Women were being discouraged, even intimidated. Porter was shocked. For decades Melbourne had been the diocese most supportive of women priests, and the issue seemed long resolved. But now, in the Anglican Church and in others, it seems to be a divisive issue once again, with a backlash unleashed and gaining ground. The question is broader than whether women can be priests and exercise leadership over men, though that is usually how it is framed inside the church. It concerns all the roles women play in the church and in the

home, where the once-traditional idea that they should submit to their husbands is gaining fresh traction. This is being re-examined in churches around Australia: Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Pentecostal and others. Porter says the change in Melbourne and elsewhere is due to a rising number of hard-line young Melbourne ministers who are strongly influenced by resurgent conservatism in the United States. She says they are "very masculine and horrified by what they call the 'chickification' of Christianity". According to Kevin Giles, a Melbourne evangelical minister and veteran of the fight for women's equality within the church, the issue is "about power—who has it and who doesn't, who determines how the Scriptures should be read".

Those who support the "headship" doctrine are called complementarians. They say women and men are created equal in value but with different roles, in which leadership is reserved for men. The biblical text they rely on is Paul's first letter to Timothy, which says: "A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be silent." The pro-equality group argues that these verses have a specific context and are not a permanent mandate. They rely on texts such as Paul's letter to the Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ." This group, who call themselves egalitarians, argue that ministry is based on abilities and not gender.

According to Giles, the debate is not about whether women can "minister". He says: "Everyone is in favour of women's ministry, because that can be anything—even making tea. The real key is leadership, headship. The debate is full of code words, but unpacked it means men lead, women obey." Giles and his wife, Lynley, a noted marriage educator, are sufficiently concerned that they have organised the annual international conference of Christians for Biblical Equality in Melbourne this weekend. Founded in the US in 1988, the group claims it has members from 100 denominations in 70 countries. Kevin Giles blames the increasingly confident assertion of headship doctrine on the influence of the Sydney diocese—Australia's largest and most powerful, and a staunch advocate of headship—and the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is influential in universities around the nation.

"It's a minority, but it's a vocal, strong, able minority which does a lot of good work in other areas." Modern technology is also playing a significant role in emboldening conservatives to stand against women joining the threefold ministry of deacon, priest and bishop. Important American evangelical leaders such as Mark Driscoll and John Piper are instantly accessible through their podcasts and blogs, which thousands of people around the world download every day. Driscoll, of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, wants more testosterone in the church. He complains that the church has produced "chickified" men. "Sixty per cent of Christians are chicks, and the 40 per cent that are dudes are still sort of chicks."

In a famous 2006 sermon, he said real men avoid the church because it projects a hippie, queer Christ, whereas men want the "ultimate fighting Jesus". According to Cheryl Catford, a Churches of Christ minister who has researched the issue, Driscoll would never have had the influence 20 years ago that he has now. Catford, who is a speaker at this weekend's conference, has researched attitudes to gender roles among Pentecostals (churches such as Hillsong that in America are called evangelical). Paradoxically, such churches often have glamorous women in the pulpit while at the same time teaching that women must be subordinate. She says many young women are not even attempting to get into Christian ministry.

"If they can get in they can't express their gifts in the fullest extreme, and sometimes run up against neo-Calvinism. So a lot of younger women are going off and doing their own things." Among Anglicans, the young women bearing the brunt of opposition are reluctant to say much because they are told that to highlight disagreement within the church would hinder spreading the gospel. Hannah Craven, who is training for the priesthood at Parkville's Ridley College—the institution that trains evangelical Anglican candidates for ordination and is at the centre of the renewed debate in Melbourne—says she has noticed the trend both at Ridley and in the wider church. "It's one of those things people are afraid to bring up publicly, and you have the sense it's happening under the radar. You hear a group of people met and talked." Craven feels strongly supported by her own church, St Hilary's in Kew, but even so she is not unscathed.

"From my perspective, it's more that sense that God's called you to do something, and you are striving to be faithful and obedient, yet know that a lot of people believe that in the process you are being disobedient and ungodly. And you have to take that seriously, and can't help but find that discouraging. It creates uncertainty." Megan Curlis-Gibson, a young minister at St Hilary's, agrees. "I've had people decide not to come because I'm preaching, or tell me why what I'm doing is wrong. It's just a conversation for them, but I'm sitting there defending my entire career. The implication is that I'm disobeying God in everything I do." RIDLEY College principal Peter Adam, a complementarian, believes that Christians can hold either view with a clear conscience. He concedes that the issue has become a source of tension among students, but so are other matters, such as infant baptism.

Nevertheless, he says, the women's issue is "very delicate. There are a number of political undercurrents going on in the diocese of Melbourne over this issue at the moment. There's a rumour going around that Ridley is lobbying the diocese to stop ordaining women, which has no truth at all." Adam's policy is not to stifle debate. "For the broader welfare of the church, I think it's better not to take sides in a way that precludes others or denies them their rights to participate in the diocese." Ridley's written policy is to welcome and provide equal training for male and female students, and accept a variety of views on the roles of men and women in ministry and leadership — the same policy as the Melbourne diocese and, indeed, the Anglican Church of Australia. Leading advocates of headship believe egalitarians are overstating the problem. Ridley lecturer Rhys Bezzant, a leader of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Melbourne, says the group makes "an easy whipping boy".

"The issue isn't front and centre on Melbourne campuses. There would be staff who hold a variety of views, and students and student leaders. AFES is not nearly as monochrome as people want to suggest," he says. Healesville minister TimAnderson, a leader among younger evangelicals who want to limit women's ministry, says he does not argue with the same stridency as the case is argued in Sydney, and that he respects other people's views. "I believe women shouldn't be in charge of churches or preaching to mixed congregations. Within the scope of a large church like St Hilary's, with a decent-sized ministry team, there's a range of roles God calls women to that they can fulfil very well, but I wouldn't include being senior minister or regular preacher." But women's ministry is far less significant to him than, say, the consecration of a lesbian as bishop in the US last month, or Christians who minimise the importance of Jesus Christ.

"When there's stuff like that on the radar, it's not helpful to get wound up about secondary matters." Anderson says pro-women's ordination advocates such as Kevin Giles and Muriel Porter expected that after women were ordained in 1992, opposition would fall away and that opponents would gradually retire or change their minds as they encountered women doing a good job. "That was their hope, so it's with considerable alarm that they see this isn't happening," he says. He's right that Porter is alarmed. She says the problem is serious, especially as the Melbourne diocese has from the first been a leader in the fight for women's equality in the church. It was Melbourne that in 1976 called on the national church to do whatever was needed to ordain women—Melbourne evangelicals, unlike their Sydney counterparts, were strongly supportive—and Melbourne was among the first to ordain women in 1992, a move approved by 90 per cent of the synod.

But evangelicalism today is shaped more by Sydney's Moore College, and it is these evangelicals, who teach subordination of women, whose churches are the fastest growing. Today,Melbourne has 524 Anglican male priests and 106 women. Half of Ridley's students are women, and they make up 31 per cent of candidates for ordination. Porter notes that while many liberal women priests have been elected to represent Melbourne at the Australian synod this year, there will not be one evangelical woman priest. She says evangelical women are not being promoted or encouraged by their side of the political divide. Porter says these evangelicals think women should be subordinate everywhere, but they have lost the battle in wider society. People would laugh, she says, if anyone suggested women should not be MPs, judges or chief executives. Family and church are the only remaining spheres where these evangelicals can be influential.

Porter says if evangelicals understood their history, they would advocate an equal role for women in church because feminism has an evangelical heritage. "It came out of Bible believing women in the US in the 19th century who wanted to fight for the freedom of the slaves, and were told they couldn't speak because they were women." So Porter is steeling herself for battle once more. "I'm heartbroken that this reaction has emerged, and sad that I and my friends have to take up this cause again that we thought was safely accomplished. And we will take it up again. We are not simply going to acquiesce in the undoing of 25 years of our life's work." The International Christians for Biblical Equality Conference will be held tomorrow to Monday at the Jasper Hotel in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. www.cbe.org.au

Barney Zwartz is religion editor.