Church-State war looms over women bishops

The prospect of the most almighty Church-State row is looming after Labour MP Chris Bryant, former Church of England vicar, has tabled a parliamentary bill that could force the Church of England to permit the ordination of women bishops six years earlier than planned. Chris has used the Ten Minute Rule system to table private member’s motion that would remove from the 1992 women priests measure the bar on ordaining women bishops. Bryant, who was an early member of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, came up with the idea after secret meetings with a group of senior Oxford theologians who told him the Church was taking too long to ordain women bishops. They pressed Bryant to find some way of forcing the Church's hands.

The last two bills tabled under the Ten Minute Rule to make it onto the statute books were both in the 2001-2 session. They were Andrew Dismore's Divorce (Religious Marriages) Bill and Neil Gerrard's Private Hire Vehicles (Carriage of Guide Dogs etc) Bill.

However, several senior Government ministers are already understood to have voiced support for Bryant’s bill. If enough MPs turned up to vote for the bill at the first reading, the pressure for change would be difficult for the Government to resist.

If the Government did allow the bill through, this would create a constitutional crisis unparalleled since Parliament rejected the Church’s 1928 Prayer Book. The Church has had the power to create its own laws, or measures, since the 1919 Enabling Act created the Church Assembly, now the General Synod. But Parliament retains the power of veto because the Church is established by law.

The bill is due to be debated on Tuesday 21 March, the day before the Budget. I first came across it on Ekklesia. It would amend the 1993 parliamentary legislation that allowed for the ordination of women priests and extend the provision to remove the bar on women bishops. In the unlikely event that it becomes law, it will certainly lead for demands for disestablishment from Church leaders who would strongly resist any further intervention by the State in Church affairs. Thinking Anglicans has recorded it here.

Bryant, a former chairman of the influential Christian Socialist Movement which counts the Prime Minister among its supporters, said: “The reason I am doing it is because there are a lot of us, active Anglicans and others, who think that the church is shilly shallying on this issue and that the ultra-consrvative tail is rather wagging the mainstream dog.

"The number of parishes that have declared themselves women priest free zones is tiny, less than 10 per cent . If women are ever consecrated, Parliament will have to vote on it like they did with women priests.

"For a start, Parliament cannot force the Church to consecrate a single woman bishop, even if it removes the legal impediment. What we can do is indicate our support for women’s ministry at every level."

Under the procedure, Bryant will speak for ten minutes to his bill and an opponent will have ten minutes to reply. a vote will be held if there is even a single objector. But if the bill gets a majority, it will get  a second reading.

The Church is presently engaged in a tortuous and convoluted process towards the consecration of women bishops. The subject was debated three times at the February synod and is likely to be on the agenda of every synod until 2012, the first date that a woman could be consecrated if the present procedures are followed. The matter could be rapidly speeded up however if the Church were to adopt the single-clause measure approach, but this would cause ecumenical difficulties and massive rebellion among traditionalists and defections to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Bryant said: "If there is a majority of 100 or 150 for this, it will give a strong indication to the Church that 2012 is a little far off. God may move in a mysterious way, but it would be good if she moved a little faster.”

He continued: “It is not for sinners such as politicians to tell the saints in the Church what to do. But it sticks in our throats when the Church preqaches about equality and won’t institute it within its own ranks. No-one would ever think to say to a parish, you can vote not to have a black priest.”

The bill has the support already of Tory MP Robert Key, also a member of General Synod,  Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes and about 45 others. “I hope people are going to write to MPs. There is a letter writing campaign and people will be coming to Parliament on the day,” said Bryant, MP for Rhondda.

He continued: "People have questioned why I am doing this and have asked what it has got to do with Wales.

But William Abraham, the first MP for Rhondda elected in 1885 and known as Mabon,  spent his whole career devoted to the rights of miners and the disestablishment of the Church in Wales."

Fourteen Anglican provinces have already voted for women bishops, including Scotland, but not all have actually appointed one.

Geoffrey Kirk, of the traditionalist grouping Cost of Conscience, warned that the bill could in theory go through and said it could present a "serious problem" for the Church.

A Church of England spokesman said: "Whether women should be ordained bishops must in the first instance be a matter for the Church to determine in accordance with its own assessment of the relevant theological issues.  The Church is already  engaged in a careful consultation process which seeks to ensure that all views on this important issue are heard and respected. General Synod will again look at the subject this summer. It is only once Synod has approved legislation that the need for Parliamentary approval arises.  The proposed bill would be contrary to the longstanding constitutional convention that Parliament does not initiate legislation on such matters."

But Christina Rees, of the campaigning group Watch, said: "This is fantastic. It reflects a widespread move for women bishops, not just in the Church but in wider society. This is a very interesting development."

Comments

[Fr Dean Atkins]

Whilst the Archbishop of Wales is being criticised today for getting involved in politics (by politicians!) politicians today are interfering with religion. Mmmm now I'm confused! Someone make up your mind, please!

[Helen Lewis]

The leaders of the Church of England are trying to have their cake and eat it. They wish to retain their constitutional position in the House of Lords and the provilege of their position within the more general establishment, while at the same time being exempt from recent legislation on human rights, equality of opportunity, and gender related discrimination. If this is the way they wish to continue, the sooner they are deprived of their opportunities to legislate for the rest of us, the better.
As for the Church in Wales, a look at the voting figures shows that the Bishops and laity are overwhelmingly in favour of women bishops, but that, as so often, the clergy stand in the way. This is par for the course. Too many clergy simply want to preside over some safe little enclave of the faithful without facing any of the challenges that might really bring in the kingdom of God. They have no conception of how silly, irrelevant and downright immoral their stance makes the Church appear.
What action can one take short of simply leaving? Personally I shall cease putting money in the plate: this is not an institution which deserves to survive.

[Frank Salmon]

So what happened to the war? Seems more of a Tempest in a Teacup :)
Cheers

[Sergeant Raj Joshi, Leicestershire]

Dear Ruth,

I have been watching this blog closely. My greatest fear appears to be coming true. I was hoping that the issue of ordaining women priests and the blogs here might have given Church and faith leaders some inspiration to resolve this issue sooner.

Alas, as the status quo appears unchanged today, in a man's world, forget the 6 years, one would expect it to take longer, more like a decade if the power decisions are made by men.

As for sexual orientation fracturing the church; this is quite absurd. Only people can fracture the church. Still we can only keep hoping that one day "man" will come to his senses and understand equal opportunity means doing the hoovering, cleaning the bathroom, washing the cars, changing the nappies, (I personally still can't cook though), and ordaining women priests of course.

The first time I made pasta a few years ago, my little one would have been 4 ish. I didn't know you could add a pasta sauce to it. She didn't tell me! Me and the kids ate it plain. I must say my pasta tastes better now! Oops my wife is calling, "Ok darling I will be with you in a minute, is the dinner ready?"

[Alan Marsh]

There were fulsome predictions about the effect of ordaining women, back in 1992. "This is what the world is waiting for" and "People will now take the Church seriously". Sadly it has not worked as claimed. Some of the most rapid decline in church attendance occurred after women were ordained - as happened also in the Methodist Church, which is in much steeper decline.

In my experience what people want the church to do is to teach the good news that Jesus is risen and offers eternal life to those who believe in him. The Ministry which he founded is part of our Christian inheritance in faith.

If you insist on Equal Opportunities then I look forward to Mr Bryant bringing forward a bill to force other faiths to admit women to their official leadership. I somehow don't think he will.

[Malcolm Bowden]

I find all the in-talk about resolution A or B or Z and flying bishops very depressing. Those traditionalists who feel so threatened by women clergy should really get out more. In the real world, I think it is safe to say that women vicars are quite happily accepted. Thanks, perhaps, to the Vicar of Dibley? Whether or not, we now have a strip cartoon in the Daily Mail (hardly a hotbed of subversive liberalism!) which features a female vicar. I think that shows how the world has moved on while some in the Anglican Communion are stuck in a groove like an old scratched LP.

Perhaps we need the BBC to offer us "The Bishop of Dibchester". I wonder who they'd cast?

[Frank Salmon]

By the time the Church of England agrees to ordain women bishops it is likely, given current demographics, to be defunct.

That Parliament can have tolerated such discrimination for the last half-century is an indictment of the state's failure to practice as well as preach equality.

[Keith Downer]

Although personally I support the ordination of women bishops, I think the situation is similar to that of homosexual priests and same-sex marriage or blessings; the Church cannot afford to experiment and until God's intention is clear, possible changes to Church policy should be viewed with extreme caution. If anything, raising the matter in parliament is an unfortunate development that will only serve to confuse and complicate the matter even further and delay any recognition of what God's intentions are.

[Cdr Marcus Stewart]

Mr Bryant's, and some others', claims for the allegedly very small opposition to women-priests/bishops need careful comment. Parishes often only pass resolutions (against having female clergy) if there is a real prospect of it happening to them. Parishes such as my own enjoy the informal oversight of a 'flying bishop', as passing resolutions may be divisive (but passed); and parishes in the dioceses of London and Chichester, notably, consider they don't need to pass them because of 'understanding' bishops who will not foister women where not wanted. It is quite wrong, and disingenuous, to suggest anything other than fully a third of Anglicans are alienated by female clergy -figures arrived at by two major research projects over the last few years.

[Alan Marsh]

Two points. The first is that the law was changed to allow clergy to sit in the House of Commons. It was nothing to do with having bishops in the House of Lords, but a relic of an Act from 1801 passed to exclude a particular cleric, but never repealed.

More germanely, the decision by General Synod in 1992 to open presbyteral ministry to women was explicitly stated to be provisional. Recognising that it would put the Church of England at variance with the great majority of episcopal Christianity, the decision was taken on the understanding that it was subject to reception by the church community - not by the BBC or the media, or by a secular parliament.

The evidence is that it has not been accepted universally, and that is why the Synod is now right to treat the issue with caution. Only three out of 38 provinces of the Anglican Church worldwide have ordained women as bishops (only two currently have women bishops) and the two which have women bishops in post, in N America, are embroiled in conflict with the Anglican Communion which does not share their loose approach to scripture and doctrine.

The Church of England must be certain before it commits itself finally and irrevocably to a decision to create women bishops: there is no provisionality beyond that point, which has the potential formally to divide the church. It is a theological issue which the church must decide for itself. Parliament has no role to play in deciding what a priest or bishop is in the Church of Christ, any more than it can decide what Christians ought to believe about the Holy Trinity.

[Malcolm Bowden]

Let's get real, shall we. The Church has to live in and minister to the world. The world sees the Church very reluclantly acepting women priests after years of debate, most of which would appear like a discussion of angels on pinheads, and then apparently not accepting the inexorable logic that women priests must lead to women bishops. Is it any wonder that the world shakes it head and looks elsewhere for spiritual guidance?

[Peter Elliott]

David Warren's reasoning is at fault regarding the number of parishes opposed to women priests.At 31.03.2004 6.1% had passed Resolution A and 7.6% Resolution B, but in fact there is a considerable overlap since most parishes will have passed both resolutions; similarly with 'Resolution C'. thus the true position is that more than 90% of parishes in the Church of England are in favour of women priests

[Chris Gillibrand]

The claims to apostolicity and catholicity of the Church of England are surely dented by attempts in Parliament to direct the wind of the Holy Spirit on the sails of the boat. Protest at such attempts were the foundation of the Tractarian movement whose modern successors find themselves besieged in their own Church.

However, even given the warnings of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=18638 , the Bryant Bill will almost certainly be welcome in Rome itself. There is a perceptible difference in the attitude of the new Pope to Catholic-Anglican dialogue and Catholic-Lutheran dialogue. He likely regards the first as past the point of no return and certainly consumed by the relativism which he so despises http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64469-2005Apr18.html.

In the second case, intellectual rigour on the Lutheran side is combined with a sense that the dialogue involves not only religious but German unity (we do after all have a German Pope who knows well his Lutheran colleagues).

For the Anglicans, the Barque of Peter is a rescue ship that after a period of time will hoist anchor. The Lutherans are presently regarded as having a serviceable vessel of their own, albeit one that cannot be called a sister-ship.

[Christopher Smith]

Representation of the Clergy in Parliament is, for better or for worse, provided by the Bishops in the Upper House. Mr Bryant had therefore to resign his orders before he could stand for parliament.

I am not certain if the present Government has altered this as part of its wider constitutional meddling.

[Dr. Irene Lancaster, University of Manchester]

Isn't it interesting that having been blamed for most of society's ills, Jews are now being blamed by some of your bloggers for a private war within the Anglican Church.

I am Jewish and a woman and I have thoroughly researched all six major religions in this country (including the different denominations within Christianity), as well as quasi religions, such as paganism and witchcraft, and can assure Robin Bather that of all these religions and spiritualities, in both theory and practice, Judaism is one of the least mysoginist and most celebratory of women. If it wasn't, I would have left it by now. I have certainly had many offers to do so.

And why has Judaism lasted so long? Because if women are not accommodated within a religion, it just goes to pieces. Contempt for Judaism among your bloggers has now reached such depths that men are purporting to tell bloggers what it is like to be a Jewish woman.

For your information, Robin, as a lay female expert, I am constantly in touch with the world-renowned Manchester Jewish Bet Din, the ecclesiastical authorities, who seek my advice, and that of other Jewish women, on a number of issues and on every occasion have treated me as an equal, if not greater than an equal.

What a contrast with the many Anglican Bishops and other senior Anglican clergy who, for my sins, I have had to deal with recently(you know, over the slight problem of the Anglican Synod divestment debacle, based on a pack of lies about the Jewish State), and for sheer contempt and sexist arrogance I have come to learn which religion takes the prize.

As a Catholic journalist wrote to me recently: 'The besetting sin of the Anglican Church is their air of effortless superiority', and stupidity, I might add. For, thanks to your Times article, Ruth, I have been reading the Pope's encyclical in love. Not only is it highly erudite, based as it is in Jewish biblical and rabbinic sources, as well as those from the New Testament, but its understanding of women is astounding.

What does the Anglican Church have to offer on women, compared to the Pope, I ask myself?

And what about Islam, Robin, what about Islam? Why be so coy about that religion?

[Mark Bennet]

Being firmly in favour of women as priests and bishops (and without a complex superstructure of unnecessary rules) there is a great deal I could write on the matter. I do feel compelled however to correct two misleading impressions in David Warren's posting of 3 March.
First, Resolution B does not designate a woman priest free zone - women priests can take services, but the PCC says they cannot be vicars or priests in charge - it would be possible for a woman to serve a curacy as a priest in a resolution B parish, for example. Different parishes have used resolutions A and B in different ways - many to buy time to see how women do, before concluding that they would be open to women themselves.
Second, Chris Bryant is correctly described as a 'former Church of England vicar'. To be a vicar is to hold an office, and Chris Bryant does not hold the office of vicar, though he used to.
At the time he became an MP (if my calendar and dates are right) an ordained priest in the Church of England had to renounce the exercise of his/her orders before being able to take a seat in the House of Commons. This is no longer the case. But renouncing the exercise of orders is not the same as no longer being a priest.
If we are going to quote facts, let us at least get them right.

[Sergeant Raj Joshi, Leicestershire]

Dear Ruth,

I take it there is an issue over ordaining female priests? Forgive me if I get any wording wrong here.

I am not saying for one minute that the state intervenes in religion but 6 years is rather a long time!

How "The Times" are changing? And how "The Times" as in the newspaper leads the World.

Even Hinduism is dominated by men, and is some way behind, but Hinduism has no real institution.

Surely the men in the Church are not afraid of a little competition. Or perhaps the institution is a little afraid?

There must be a number of issues holding the female gender back for this to take 6 years. Is it the dress code?

Or maybe it is just that boys will be boys.Equal opportunity does mean equal opportunity. Ermm....The old saying, "And may the best man get the job", will need changing. And about time too. Actually maybe the State should intervene.

[Alistair McBay]

The commentator who says that the Commons has no moral or spiritual authority to decide who should be ordained in the Church of England is right.

Time, then, for disestablishment and complete separation of church and state. The CofE can then continue in its relentless pursuit of the tediously irrelevant, while the rest of us can get on with living in the real world

[Alan Marsh]

The House of Commons also voted to liberalise abortion, to go to war in Iraq and to create civil partnerships. It has no moral or spiritual authority to decide who should be ordained in the Church of England.

It can't even manage to reform the House of Lords!

[Robin Bather]

I was looking forward to hearing Ruth's opinion on this interesting subject but to no avail. I would like very much to have your take on this Ruth.

The C of E is certainly dragging its collective feet on this contentious issue and the government's pressure is required to show them the way.
I would be pleased to see women bishops within this decade as there seems to my way of thinking no logical defence for not ordaining them.

The Anglican Church needs to forge ahead and show the way for other ultra conservative religions like the Church of Rome and Judaism whose misogynistic beliefs belong in the medieval past.

If some Anglicans flee to Catholicism when this new era arrives--so be it. I recall when the Beatles received their well deserved knighthoods several previously knighted people returned their honours in protest. Such is life. Those angry few have been forgotten and in the light of this new millenium we don't find it so shocking to have rock stars with the prefix "Sir."

[David Warren]

Chris Bryant is way out when he states that 'The number of parishes that have declared themselves women priest free zones is tiny, less than 10 per cent.'

In fact 16.14% of parishes have either passed Resolutions A or B, or have petitioned for Extended Episcopal Ministry. That represents a total of 2127 parishes or around the equivalent of 6/7 average sized Dioceses.

If you analyse the figures by Province you discover that 25% of parishes have passed resolutions A or B or have petitioned for Extended Episcopal Ministry, whilst the figure in the Province of Canterbury is 13.4%.

Why is Bryant 'a former Church of England vicar'? I thought once a priest, always a priest, or is that except when you become a Member of Parliament?