Forum Thread
Fulcrum Press Statement: Women Bishops and the Church of England

Please dont post this onsite before people have the chance to read the Link put on by Simon Cawdell, but i have read the link, cant help but feel like a deflated balloon. 2014 for the finalisation of all this, is this when they seriously intend Ordaining the first female as a bishop, or will they be ordained and only recognised in some churches sooner.?

I mean I know i am never going to be a Bishop, but its about the movement of people towards God and Gods true church of believers, its about knowing that we are truly a family of God living by example. In my world its about all the little things that make people feel safer because they know that people are not trying to outdo or harm anyone, and that no-one is working in a fearful environment being laughed at. Welcome to my world, God said take your brother or sister aside and settle concerns, thats what i am doing, i dont want to read or hear the tears of female clergy or men because they have been bullied or read that they have been chased out of their parishes. Jesus loves us all now equally up untill and in eternity, imagine that, imagine being wanted and having no fear for all eternity, not even fear of a woman or a man etc.

Peace be with us all truly said sincerly  meant.

Waterangel

Graham has asked me to add this as a useful link to answer the question: http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/12/synod-anglicans-women-bishops-vote

Dave

Graham may be a busy Bishop at the moment, but to try and answer your questions (much asked and answered all over the place!).  There's a general guide to the process here http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/churchlawlegis/legislation/measures/process.html  As this is Article 7 and 8 business it also has to be referred to the dioceses, between Revision Stage and Final Approval, as follows.

- All 43 dioceses will have to vote to accept it, as it is.  It must be approved in all three houses (Bishop(s), Clergy and Laity) to pass, and more than 50% of dioceses must pass it, or else it lapses - that is back to the drawing board.  In which case a new go at it can't be reintroduced until a new Synod is elected in 2015.   This stage is likely to take at least 18 months.   Dioceses can't, obviously, amend the Measure (or it would come back in 43 versions), but can pass following motions which Synod would be obliged to take into account.

- it then goes to the House of Bishops, to pass back to Synod in a form for Final Approval.  This may include drafting changes, but Synod can/t have another go at any major changes.   This might be in February, or perhaps July, 2012

- the approved Measure is then sent to Parliament, where  the Ecclesiastical Committee have to deem it 'expedient' (they can refer it back for redrafting if they so choose), and if they forward it, it then has to be approved by both Houses of Parliament, on a straight Yes/No vote.  These stages can be as long, or as short,  as Parliamentary processes permit.  So say all of that  might take another year.

- then if approved the relevant Canon has to receive royal assent (a signature on a piece of paper) and then to be Promulged ('activated') by the Archbishops.

- then women could become bishops.  When the first appointment of a woman bishop might take place after that, of course, is another matter.  There'd have to be a vacancy, and a suitable candidate, and a process of choosing.

Hope that helps.

Graham,

So what is the roadmap to women bishops? Are there still some potential barriers? When could the first woman bishop be appointed and when is this likely to happen?

The Today program had two interesting items. John Broadhurst explained why traditionalists are not happy at 7.09 and Tom Butler expressed confidence in local dissusions  at 7.48. http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8813000/8813205.stm

David

The Revision Committee's Measure passed in General Synod this afternoon at 4.25pm. It will now be discussed in Diocesan Synods and return to General Synod in 18 months time. Only four amendments were passed and these were all agreed by the steering committee of the revision committee. This is wonderful news!

For live reporting, see Thinking Anglicans site here.

For the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech this morning, click here.

For General Synod's official report on the morning session, see here and for the afternoon session, see here.

For audio file of session part 1, click here, and for part 2, click here.

Press reports so far include:

Riazat Butt, 'Archbishop warns against delay over women bishops', The Guardian online, 12 July 2010

Press Association, 'Women bishops bid passes key hurdle', Press Association, 12 July 2010

BBC, 'Women bishops can be created, Church of England rules', BBC site, 12 July 2010

The reports for the Living Church from York by John Martin, Fulcrum media secretary, are as follows:

'Synod Prepares for Grueling Debate' The Living Church, 9 July 2010

'A Narrow Loss for the Archbishops', The Living Church, 10 July 2010

'Understated Critiques Ensue at Synod', The Living Church, 11 July 2010

'Synod Approves Plan for Women Bishops', The Living Church, 12 July 2010

Graham ad Tony

You both state that these amendments were an attempt at justifying the law in Poetry and that the ambiguity of poetry meant it would not be lawful to use it as the amendments of law have to be in prose. Of course i have to now ask about the relevance of the bibles poetical books, for if the bible is used as defence for upholding or disregarding laws surely you cant say only some of the books can be used as a defence.

As the issue of women bishops is largely coming under the umbrella of biblical interpretation, the psalms are the very books that the communication to an individual put in place and consecrated by God may use. Of course i am referring to Rowans knowledge of poetical language allegories, analagies, and the real communicaton to him through that, after all Moses gave us the law from the inscription in stone in mount Sinai, which is where the first exodus began.Poetry may be ambiguous with the true meaning known only to the writer, which is why we have an interpreter like in the use of tongues for instance.

I will just hold on to my dream, that one day all will understand that the true church in its true form is a fellowship of believers who love and care for one another on equal terms and seek to serve their saviour the Lord Jesus Christ in their community in much the same way. There should be no fear or condemnation in that.

Also on a note of awareness and concern, the references to shotguns, makes me ask you , to check that any distressed clergy are safe. Seriously. We all know what can happen if the wrong stress comes at the wrong time.

Angela

Pete,  thanks for a long and careful think through complex issues. You know my own position on this but I respect yours and the evident integrity with which you approach it all.

Just one response if I may ...

I seriously struggle with one part of your argument.

Firstly you claim to not find a 'boss-bishop' model that the Synod continues to take as default in history or in practice in the church.  This is not self evident to me. Perhaps you can point  to evidence for your views on this. I am curious. But it is clearly the assumption on which the present system works, as you accept. But are you asking us to have supported to the ++'s ammendment on the basis of the possibility of a different vision for episcopacy that is not actually part of the present debate?

You then say, 'I had hoped women in ministry might move us on from what, at it's worst, could seem just another form of male-dominant power thinking.'  Well forgive me if I am misunderstanding you but this feels unrealistic at all sorts of levels. Frankly this feels a like a further unrealistic burden on women ordained into ministry in a church that continues to ask them to be faithful and  flourish while allowing huge amounts of time and support and legal protection for those who do not even think they should exist. Your hope had been (and clearly you think 'they' have failed) - that even while they wait for the church to finallly and umambiguously welcome them, they would (in their spare time?) transform the theology and practice of the episcopal ministry.

I have no doubt that a full and rich partnership of men and women in ministry will enable a renewing of ministry and leadership but it will take time. And it will certainly need men to mature into a more Godly critique of how they work perhaps even more than women at this stage.

Thanks again

Thanks, Pete, for your very thoughtful and thought provoking comment. You state:

...it called to my mind the words with which the chair of the Revision Committee concluded his introduction of the Measure.  "We have to legislate in prose.  It would be much better if we could do it in poetry."    I think this was a brave attempt to legislate in poetry.

That seems to me to be the heart of the issue. The law of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Church of England's canon law, has to be drafted in clear and precise prose.

Legislating in poetry really does not work and would cause chaos. The law has to be clear and the Archbishops' amendment was not clear as the Fulcrum commentary on it pointed out.

I'm sure I'm not the only Fulcrum supporter who has been at General Synod this time around, but I'm not aware of other voting Synod members who use the Forum, so thought I'd have a go at reflecting on Saturday's debate and voting on the Archbishops' amendment - which as we know Fulcrum Leadership Team had come out against in advance, as had numbers of other groups.  And it went down - just, in the House of Clergy - so they should be relieved.  But I voted for it, and although I accept the result I'm not happy with some of the reasons given by those opposing it, and wanted a place to say why.

We'd already clearly defeated two more 'extreme' amendments - one for separate dioceses, and one for clearly transferred authority, but this was the big one. The Archbishops said they were offering us something that squared the circle, giving opponents of women bishops just enough space to breathe and flourish in a church which contains them, whilst not detracting anything from the role or status of a women bishop in itself.  It could just, said Rowan, be a situation 'where nobody loses'.  Sadly (to me), not enough people were persuaded to give it a try.   Well, that's practical politics for you - but my sadness was not just in the result, not even in the closeness of it (and had it been a count of the whole Synod, rather than by Houses, it would have succeeded), but for what I saw as the inadequacy of the arguments advanced against it.

Just before I do that, let me explain why I voted for it, and why I am sad it fell.   Thos not on Synod have the luxury of making their minds up on what it decides in advance, and according to whatever presuppositions they may adopt, without necessarily being able to pay close attention to the detail.  Those of us currently on Synod ought not to do that. At the least we ought ought to pay attention to what's in front of us - and what's said in its favour or against it.  I came to the debate wanting to do just that.   My conclusion, at the end, was that the amendment - which really was relatively modest, in that it would only have removed 4 words, and added 4 lines to a very wordy piece of legislation - would, we were told, have made all the difference to many traditional Catholics, and classic evangelicals, and would not, as far as I could judge, concede anything more significant than the unamended draft already did.  In other words, I was persuaded it could, indeed, have given us a win-win.

Let's start with what was, to be fair, the strongest argument against it.  That by introducing this new idea of 'co-ordinated episcopal ministry' it was open to an ambiguity, which in the event of a hard case could prove fatal.   It's 'the buck has to stop somewhere' argument - and that's what Fulcrum advanced in the article that has given rise to this thread.  In a slightly weaker form, this was advanced as "we're not clear what this would mean, and so we can't support it, in case it proves unworkable".    But to work, this is based on the premise that always, at all times, we have to have one 'boss bishop' in each place (formal word - mono-episcopacy).  This seems to me to fall down both historically and in practical reality.  The idea that the present form of Anglican diocesan episcopal supremacy is intrinsic even to Anglicanism, let alone to the esse of the church, I find totally unpersuasive.  I had hoped women in ministry might move us on from what, at it's worst, could seem just another form of male-dominant power thinking.  And, to give just one example, as Sentamu pointed out - he is the Primate of England, and Rowan the Primate of All England.  Those who know and understand this strange co-ordinate language have never until now suggested it is so fatally flawed as to bring the CofE tumbling to its knees.  (Those who don't know of this will have to take my word for it for now.)

So to a second line of argument, advanced with great force by numbers of speakers.  That the amendment would "enshrine inequality in the legislation", sometimes simply stated as self-evident, but by one or two further expounded as "because it would REQUIRE a woman bishop to share her authority when a parish asked for it".   Well excuse me, but this is where reading the actual words might help.   The amendment left out the 4 words " (by) way of delegation to" and replaced that with the 4 lines that made it clear that this was to be, essentially, shared authority (my word, making explicit what is implicit in the amendment).  So yes, the idea of delegation would have been replaced by that of sharing.  But the parochial actions that would lead to that being requested, and granted, were not touched by the amendment AT ALL.   If this sharing was now "required by the legislation" , then so is the delegation that is already in the draft.  And both are in the Measure, which is, by definition, the legislation.  So being "enshrined in the legislation" applies already.   To use a simple analogy: the bullet may have been changed, but either way the gun was loaded and the trigger wasn't changed.  Now given that, in advance of the debate, a lot of pressure groups, not least WATCH, made great play of how the current draft was as far as proponents of the Measure could go, and anything more would "enshrine inequality in the legislation", I am not surprised that the argument was also used in Synod.  But that doesn't make it - to my mind - any more persuasive, or indeed, logical.  Logic would say if you want non-discriminatory legislation, go for a single clause Measure.    Anything more is ipso facto discriminatory, in that it allows - by Measure - parishes that are opposed to a woman bishop to ask for special treatment, so as not to experience her ministry/authority.  Conversely, if you are prepared (however reluctantly - and for good caring reason) to allow such a request, then you've already stepped off the absolutist ground, and it's simply a question of how far you will go.  Not 'separate dioceses'; not transferred authority.  But why not wording why explicitly says this "shall not divest the bishop of the diocese of any of his or her functions"?

Which brings me to a third point.  The words "his or her" in the amendment make it clear that there may also be male bishops who are found to be unacceptable.   At first sight opponents make scorn of this - so you're allowing parishes to choose bishops on what they believe now, are you? they say.  Well, it was said.   But a moment's thought shows it's not that at all.  For example (to take the most obvious case) a male bishop consecrated only by women bishops is not a Bishop to a traditional Catholic - any more than a woman Bishop can be a bishop to them.  It's not the gender, but the theology that makes this so.  And so whilst the unamended Measure is at risk of looking as though it is only on grounds of gender that a parish asks for this (because under it they have to be provided with "a male bishop", the amendment would have been slightly more even-handed as regards gender.  Irony, or what?   

And the final, less than logical, reason that people voted against the amendment?  It's the 'zero sum argument' and I would have just deduced this from some speeches, but in fact it was said to me explicitly by one person (no, I'm not naming names to anyone).   The argument goes that even if we they don't really understand all that the amendment would have meant, if it made things more acceptable for those opposed, it must mean it would be less acceptable to those in favour.   So they voted against it.   The  zero sum argument says If you gain ground, I lose ground, and so believes it's not possible to have a win-win.   You can't square that circle. 

Well, logically, perhaps that's so but it called to my mind the words with which the chair of the Revision Committee concluded his introduction of the Measure.  "We have to legislate in prose.  It would be much better if we could do it in poetry."    I think this was a brave attempt to legislate in poetry.  And not poor doggerel, but fluent, rhythmic lines (Rowan is a poet, amongst other things).  And I think it was defeated not in fact by logical argumentation but by impulses of a different sort.   In the hearts of at least some of those longing for the day when women can be bishops in the CofE on equal terms with men (a group which as a whole includes my heart by the way), there was at this moment found no room for the thought that this might be a gesture of generosity that need not, in the end, cost any more than had already been agreed.  The politics had won. For so long people had said to themselves "we've  gone just as far as we can go" that an idea that might have worked was rejected not because it was unworkable, but because it was impossible that it be entertained.  And I know I've not gone into the arguments that "the Archbishops shouldn't have tabled an amendment at this stage".  But I've commented on that elsewhere.

I know many who read this will disagree - possibly quite strongly.  I'm only telling it like it seemed to me, being there.   The arguments against didn't add up to me, compared with the arguments for.  The voting, actually, didn't add up either - until voting by houses came into play.   So be it - them's the rules, for all of us.   What actually worries me, as someone who wants this all to go through, is that now it could be at more risk of not doing - because it makes provision for those opposed that most of those opposed have said is no provision.  So, assuming nothing cataclysmic happens when we return to revision later today, it all comes down to the Code.  But the task the Code has to deal with just got an awful lot tougher.  I think.

just want to clarify i am aware it was God prior to Jesus birth that led the followers in the darkness, i didnt make that clear not that it matters, if everything you know and remember comes out in the wrong order if it is all good it does not matter, just goodness in a different format, like women in the ministry (oops not supposed to say that). Also if you follow the logic of the shadow, which is your own and then think of the words "surely goodness and mercy will follow me" we get to i'm ok your ok Now that is to truly live under the shadow of his wings.

Waterangel

Maybe this is good.....more people unable to pretend all is well and compromise....so they leave......"open evangelicals" can be like TEC's 'communion partners', Dr John can be given his divine right to be a bishop..... and we might get to TECusa's nos of 1 in 400 attending on a Sunday..... it will not matter in the long run if that happens....just one organisation slowly winding up.