Church & State: Another fine mess?

The parliamentary reaction to this week’s synod vote tells a powerful tale. Wearing his Garrick Club tie, the Second Church Estates Commissioner answered questions from MP's, all of whom expressed amazement and moral repugnance about the official and institutionalised sexism of the Established Church. (note to overseas readers — The Garrick Club is an exclusive Gentleman's club in the West End).

The Garrick Club Tie Gaffe (if such it was) underlined an important aspect of the problem: the Church claims to be far more than a private organisation like a golf club, masonic lodge, or Gentleman's London hang-out. It claims to be good news for everyone, and the fury of our legislators when they see it acting as though it were a private club, disconnected from society, was unmistakable.

In our present context it appears that institutionalized sexism undermines everything. If a vicar smacked his children publicly, it would radically undermine their moral authority. Saying that corporal punishment was in the Bible, as it is, or parents had a duty to discipline their children, or that it was a matter of sincere conviction that children should be beaten for their own good, would only squander more moral authority.

This is not Guardian reading political liberalism. All theology and ethics are contextual — they only mean anything, as with all aspects of the Word, when they take flesh. A society populated by people bearing the consciousness and identity our great grandmothers had wouldn't find this question urgent, but ours does. This is an assertion of realism not liberalism.

In the light of several conversations this week all round, the realisation is creeping over me, like cold water in a hot bath, that when everything contingent has been talked out, this does all boil down to sex discrimination, no more, no less. Discriminatory is as discriminatory does. We're not fooling anyone, not even ourselves any more by pretending otherwise. The failure of any male headship argument to register in the House of Commons debate implies that, politically speaking, those who hold new model Complementarian views would be better off explaining the moral value of that particular kind of discrimination than pretending it is not what it manifestly is.

Look, nobody actually believes “men are the same as women.” The question is why should we impose an artificial difference on men and women that renders women permanently subordinate? It hasn’t always been so, even in our tradition. In the Bronze Age, Deborah Judged Israel, and that was OK. Unlike possessing a womb, subordination of women is not inevitable or, these days, generally desirable. New model Complementarianism as expressed last week is an elaborate three card trick. You begin by saying (1) everyone is equal, then (2) that they're different, then (How do they do that? watch out for the Queen of Hearts) (3) it's OK if woman are subordinated because that's a difference. Innit.  Ah but you see, it's precisely the subordination that isn't equal, or acceptable to our MP's. They think it's inequality. Because it is.

Another trope that's been doing the rounds is about the state imposing its standards on the Church. This happens all the time when churches are forced to conform to the Charities Act, or fire regulations, or the National Insurance Act.

St Paul met this challenge in Romans 13. When he told the Christians to obey the civil power because it does not wield the sword in vain to accomplish right he was talking about Nero. The man who executed him. But he believed what he said.

Look, if sex discrimination is actually wrong in our context (and all moral convictions can only be formulated or expressed contextually), than for the state to stop it is no more questionable than the state preventing the Church discriminating racially, or beating children, or owning slaves. Those last two, incidentally, also came with a rich Biblical pedigree, in the days they were morally acceptable enough for the largest slave owner in England was the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel. They may have been OK then, but now they are not.

People ask, can't we all just forget this stuff and preach the gospel? It's a lovely thought, but what this parliamentary debate makes clear is that if part of the "Gospel" is treating women as subordinate, incapable of offering service as they are gifted by virtue of their sex alone, it's bad news to the people it is trying to reach, not gospel. Most people hold that sex discrimination is wrong in the Church or anywhere else not because they are wild left Guardian readers or secularists (though they could be either or both of those things), but as the natural consequence of their deep moral convictions, their Gospel as they have received it.

Change comes in such matters not by compulsion, but by a vision. That is how St Peter, on the roof at Caesarea, acquired a new approach to living by Kosher laws. Change will come from a bigger vision of humanity, in which gender is not a means to impose artificial limitations on people, either the body of the Church, or the world, or gifted and called individuals, but rather an aspect of being the way God creates us and equips us to be good news to the whole creation.

Whatever the procedural arcana of the General Synod, politically well-informed people are now saying it's probably a one-clause measure within two years or curtains for the establishment. The Church would lose its implicit broad spectrum engagement with public life but, trying to look on the bright side, could design a catchy club tie for itself.

On Cliffs and Hanging

So this is what the Game show hosts call “Make-up-your-mind time.” For once, the Guardian and the Telegraph agree — this is Decision-Day. Like everyone on all sides, I’m praying. On days like this the Church chances the notion that the rather slippery and elusive concept of God’s will can emerge and take flesh. The risk is real, both that it will and that it won‘t. I read again what I’ve said on this blog about women and the episcopate. Back in July 2008, it struck me that the mountain those opposed to this had to climb was to come up with some way their sticking points, however irrational, could be positive and missional — good news. This has not happened, perhaps because it could not be done.

Since then, considerable ingenuity has gone into attempts to square the circle between justice and voodoo, almost successfully at times. We nearly discovered Schrödinger’s Cat with a Hat — she both is and is not a bishop depending on whether the box is open. Along the way many have said “there is no doubt this will happen — the only question is how.” They are probably correct, politically, but it doesn’t help to have lost focus on why and what it could mean to have women in the episcopate. Also, there's a danger that this way of speaking has created an illusion that any institution can stagger on for ever finessing the detail without losing something of the plot.

On offer is a considerable, almost fatal, compromise of principle, but most progress in the world is made crabwise. Looking at the big picture, it would be tragic to waste another seven years on this issue, and, given the sheer quanitity of thought and prayer that has gone into the present sticky compromise that’s on offer, the idea that one more wee heave will dissolve the knot is purest moonshine. Permitting blacks to sit on white beaches may leave a vestige of apartheid. It may be less good than abolishing white beaches. But it’s progress. MLK said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

If not now, when?

So Long, Mr Nibbles

Dr Robyn Skinner, psychotherapist, once had a patient with a most annoying habit. He always brought along a stuffed toy rabbit, a mysterious authority figure that was assiduously consulted before any critical decision. The presence of Mr Nibbles was lucrative for Dr Skynner, but seriously inhibited progress with the gentleman’s condition. Theological discussions involve sensitive personal matters, and participants often bring along their stuffed rabbits — mystery authority figures. 

Anglicans have three particular bunnies. 

There’s a Vatican Gold one — 

“we’d love to, but what would the Pope say?” Well, the real Pope has always shot straight from the hip about womens’ ordination. He abominates it lock stock and barrel. He even came up with the ordinariate, a tiny but perfectly formed exercise in what Southern Baptists call sheep stealing, that leaves no room for doubt.

There’s the Biblical Literalist one — 

Oh, we all know God didn’t do the job in seven literal days, but the nursery narrative says could have, and we want to play safe. On gender equality most people know the score. The most avid “complementarians” do allow their wives to bob and cut their hair, to speak about faith, except in Church, to lead teams containing men. They’re part of a Church whose supreme governor is a woman. The English settled the real issue about whether women could ever, as a matter of Creation ordinance, hold positions of authority over men back in 1569, and it’s generally worked out fine since.

Finally there’s the dog eared old rabbit called “nice.”

All manner of murder and mayhem, backstabbing and worse, go on at the Vicarage. Only we must be nice about it. In fact, none of us are as nice as we like to think we are, but the pretence continues in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary if only we behave well. Nice is full of “yes, buts.” I first encountered it in the form “We’d love to have a Cheshire home in the town, but we can’t let people in wheelchairs dent our property values.” yes, But... It’s anything but nice. And in present circumstances another canter round the paddock for this question is anything but nice.

This week the General Synod reaches a final vote. Stuffed rabbits sometimes help make it possible to talk together along the way, but they can't help with final decisions. Best vote according to your positive convictions, one way or the other. If you believe women cannot be bishops, you couldn’t live with yourself if you voted any way but against. Nobody would expect otherwise. But the reverse is also true for those who do believe women can be called by God to the episcopate.

It makes no sense at all to anyone to consult any stuffed rabbits any more. Everyone has compromised, including those who believe in a non discriminatory church. The idea that another trip around the gasworks on this subject will deliver traditionalists anything better in eight years’ time seems, frankly, insane. That could only happen if a new synod represents a final retreat into the ghetto, because the direction of travel on planet earth is plain as a pikestaff, and it's the other way.

After years of trying out every conceivable permutation a compromise has been reached that leaves almost everybody unsatisfied. The only process grounds left involve the notion that a statutory instrument is too far short of a statute to protect people — a somewhat top shelf legal concept that is simply untrue in any other area of life.

Time to leave Mr Nibbles out of it and vote according to conviction. Time to move on. 

Cooking the Curate’s Egg

So, where has the C of E got to this week on Ministry and gender?
Assuming Les Six have done their stuff, an amended scheme will go before the General Synod in a few days time.

Down the road leading here two mantras have pullulated behind the discussion:

(1) “This isn't, of course, about gender. Perish the Thought.”
This assertion is a lie. It is, and it always was. Discriminatory is as discriminatory does. It is not for the discriminator to judge the matter, based on their intentions, but those discriminated against, based on what actually happens. All else is illusion.

(2) “This is about theology not discrimination.”
This assertion is a lie. However you tart it up, Trevor Huddleston showed us years ago, discriminating is actually a theological assertion. Imagine, as I have attempted sincerely to do, that there is a theology that justifies treating women, against their will and calling, as inferior. I can't conceive of such a thing, but let's suspend disbelief for a moment. What is the difference between that noble theology and cultural prejudice dressed in voodoo? At no time in the past five years has anyone showed me. All that unites reactionaries in this matter seems to be a cultural prejudice against seeing women in positions of authority, reinforced by a reactionary subculture. It is every bit as much drawn from the contemporary world’s values as progressive aspiration. It’s just drawn from the reactionary quarter of them.

So, for synod members, it’s what one game show used to call make-up-your-mind-time, for the next five years anyway.

If the Church needs a gender-neutral ministry, something the vast majority of people believe to be right, this scheme does not deliver that. It is fundamentally inequitable and discriminatory. The best condoms do not have holes in them, however small. There is no telling what monstrous births may take place in the various caves of Adullam this measure potentially creates. It could be a step in the right direction, but it will retain the Church’s institutional sexism in a way most people outside the bubble find puzzling and, ultimately, morally disgusting.

If what matters most is the lesser matter of allowing women to be bishops, this scheme does finagle that. In itself the eventual presence of women in the house of bishops might be able to achieve what the present set-up couldn’t for the institution, and plug the hole in the bucket. In a down and dirty world this won't be the first time in human affairs tulips were grown on dung.

As to the leadership of the Church in synod, a lifetime of pretending, whilst trying to set their course on dead reckoning and politics with only an occasional star sight, scarcely prepares them to exercise moral leadership at a critical moment. Most episcopal palaces are emitting a loud and eloquent silence now. Many of our senior men probably thought on Monday that all they were doing was giving the women what they wanted whilst being as nice as possible to the other lot. That's why you can't see them for dust now.

It’s Touch and Go, I’d say.

Swimmin with the Wimmin part 94

So what was the women bishops result? I don’t really know, of course, not being part of the house of bishops, but preliminary indications are pretty much that things can roll forward. Bishop Pete Broadbent, who sits in the House, has provided a good thumbnail summary.

The result, in true C of E fashion, is a curate’s egg, but probably not such a rotten one as to send the whole process around again in five years time. The Bishops said “yes,” mainly because anything else would be ludicrous now. The number of people requiring alternative episcopal oversight has dipped in most of the country, very likely, below 2-3% of electoral roll members — something like 0·06% of the population. Another circuit to land in 5 years time would not yield a different result, and certainly not one more congenial to those who believe women do not belong in positions of episcopal authority.

But, some inquire, what exactly does the press release Ruth Gledhill called “the worst written since the Reformation” actually mean?

The project basically moves forward with two amendments. I will now attempt to pick through the entrails. If I am wrong, please correct me. But this is what I think it means...

(1) The first amendment expresses the slightly donnish theological distinction Rowan pushed at the last general synod between “delegated” power, a legal thing, and what could be called ordinary episcopal authority. Thus when I ordain people I am understood to derive my authority to do so from my ordination as a bishop, not from the Bishop of Oxford let alone his gene pool. This has the benefit of expressing traditional ecclesiology in the way that the flying bishops project never did.

The distinction is supposed to help on two fronts. Those who believe higher clergy need male gonads can comfort themselves in the knowledge that their guy got all of his regular authority to function from the admittedly nebulous entity called “the whole church of God,” not the XX bishop up the road. On the other front the Chromosomally Simplistic One can reassure herself that she got her authority from the same place and did not lose any of her episcopal Mojo in order to placate the XY-only people. Their arrangements were a merely legal fandango.

In itself this amendment was probably necessary to move forward at all, given the situation created by the Act of Synod from 1993. Unlike the nineties flying bishops arrangement, at least this amendment is ecclesiologically coherent, and it could help normalise perceptions from a theological point of view. The extent to which ordinary people (in the non-ecclesiastical sense of that term) know or care about it may well be limited.

(2) A second amendment requires bishops to have serious regard, when allocating clergy, to the reasons parishes require bishops or priests with gonads.

On the face of it this is common sense. If people want a male because the Eucharist must be celebrated by someone who shares Jesus’ biological gender (if not his Jewishness or Beard), they get a Real Man of the Eucharist. If on the other hand they believe that God Made Woman not to hold any authority over men in Church (unless an Archdeacon or Supreme Governor), then what matters isn’t the Eucharist, but that women don’t preach to other men. In effect these latter want a proper male preacher, having often in past times had an Oxbridge blue in some Manly Pastime. Just remember this is nothing to do with gender, and that this second amendment, kindly and sensibly, requires a proper match in this matter.

Is the Church going to remain a discriminatory organisation, with a thinning theological figleaf to cover its vulnerability? Truth compels me to say, probably yes. In Brer Rabbit terms the old deal was that the buses were not segregated, and as long as the whites who believed in segregation on biblical grounds sat at the front, they could kid themselves that there weren't blacks at the back of the bus. This has now been modified. The driver can soon be black, and those who believe in Biblically based separate development can either stare out the window sideways or comfort themselves that they only have to look on the back of the driver's head. This scheme could well be a way to bring women bishops onshore from places like Oz, New Zealand, Canada, and the US. That's progress, I suppose. Intellectually, it’s not quite desegregation. But do not underestimate the power of evolution. We wouldn't be having this discussion if Evolution didn’t work.

In the meanwhile my picking over the entrails mattereth not a pig’s burp. There is a special Group of Six Wise Ones (including one woman) who will now pick over the entrails to decide whether this is too radical a change to go forward. I wouldn’t think that's too risky a bet, but the C of E is a place loaded with surprising possibilities. If Les Six do decide this amended scheme won’t blow all the fuses on the Enterprise, everything rolls onward to York in June. Get that old ecclesiastical anorak out of the cupboard and tighten your underwear. The Monstrous Regiment is at the gates.

Off for a few Monastic days

Abandoning what some speak of as the smoking ruins of the General Synod, I’m off for a week in a monastery. Reports and notes will follow, but I do turn off the Internet at St Wandrille, and won't be blogging again until next weekend.

I’m not sure the ruins of the General Synod are smoking, even if the next steps remain to be discerned on ordaining women to the episcopate. The Archbishops had a right to do as they did and suggest another way forward, although I can understand some synod members feeling the procedure gazumped due process. The synod had the right to decide it didn't quite buy the deal. C’est la vie. The Holy Spirit is able to work through the human processes of the General Synod...

Howbeit, one doughty layman of a traditionally Conservative outlook suggested to me at a recent do, you can't really have a situation where the blacks are allowed on the bus but only because there's a whites only section at the front where, as long as the passengers don't look round, they can feel as though nothing’s changed. It’s for everyone to decide what their consciences will and won't wear, but we each and all have more or less tuned consciences, and therein lies the complexity. He thinks they all need a bit of moral courage, now. Further paralysis and funk is the worst option of all, surely, for everyone. Time for a bit of faith.

Revision Committee: Tough Salami

The latest from the rather dry and technical sounding Revision Committee on women in the Episcopate which met yesterday contains one ecclesiologically significant discovery:

After much discussion, the members of the Committee were unable to identify a basis for specifying particular functions for vesting which commanded sufficient support both from those in favour of the ordination of women as bishops and those unable to support that development. As a result all of the proposals for vesting particular functions by statute were defeated.

The effect of the Committee’s decision is therefore that such arrangements as are made for those unable to receive the episcopal ministry of women will need to be by way of delegation from the diocesan bishop rather than vesting.

It seems that the 19 members of the committee spent long hard hours trying to see if there was some way of producing some kind of new model episcopacy that simultaneously was and wasn’t complete in the ministry of every bishop. What they seem to have discovered by painful endeavour is that it just isn’t possible to salami slice what bishops’ ministry is within an autocephalous Church. St Cyrprian’s principle (“Episcopatus unus est cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur”) has, since the time of Archbishop Benson (1882-18891), been the keystone of Anglican theology of Episcopacy. Thus, ecclesiological first principles prove themselves.

So what? The choice now before Synod is for provision outside the legislation itself, or a statutory code of practice. The full synod will doutbless discuss these options and decide what they want to do between these options. There is, of course, always a third option of dong nothing (letting the measure fail). This is the kind of discussion and decision making the General Synod is for, really. February’s debates could well make interesting reading...

Women Leaders stand up and out

Willow Creek has long sought to recognise leaders regardless of gender. If God has plainly gifted someone for leadership, why pretend he hasn’t on grounds of mere gender? In practice, however, the vast majority of faculty members at previous summits have been men.
This year’s event has included in its lineup two particularly inspiring women, Wendy Kopp of Teach for America and Catherine Rohr of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program.

Both, shortly after leaving College, resolved to change the world, by taking wasteful injustices head on . TfA uses a Peace Corps model, with its strengths and weaknesses, to deploy good young graduates in inner city schools with a transformative brief. PEP, based in Texas, seeks to turn around prisoners’ lives in the largest state penal system in the world, by giving them self-awareness and self-respect, growing character, and developing the will to use skills which have been misapplied in constructive ways.

Both Catherine and Wendy came over as sharp, perceptive, high capacity, and practical. These qualities came with low tolerance of being assumed to be their own PA’s, or otherwise patronised. How many times in the past 30 years, asked Catherine, with laserbeam piquancy, had Bill Hybels been asked what it felt like to be a male leader?

The Church of England has some honest, passionate, realistic and focussed leadership like this at senior levels, but desperately needs more. I think back to the stifling, idiotic boys club culture of deanery chapters I belonged to in the 1980’s, and rejoice to think it has largely been subverted. As this process marches on, even towards the House of Bishops, it’s good to know the talent is out there, if only we find the grace and wisdom to acknowledge and deploy it.

ASBO Jesus Discussion Starter 506

Hmm...

Church of Navel-Gazers?

I am not a natural Daily Mail reader, and I struggle with some of its historic points of view, from its enthusiastic endorsement for Hitler back in the 1930’s to its more recent tendency to whining Xenophobia. The fact is, however, that it is one of the few newspapers to build its circulation in the past twenty years. It has done this, it is said, by having a sure finger on the pulse of middle England.

Seeking the gift the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us, I noticed a different persective on this week’s General Synod by Stephen Glover. Does this voice of Middle England deserve more serious consideration than comes naturally to Church political insiders?

Most people do not know the Church of England very well, and few of us regularly worship in its pews. But it is, for all that, our national Church, and most of us write 'C of E' when asked our religion. Millions of us are still married in its often glorious churches, and millions of us will have the words of its prayer book - transcendent ones, if they come from the 1662 version - spoken over our coffins when we are dead. So, however remote we may appear from the Church of England, it remains part of many of our lives, if less so than for most of our forefathers.

Strange and unfamiliar it may sometimes seem, but it is not some private sect whose deliberations are purely its own concern. And yet that is exactly what it has appeared to be these past few weeks, months and, I fear, years, as it has torn itself apart over issues that do not seem central to this nation's needs and concerns...

Our national Church is preoccupied - no, obsessed - with two issues: whether its priests should be allowed to be practising homosexuals, and whether women should be allowed to become bishops. I don't say such matters should be of no importance to members of the Church. But to concentrate on them so long to the virtual exclusion of more important things - well, that seems a form almost of madness, and certainly evidence of grotesque introspection.

One does not have to be apocalyptic to believe that we live, as David Cameron says, in 'a broken society' in which Christian values, as they would have been recognised by our fathers and grandfathers, and as they have been preached by the Church for nearly 2,000 years, are scarcely observed, or even understood, by many people.

Nearly half of marriages, which institution the Church has celebrated as the rock on which society is built, end in divorce. A growing number of people no longer bother to get married at all. The family, whose most perfect inspiration was the Holy Family, is no longer a paradigm for many people, and the Church of England only intermittently and half-heartedly promotes it. The Church is silent on many pressing social problems which seem to portend the slow disintegration of society, and often arise from the family breakdown about which it is comparatively relaxed. While it has been agonising about homosexual priests, ever younger children have been stabbed to death on our streets, and the level of mindless violence seems inexorably to grow. Yet our national Church has little to say about the brutalisation of our country...

The debate on the consecration of women bishops has been bewildering to many people, including some Anglicans. The Church of England decided 15 years ago, rightly I think, that there is no theological objection to the ordination of women as priests. Now half those accepted for ordination are female, and there are women canons, archdeacons and even a dean. Why not bishops?

One can understand that Anglo-Catholics should feel qualms about women bishops, as they did about women priests, and it seems reasonable that they should have their own male 'super bishops', as was proposed at the Synod yesterday. But the country looks on in amazement as Anglo-Catholics threaten to resign en masse, and to rip apart a Church that is, frankly, already tottering. Their arguments seem arcane, particularly in view of the earlier acceptance of women priests, and almost insanely inwardlooking.

Similar objections should be made to the Church of England's obsession with homosexual priests. Here, the factions are different, with the Anglo-Catholics being for the most part relaxed about homosexuality, while many Evangelicals, comfortable with the idea of women bishops, are distinctly queasy about homosexual priests. Many Third World Anglicans, especially in Africa, share their reservations.

But why in God's name does it matter so much? Both sides should be castigated for upping the ante. There are people such as the publicity-seeking American gay bishop, Gene Robinson, for whom homosexuality appears to be the most important issue in the world, and there are fundamentalists on the other side, the degree of whose intolerance seems almost un-Christian.

Everyone knows there have always been gay priests, and no one minded very much as long as they didn't demand instant and complete equality with heterosexuals within the Church. With good sense on both sides, there could have been a quiet evolution, which has been the Anglican way in past centuries, or at any rate since 1660 and the restoration of the monarchy and the Church of England.

As it is, with grandstanding crusaders opposed by intolerant fundamentalists, there has been an unedifying struggle about something not very important, while the rest of the country looks on in amazement at an increasingly monomaniacal national Church. Think what both Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals in the Church of England did for society in the 19th and early 20th century - building churches and opening missions in working-class areas, ministering to the poor, encouraging education, and inculcating Christian values.

And now, when our own century throws up its different but perhaps no less appalling social problems, our national Church, far from trying to fill this frightening moral vacuum, is too busy talking to itself.

I have certainly met good ordinary people, many of them lifelong core members of the Church of England, traditionally minded rather than traditionalist politicians, who think exactly along Stephen’s lines. They often feel that nobody in Synod speaks for them, and the whole focus of the present debate excludes their point of view. Discuss?

Reactionary Mount Improbable?

Presiding at the Eucharist this morming for a religious community, the Gospel from St Matthew told of Jesus and the woman with Haemorrhages and Jairus' daughter. These gave some hope of healing and resurrection. The verses just before, I notice with great disquiet, had Jesus laying down the very un-English principle that new wine requires new wineskins — not great politics, but the sober truth. I can say, with some relief, I'm not a part of this afternoon’s discussion. We’ll see how and where the Spirit leads, and try and make it work, whatever.

Driving back, it struck me that the Bible contains all kinds of praxis, including women judges in the OT and a gender balanced leadership in early Churches. The NT tells women to wear hats and ask their husbands when they get home, as it tells slaves to obey their masters cheerfully. It's a command to live incarnationally within the real world. Following that command today would take you to a missional place where female subordination wins no respect, and slavery is gone in spite, you may feel, of the clear teaching of the Scriptures, if you take their advice to slaves as absolute rather than circumstantial.

From a Catholic viewpoint whom you ordain is a matter of canon not dogma. I respect and very much like the tiny number of petitioning clergy we have. I hate the idea of the church causing them distress. I wish they had been able to come up with some way of locating their convctions aganst female bishops in some bigger moral framework, in which there was some positive candle, apart from inertia, reactionary fear and hurt feelings. I would love to have this explained to me, but nobody has so far come out with anything remotely convincing on this level to any except their own.

Talking to non-ecclesastical-anoraks, Discriminatory is as discriminatory does. For them, rejecting gender inequalty isn’t a fashion statement. They believe, deeply, that discriminatory attitudes and behaviour are disgusting and immoral. The Church preaches hope and new life, but seemingly behaves less ethically within itself, as they see it, than Woolworths. To reply that ’tis all, in truth, some kind of Father Ted voodoo mystery thing means nothing at all to anyone who thinks this way. This is as big a missional no-brainer as disobedient wives and truculent slaves would have been in the early church. No system of pockets within which gender based discrimination is OK can cut any ice missionally. Pragmatically, perhaps you can abolish racial discrimination in Alabama whilst keeping a few all white buses, or all-white drivers’ rotas. On every other level, it just don’t make sense.

That’s the mountain our so-called traditionalist friends have to climb, and sincerely I wish them good luck with it. I can’t join them on the climb, because I believe passionately in the Church’s mission, and at the heart of that is the building of a kingdom in which there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, but all are called to be one in Christ Jesus. Period.

General Synod Crisis Management 101

As the General Synod discovers that a lifetime of steering around difficulties rather than facing them scarce prepares one for an hour such as this, we all need a bit of inspiration and guidance. Here it is, from an old campaigner with an established track record for sorting out real crises:

Far more deadly than the Male...

I’m trying to contain my disappointment at not being invited to Gafcon by watching Matthew Sweet’s delicious celebration of the British B movie, Truly, Madly, Cheaply (available on the iPlayer for 6 more days). My favourite was Devil Girl from Mars (1954). It makes Ed Wood look like Kubrick.

The IMDB warns “The plot synopsis of this film is empty.” But I look upon that statement as a challenge. Niyah, a shiny six footer in kinky boots and PVC cycle cape, comes straight from Mars. But what’s she doing over here? Well, Mars, now governed by women, has run out of men. Probably eaten by kinky devil girls. Let’s hope they died happy. So Niyah has come over here, accompanied by a Kelvinator Chunky Robot who doesn’t like trees, to replenish with hearty highland stock. All she can find on the moors are tweedy old gits with pebble glasses, and twinset girls in two piece business suits. Hope springs eternal at a humble highland guest house — They don’t do Bombay Mix, but they have got a desirably plummy Harry Enfield male lead.

NIYAH (for it is She): Fools!
DPHEML: Mrs Jamieson! May I introduce your latest guest. This is Niyah. she comes from Mars.
CRABBY LANDLADY: Oh, well that’ll be another bed.

Quite. You can work out the rest for yourself.

But these things were written for our learning. This is the summer of love when General Synod votes on female bishops, and some real ones come to Lambeth. Some will remember that Item 1 on the radical feminist agenda was a fantastic night of terror that menaced the fate of the world back in 1954. “Mankind’s greatest threat is a single woman.” The more reflective and mission minded among us will think that 50 years on it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

Worth at least a thousand words

Dave Walker has been bringing clarity to the three options outlined in the Manchester Report — absolutely brilliantly. The one that caught my eye was his graphic depiction of option III (“3 non geographic dioceses”). Pretty much says it all, really.

So it’s over to the politicians of the General Synod now. To paraphrase the Prophet Amos (3:3), (as genteely as possible) the fact is that, er, two half bottoms do not a whole bottom make...

As is only right, immense amounts of care have gone into trying to help out those opposed to women’s ordination. Various schemes, (such as TEA), were ingenious attempts to square the circle, but apparently did not help the people for whom they were designed. A strong code of practice alongside the legislation will help everyone engage with reality charitably. Because of the way this discussion has been almost entirely framed around the objections of opponents, people may forget other salient facts:

1. Everybody has a conscience, including those who believe that Galatians 3:28 does apply to the sociological setup of ordained ministry, and ecumenical partners who are scandalised by the C of E’s present practice.
   
2. Everybody is capable of feeling pain, including women whose ministries are rejected or marginalised within our present arrangements.
3. Gradualism has been the way until now — women preaching in the 60’s, deacons in the 80’s, priests in the 90’s... If, however, you are turning a turtle, the kindest way to do it is probably to pick up the shell and do it, not one leg at a time.
   

Kipling for profit and pleasure...

The late great Sir John Harvey-Jones, King of the Kipper Tie, used to remind lily-livered businessmen shivering on the brink of change, “Remember, you can only get shot once.” True, but our elders and betters in the General Synod seem to have devised a way of making getting shot take about thirty years. Fun it ain’t.

As elaborate plans are mooted for somehow simultaneously having female bishops and not having female bishops, I puzzle over about the whole notion of preventing schism by institutionalising it. Really?

Everybody knows it’s coming. The question is “how?” There’s a discussion Tuesday among my colleagues in funny hats, to be developed by the House of Bishops (of which I am not a member) another day, and taken to the General Synod to decide. Justice, operationally, to losers — of course; but it’s kindest and truest to make up our minds. Personally, I’ve been trying to stay my anxiety in the traditional way for frightened males of my father’s generation to calm their nerves: an evening’s anxious Kipling:

Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act...

So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

Friends, shall we Kipple? probably not. The time for Kipling is over. However there is a line that runs from Duck-Rabbit integrative complexity to subtlety to ambiguity to fudge to hypocrisy. Now’s the time to decide where we place ourselves on that line, and the way to decide, after we have listened carefully, is by charity and higher logic, not the purest hobgoblins of small minds.

Ending Discrimination — Amen Brother!

A big sloppy wet enthusiastic “Amen, brother!” to Simon Barrow, from think-tank Ekklesia. Obviously there are jobs (like being a vicar) for which some faith commitment is part of the job. What is wrong is to pretend every role in a Christian organisation carries this occupational requirement, or to resort to abusive process. Reporting a recent employment tribunal judgment, he writes:

This judgement ought to make religious charities sit up and think - not just about their legal responsibilities and the morality of non-discrimination, but about the impact of their behaviour on their image with the public at large.

Leaders and entrepreneurs in many faith organisations seem reluctant to embrace a comprehensive equalities agenda, or to recognise their culpability in issues of discrimination. Yet they are often the first to seek exemptions from legislation accepted by others and to complain that they are being 'attacked' when criticisms are raised.

The Christian message of love and justice is undermined by poor employment and equalities practices in the Christian organisations. This is an opportunity for the churches to get their house in order.

This encapsulates precisely what I was trying to say here last week about raising our game in Church employment practice, to create a safer less abusive working environment. I see this as one key weapon against bullying cultures and practice after appointment. Talking this through with people over the past few days, it seems our diocesan appointment practice is basically sound, but there’s a challenge to prove it. Out in the world of parochial appointments, practice varies from state of the art to completely potty. Time for the tough to get going...

PS — full and detailed account of the original case by Ruth Gledhill here.

Women bishops — but how?

Big stack of reading over the next fortnight, on women bishops, including the new report about implementation possibilities from the Bishop of Manchester’s group. I’m all ears (eyes?), and look forward to the college of bishops later this month. It was very helpful indeed to have full (anti) comment from Cardinal Kasper two years ago, albeit from his narrow denominational perspective. I will also revisit the substantial theological reaction to the Cardinal’s lecture from the Bishops of Durham and Salisbury in 2006, which set his advice in a biblical, broad ecumenical and historical context.

Before I start reading, three immediate historical thoughts come to mind, process markers rather than conclusions:

1. In the OT God appointed an order among his people; but its expression, including its gender makeup was variable. The order of judges, with occasional female supremacy, gave way to male kings, tradition says, because the people wanted to be like the others round about them. God, in his providence, said “yes.” In the New Covenant, the Church’s highest calling is to be a delivery system for the kingdom, and, as body of Christ, what Maximus the Confessor called an “enfleshing of the incarnation.” Therefore the practical sociology of Christian ministry has always been contextual, not absolute, reflecting the reality of the social structures around it. Thus Early Church practice within which 30-40% of the leadership was female gave way to a medieval order where imperialistic institutionalism was the order of the day, and it was inconceivable that anyone but celibate males should exercise authority. All this by divine permission. Absolutising 12th century cultural assumptions, whilst cutting free from the (frankly ludicrous) anthropology of female subordination that validated them at the time, seems to me historicist weirdness, ignoring truths recovered by the sixteenth century Reformation.
2. When we turn from fading Roman Imperialism to its British counterpart, 20th century bureaucrats, with their instinct for steering round difficulties rather than facing them, loved partition solutions. They were the centrepiece of British Imperial policy in Ireland (1922), Palestine (1948), India (1947) and Cyprus (1955). They seemed rather noble means for giving incompatible populations long term peace. However those colonial governors wore ostrich feathers for a reason. What they actually did, long term, was institutionalise schism. Their product in Ireland was almost a hundred years of violence, in Palestine sixty years of strife, in India (Kashmir and Pakistan) a war in which a million people died, in Cyprus the green line. The man at the FO could sign the problem off and bring the troops home, but, long term, I can’t think of a single partition solution that was a long term winner. We are still struggling with deadly institutionalised schism in the Middle East and India. Of course in Church everything is entirely different, but history is reality written for our learning, and I can’t get enthusiastic about elegant churchy versions of the kind of statesmanship that so delighted 20th Century Sir Humphreys. They got their knighthoods but they also got the big picture dangerously wrong.
3. To return to Church history, formative Anglican theologians did not attempt to build the church by cobbling together some kind of synthetic panjandrum out of the most extreme positions, to keep everyone on board politically. Instead, they centred everything back on the Scriptures and the Creeds. This method worked for them, anyway. Perhaps we should try it. Too much Ecclesiastical Heath Robinson Engineering and you'll end up with a bunch of grinning politicians and no real bishops anyway, male or female.
   

A Real Pioneer minstry

I’m very sad about the death of Margaret Hall, Associate Priest at St Michael’s Amersham. Her working ministry was characteristic of a generation of women called to ordained ministry — Teaching geography and music, then (1978) Accredited Lay Minister (What in the Middle Ages was called a “Lady Worker”, Deaconess (1980), Deacon (1987), Priest (1994). Her ministry gifts were first accredited by a male-led “Board of Women’s Work.” The title sounds completely Harry Enfield, but they seem to have concerned their pretty heads with rather more than ironing and housework. Thirty years ago all sorts of otherwise intelligent people believed that God Created Daughters of Eve mainly to push out babies, do the typing and make the coffee. The brains were an accidental addition. We haven’t quite grown out of this attitude, but today at least the boot’s on the other foot.

Margaret was a sharp, sometimes visionary, critical thinker, whose life was touched, profoundly, by grace. Her ministry had to grow in slow motion, in a Church struggling to learn how to get real about women’s ministry. I’ve never had to serve a church which can’t accept God’s grace in my life merely on grounds of something I was born. For a generation of women called to Priesthood there was always potential embitterment from the context. This drew Margaret back to the heart of what her calling was about, pastorally and sacramentally. She just got on with the job, in Chesham (especially Ashley Green) and Amersham, and thousands will always thank God for her skilled pastoral care, realism and passion for truth and justice, personally expressed and applied. She had a rich and loving home life. Always a genuine team player, she involved herself in Citizens Advice and the Samaritans as well as church ministry. Praying with her last week in hospital, she ministered to me far more than me to her. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.