Anglican Samizdat

At its synod, the Church of England voted not to allow a provision to grant alternative male oversight to clergy and parishes who believe a woman should not serve as a bishop.

I have always been ambivalent about the legitimacy of women bishops: I think there are good arguments on both sides. That being said, it seems to me inconsistent to allow women priests but disallow women bishops. So, although I have reservations, I find myself not completely averse to either women priests or bishops.

But is this really about women being called by God to serve as priests and bishops? I don’t think so: if it were we wouldn’t need a campaign:

Christina Rees, of Women and the Church, which campaigns in favour of women bishops, said: “We have already tried our best to keep everyone in [the church] and to increase the level of communion between those who hold different views on women’s ministry.

None of the recent battles at the CofE synod focussed much on God’s calling: the big thing is the battle for Equality – a secular notion that is the antithesis of Christian service, sacrifice, dying to self, humility, placing others high than oneself and carrying one’s cross. Not that I am much good at any of those things either – but then I’m not mounting a campaign to further their antipode.

One thing that rules out all these ladies for bishop is – they are too eager to become one: that should disqualify anyone.

Other than ambition, lust for power and vanity, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be a bishop. I know of very few bishops who are sufficiently unpretentious to be taken at all seriously: better to become a barmaid, they occasionally make sense.

Kingsley Amis, in his Advice to a Writer, restores proportion to the office of bishop and archbishop. Ladies, take note.  It even has a Canadian ending:

That time you heard the archbishop fart
You did quite right to say.
And should the ploughboy turn up gold
The news would make our day.
But when the ploughboy farts henceforth
Forget about it, eh?

The amendment would have allowed clergy who do not recognise the validity of women bishops to seek alternative oversight from a male bishop.

From the Church Times:

General Synod votes against Archbishops’ amendment
10/07/2010 17:15:00

The latest (5.15pm) from General Synod meeting in York: Synod has voted against the amendment proposed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York that would have allowed for “co-ordinate jurisdiction” for those opposed to women bishops.

The vote was narrowly lost in the House of Clergy. The numbers:

Bishops: 25 for 15 against 0 abstain
Clergy: 85 for 90 against 5 abstain
Laity: 106 for 86 against 4 abstain

As a whole, more Synod members were in favour – 216 to 191.

For conservatives who can’t accept women bishops – and who would like the Church of England to remain intact – this is bad news.

For Rowan Williams this is bad news: it is another example of his failed leadership.

For those – like me – who think  liberal and conservative versions of Christianity are actually two different religions and that, because of this,  a split is inevitable, this could be good news: why delay the inevitable?

For the average non-Anglican it is not news at all.

Interestingly, it was the clergy who defeated this motion, not the laity (too much common sense?) or bishops (too politically astute?).

I just wish I’d been there with my camera:

Meetings of Church of England bishops are usually sedate – and that’s how they like it.

But last week’s proved decidedly more eventful, when they found themselves sharing their conference hotel with a hen party.

It was the cue for Carry On-style high farce which culminated in the Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, 67, gallantly offering his dressing gown to a naked girl, who was apparently locked out of her hotel room.

Other bishops soon became aware of drink-induced vomiting and screaming – and everyone was eventually forced to evacuate the hotel in the middle of the night when a reveller let off a fire alarm.

The Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Rev Stephen Platten, 63, said: ‘The alarm seems to have been triggered when two young ladies, who were pickled, came back late at night.

‘One of the ladies was naked and one of the bishops had to give her his dressing gown to cover her nakedness. I think the other woman was trying to take her clothes off, too, but she was stopped in time.’

Nearly 50 bishops, among them the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had gathered at the £130-a-night Park Inn Hotel in York for the meeting, where the main item was admitting women to the episcopate.

Rowan Williams denied foreknowledge of the ladies’ night out and shortly after tussling with Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt in an attempt to thwart his dressing gown manoeuvre, inspired by the moment, burst forth into this peroration: “Nothing will stop sex being tragic and comic.  It is above all the area of our lives where we can be rejected in our bodily entirety, where we can venture into the exposed spontaneity and find ourselves looking foolish or even repellent: so that the perception of ourselves we are offered is negating and damaging.  And it is also where the awful incongruity of our situation can break through as comedy, even farce.”

Maybe it’s got something to do with the weather in the UK: it’s usually grey. In keeping with avoiding black and white, in July 2008, Tom Wright criticised GAFCON in this way:

It is to say, rather, that the GAFCON proposals are not only not needed in England but are positively harmful and indeed offensive. This was more or less what I said on the radio last Thursday, where I distinguished carefully between the American and English situations. AS FAR AS ENGLAND IS CONCERNED, it is damaging, arrogant and irrelevant for GAFCON leaders to say, as they are now doing, ‘choose you this day whom you will serve’, with the implication that there are now only two parties in the church, the orthodox and the liberals, and that to refuse to sign up to GAFCON is to decide for the liberals. Things are just not like that. Certainly not here in England.

The Church of England does seem to be moving full steam ahead in that direction, though:

A proposal to give the partners of gay priests some of the same rights that are awarded to priests’ spouses is likely to spark a new row over homosexuality.

Bishops and senior clergy will debate at next month’s General Synod whether the Church should provide same-sex couples with the same financial benefits as are awarded to married couples.

Traditionalists have expressed strong opposition to the move, which they claim would give official recognition to homosexual relationships.

They warn that affording equal treatment to heterosexual and homosexual couples would undermine the Church’s teaching on marriage.

At present, the Church bars clergy from being in active gay relationships, although it bowed to pressure to allow them to enter civil partnerships on the condition that they are celibate.

If this is sufficiently important to risk the stability – what’s left of it – of the Church of England by bringing a motion to General Synod, there must surely be a significant number of homosexual clergy in “celibate” – nudge, wink – relationships. If this motion is brought to GS, let alone if it passes, it will make a mockery of the CoE’s teaching on marriage.

So, Tom, is it time for  ‘choose you this day whom you will serve’, yet?