68 GSCENE
KEITH SHARPE
TRUE COLOURS
A TRIUMPH FROM DISASTER?
BY DR KEITH SHARPE,
CHANGING ATTITUDE SUSSEX
Tuesday, 20th November 2012 is a date which will go down as a fateful
day in the history of Christianity in this country. The media headlines
were all about the Church of England voting against women being
allowed to become bishops. But actually the ramifications of the no
vote go far wider.
I sat through the entire Synod debate in Church House, Westminster. It
was a sobering experience. The whole day was given over to this one
issue: should the proposed legislation to admit women to the
episcopate by passed or rejected? Well over 100 speeches were made.
The motion was generally expected to be approved but as the afternoon
wore on I became less and less certain that it would be. Just before
lunch the incoming new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, had
spoken powerfully and cogently in favour. And just after lunch the
outgoing Archbishop, Rowan Williams, made a really moving and
impassioned plea for Synod to support the legislation. But gradually the
weight of opposition against it began to become clear as speaker after
speaker got up to condemn it.
Synod is divided into three ‘houses’ : bishops,
clergy, and laity. The House of Bishops were
overwhelmingly for, but even there some argued
against the measure, including our own Bishop of
Chichester, Martin Warner. The House of Clergy was
also predominantly in favour but here too some
spoke passionately against it. But in the House of
Laity there seemed to be a surprisingly large
number of people anxious to get to the podium to
vent their fervent disapproval of the proposed
change. The motion needed a two thirds majority in each house in order
to pass. It got this easily in the House of Bishops, and by some margin
in the House of Clergy. But in the House of Laity it only achieved 64%
support and so fell short, just.
How could this happen? Basically it came about because of an unholy
alliance between extremely conservative Anglo Catholics and extremely
conservative Evangelicals. This alliance is cynical and unholy because
the two groups hold diametrically opposed views of almost everything
else. They only agree that women cannot be ordained, and they agree
on this for totally different reasons.
The Anglo Catholics think that women cannot be priests (and therefore
bishops) because Christ chose only males for his disciples. This is not
the place to go into the labyrinthine argumentation which this premise
entails. Suffice to say that the consequence is that it is for them
impossible for a female to become a priest. So putting a woman
through an ordination ceremony is merely a charade: the magic can’t
‘work’, it just doesn’t ‘take’, you end up with a female in fancy dress.
The Conservative Evangelicals think that women should not be priests.
They don’t believe in the Catholic sacrament of ordination for men or
women, but they do believe that women should never play leadership
roles because of the God ordained ‘headship’ of males. They think that
in Genesis in the Old Testament, and in St Paul in the New Testament,
God clearly sets men over women and so females should obey males and
always be subject to male authority. Letting women be priests and
bishops therefore represents a grave act of disobedience to the
(supposedly) clear teaching of the Bible. It is abhorrent to God.
I imagine that some of you reading this might be open-mouthed at this
point. Even as I write this I shudder at how utterly alien all of this
sounds to most modern ears. But you need to know that significant
numbers of your compatriots actually believe these things. (Don’t forget
this is also the position of the Roman Catholic Church and many nonChristian religions as well). These arguments have been rehearsed again
and again over the past two decades. Until the 20th November, the
Church of England had arrived at a point where essentially the Anglo
Catholic/Conservative Evangelical opposition had accepted that women
bishops were an inevitability, and what they wanted was ‘proper
provision’ for themselves to carry on with their anti-women’s ordination
stance while remaining within the C of E. The proposed legislation
included provision for every diocese to set up a code of practice so that
parishes which did not want to be subject to a woman bishop could
request ‘alternative episcopal oversight’ i.e. be looked after by a male
bishop.
And this is where we get a cruel twist. The unholy alliance did not think
the provision in the proposed motion was sufficient. But also, some
supporters of women bishops felt it was far too generous, and if
implemented would effectively relegate women to being second class
bishops. So some of them voted against it as well.
The rest is history as they say. But the consequences are profound.
Suddenly vast numbers of ordinary people who have little or nothing to
do with the Church have become animated about this. They have
realised that we have a national church, and that this national church
which is actually part of our national life is completely out of step with
contemporary values and standards of human decency.
Many ordinary people who thought nothing of it before are now
scandalised by the idea of the ‘stained-glass ceiling’ which means only
men can be promoted within the C of E hierarchy
“Many ordinary people who thought
nothing of it before are now scandalised
by the idea of the ‘stained-glass ceiling’
which means only men can be promoted
within the C of E hierarchy”
The consequences are far-reaching. The 26 seats in the House of Lords
reserved for bishops are effectively reserved for males only, not now by
tradition, but by deliberate vote. Many ordinary people who
thought nothing of it before are now scandalised by the idea of the
‘stained-glass ceiling’ which means on