Elizabeth Joyce Smith

Elizabeth Joyce Smith (born 1956) is an Australian Anglican priest and hymnist.

Biography

Elizabeth Joyce Smith was born in Stawell, Victoria, Australia in 1956. She attended secondary school in Euroa. From 1974 to 1978, she studied at Monash University in Melbourne, and at the University of Melbourne.

Smith pursued liturgical studies at the Pacific School of Religion, California, where she obtained her PhD in 1995. Her thesis was published in 1999 as Bearing Fruit in Due Season: Feminist Hermeneutics and the Bible in Worship.

Hymns Smith is a feminist hymnologist who uses inclusive language and non-hierarchical images in her writing. She is quoted as saying that she tries "to be inclusive in [her] writing and preaching – of women, and of all the other people God loves but the church often overlooks or excludes." She subsequently published two additional collections of hymns: Rejoice! For God Has Called Us, in 1993, and Songs for a Hopeful Church, in 1997.

Several of Smith's hymns are included in an ecumenical hymnal, Together in Song, which was published in Australia in 1999.

"Where wide sky rolls down" - Hymn #188 "God in the darkness, God beyond our knowing", Hymn # 17 in More Voices

Works Praise the God of Grace: Hymns for Inclusive Worship (1990) Rejoice!: For God Has Called Us: Hymns for Inclusive Worship (1993) Songs for a Hopeful Church: Words for Inclusive Worship (1997) Bearing Fruit in Due Season: Feminist Hermeneutics and the Bible in Worship (1999) Prayers & Plays for Christmas and Holy Week (2006) Articles Smith, Elizabeth J. "Changing the Words, Changing the World? Feminist Theory and Liturgical Language", Women-Church: Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, no. 14 (1994): 28–35. Digitised version of no. 14 (1994) available on JSTOR Open Community Collections, University of Divinity Digital Collections, Mannix Library Smith, Elizabeth J. "God in the New Songs: The Proclamation of Inclusive Language Hymnody", Women-Church: Australian Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, no. 17 (1995): 13–18. Digitised version of no. 17 (1995) available on JSTOR Open Community Collections, University of Divinity Digital Collections, Mannix Library