Book Launch

This event is in person and online.

Jointly organised by Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology & CCCW (Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide)

Elizabeth Glendinning Kirkwood (1895-1968), who was a significant writer, especially of Christian history, a missionary, and a mould-breaker, was born in the west of Scotland.

Elizabeth had outstanding intellectual gifts, and graduated with a first-class honours MA in history, with philosophy, at the University of Edinburgh.

From Edinburgh she took up a post as assistant lecturer in history at the University of St Andrews. From St Andrews she became an editor and a writer for the International Review of Missions (IRM).

From 1922 to 1926, she taught at the Women’s Missionary College (WMC), Edinburgh – an institution with a progressive tradition in education and inclusive community. She also returned to academic study, enrolling for a Bachelor of Divinity degree through New College, Edinburgh.

In 1926 Elizabeth was the first women to graduate BD at New College. She also explored whether she could be ordained as a minister. Her case led to a debate on women’s ordination, but that did not happen in the Church of Scotland until 1968. Although the motion failed, Elizabeth Hewat went to China, where she had freedom in ministry and combined work as a teaching mission . She returned to Scotland in 1933 to complete her PhD.

Moving to Bombay (Mumbai), she became Professor of History at Wilson College.

After returning to Scotland, she was invited to write the official history of Church of Scotland Missions, her magnum opus, She once wrote that ‘women in the church hold a subordinate position; and women of today ask why . . . Of one thing they are certain, and it is this, that it is not Christ who is barring the way’.