Sunday, February 05, 2006
Women bishops in the Church of England
From tomorrow until Thursday, the General Synod will be meeting. I’ll be there as an elected member. A large proportion of this session will be devoted to trying to find a way forward on the issue of women bishops.
There are a lot of people who feel they have a lot at stake in this, on both sides of the argument. I know many women clergy have felt very vulnerable as a result of all this discussion – even I as a lay woman feel vulnerable. The whole debate has some theological undertones around gender and the nature of Christ that I find disturbing (most of which were explicit during the women priests debate but are now in the past as this time round it’s more to do with the role of bishops and the nature of ‘being in communion’). I’m expecting the debates to be very passionate and very painful, and to be honest I’m dreading them and have been worrying about it all for weeks. Please pray for all of us on the Synod – that we respect one another, that we listen to each other, and most importantly that God’s will be done in our church and we don’t do too much to stand in God’s way!
Read on for an overview of where we’re at…
It’s generally accepted that we will have women bishops, but the disagreement comes when we try to decide how to accommodate the minority of people who will not accept women bishops, women priests, or in some cases even men bishops who ordain women. The House of Bishops have proposed a system called Transferred Episcopal Arrangements, where if a woman bishop is appointed, parishes can opt out of being under her authority, and she would be legally required to transfer her authority over that parish to another bishop (like a flying bishop) – although administratively the parish would still remain under the original bishop.
This is a kind of compromise plan, as those against women bishops (Forward in Faith etc) are campaigning for a ‘third province’ which would run separately from the other two provinces of the CofE, and ordain its own priests and bishops. The pro-women bishops groups (Watch, Inclusive Church, Affirming Catholicism etc) are advocating a ‘single clause measure with a code of practice’ which essentially means that there is nothing enshrined in law that allows discrimination against women bishops, but that there would be an enforceable code of practice that required a woman bishop to delegate sacramental responsibility, but not her authority, to another bishop. Of course neither side is completely happy and both sides see scope for developing TEA into something that suits them better - for more discussion try looking at the Church Times. Added messiness is when men ordained by women - or men who ordain women - are added into the equation.
The Synod will have to decide whether to proceed with TEA or not, and will have opportunities to make amendments to the Bishops’ proposals. I’ll try and keep you posted about what’s happening – the main debates are tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday morning and Thursday morning.
There are a lot of people who feel they have a lot at stake in this, on both sides of the argument. I know many women clergy have felt very vulnerable as a result of all this discussion – even I as a lay woman feel vulnerable. The whole debate has some theological undertones around gender and the nature of Christ that I find disturbing (most of which were explicit during the women priests debate but are now in the past as this time round it’s more to do with the role of bishops and the nature of ‘being in communion’). I’m expecting the debates to be very passionate and very painful, and to be honest I’m dreading them and have been worrying about it all for weeks. Please pray for all of us on the Synod – that we respect one another, that we listen to each other, and most importantly that God’s will be done in our church and we don’t do too much to stand in God’s way!
Read on for an overview of where we’re at…
It’s generally accepted that we will have women bishops, but the disagreement comes when we try to decide how to accommodate the minority of people who will not accept women bishops, women priests, or in some cases even men bishops who ordain women. The House of Bishops have proposed a system called Transferred Episcopal Arrangements, where if a woman bishop is appointed, parishes can opt out of being under her authority, and she would be legally required to transfer her authority over that parish to another bishop (like a flying bishop) – although administratively the parish would still remain under the original bishop.
This is a kind of compromise plan, as those against women bishops (Forward in Faith etc) are campaigning for a ‘third province’ which would run separately from the other two provinces of the CofE, and ordain its own priests and bishops. The pro-women bishops groups (Watch, Inclusive Church, Affirming Catholicism etc) are advocating a ‘single clause measure with a code of practice’ which essentially means that there is nothing enshrined in law that allows discrimination against women bishops, but that there would be an enforceable code of practice that required a woman bishop to delegate sacramental responsibility, but not her authority, to another bishop. Of course neither side is completely happy and both sides see scope for developing TEA into something that suits them better - for more discussion try looking at the Church Times. Added messiness is when men ordained by women - or men who ordain women - are added into the equation.
The Synod will have to decide whether to proceed with TEA or not, and will have opportunities to make amendments to the Bishops’ proposals. I’ll try and keep you posted about what’s happening – the main debates are tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday morning and Thursday morning.
