Coralie Ling

Coralie Ling (born 1939) is an Australian retired Christian minister. She was the second woman ordained in the Methodist Church of Australasia and the first Methodist woman ordained in the state of Victoria. In 1977, she became a minister in the Uniting Church in Australia when it was formed as a merger of Methodist, Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches.

Life and career Born in Brunswick, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne, Coralie Ling is the daughter of Stanley and Mavis Ling. She went to Dandenong High School, and later completed a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne. After graduating, she taught for three years.

Ling was spiritually inclined as a young woman and had been active in youth church groups. She was the first woman to be ordained in the Methodist Church in the state of Victoria and the second Methodist woman to be ordained in Australia. In 1977, the Methodist Church of Australasia merged with the Congregational and Presbyterian churches to become the Uniting Church in Australia.

In 1991, Ling became the pastor at Fitzroy Uniting Church, in Fitzroy, Victoria. In 1999, she completed a PhD through the Doctor of Ministries in Feminist Theologies Program, a program of the San Francisco Theological Seminary established by feminist theologian Letty Russell.

Ling retired from active ministry in 2005.

In 2019, she was featured in a show called Beachside Stories at the Gasworks Theatre in Albert Park, Victoria. She performed in a brief one-woman act written by Clare Mendes.

Select publications Ling, Coralie. "Weaving a Questing Spirituality", Women-Church: Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, no. 38 (2006): 31–35. Digitised version of no. 38 (2006) available on JSTOR Open Community Collections, University of Divinity Digital Collections, Mannix Library