 years, including four years in the London bureau in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a young Queen Elizabeth II began her reign.

Dr Sturrock, a parishioner of St Stephen’s and St Mary’s in Mt Waverley, describes herself as “an ecumenically driven, interfaith-driven Anglican”. She is working on her second PhD, on the churches’ activities in the interfaith movement, particularlyChristian-Jewish-Muslim relationships in Victoria, in which she has been involved for three decades. She is on the executive committee of the Council of Christians and Jews and edited its official journal, ‘Gesher’, for five years.

Her first doctorate was on the episcopacy of Bishop James Moorhouse, Melbourne’s second Anglican leader from 1876-86.

She is a lay chaplain at St Paul’s Cathedral and a foundation in her name has been established at Trinity College to further the development of women theologians. She was an early advocate of women’s ordination.

Asked how ordained women were faring in the Church, Dr Sturrock said: “They are doing well, sometimes under great difficulty. It’s not easy for them still but where they are working, they are proving to be faithful, energetic -- often to the point of exhaustion -- and truly, truly committed.”

But she added: “Wearing a white collar is not the only way to serve the Church. Many of us do that in many, many ways and often unsung ways.”