Phil,

This 'careful reader' finds you agreeing, when challenged, that a new born baby dying an hour after birth will be subject to God's wrath and judged accordingly 'unless God is pleased to save such a one'. You only quoted Warfield after this statement.

... but do you really want a discussion anyway? It is very hard to hold a conversation with someone who is constantly looking over your shoulder and loudly trying to challenge the entire known evangelical world to join in - and hinting at your dark suspicions that none of them seem to want to. I'm not surprised they don't - I don't either on these terms.

And Phil and Nersen, instead of just throwing bible verses at contributors as if we are willingful ignoring 'awkward' bits of scripture or assuming that we must be denying what 'the real God and the real Christ did or didn't say, speak or think or reveal exactly and literally what the bible says they did ......'  please at least consider that we might  have just as deeper reverence for God's word, can quote all the verses about wrath that you throw at us, have taken them very seriously and after careful bible study and interpretationhave come to place such teaching in a whole context of God's revelation of himself and his saving work in Christ.

Iconoclast - you say you prefer to be anonymous because -  'I wish to be judged on what I write and not who I am'. But you are not anonymous at all are you. You have chosen a pseudonym - and a strong one at that. When I see the name Iconoclast I immediately have a personality in mind - a bedunker of the prevailing view, probably a bit  'in your face' and/or aggressive. So for me you have made your identity is more of a factor in interpreting and responding to you - not less.

Choosing a more neutral name would have achieved your aim much better.

There is something unutterably bleak about the image of a dying, new born child, overshadowed by a very, very angry God who, without pity or love consigns the child to eternal wrath and hell while deciding to allow the child in the next bed to live. Phil calls this latter choice 'gracious'. It is in fact totally abitrary.

Given the highly literal and 'logical' way with which Phil reads and interprets the Bible it is perhaps not really surprising that we end up in such a pitliless place. But having found himself there does he really ask no questions of such divine behaviour? What kind of prayer, love or worship is really possible to such a God? The most moral response might be to refuse to serve or bow to such a being. Bad theology is worse than no theology. Simone Weill once wote that there are two forms of atheism - of which one is the purification of our understanding of God.

I have just received my latest copy of Third Way and within it a leaflet produced by something called the Women Leadership Campaign - and organisation campaigning for ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. It is very professionally produced, robustly presented and is, on this evidence, a well resourced and mobilised outfit.

For those who missed the leaflet their website is: www.womenpriests.org

It reminds us of an intriguing future possibility that should be included in the present mix.

 "Like it or lump it" describes leadership and  a decision making process and leadership that is unilateral, non-consultative, non-negotiable, coercive and bullying. Well the Church of England has its faults but that approach to leadership is not usually thought to be one of them!

You will struggle to pursuade me that this phrase in any way describes the tortuously slow and genuinely consultative process by which the CofE has been journeying towards its decision on women priests and bishops. And it actually demeans the present discussion to reduce the thoughtfulness of anyone's viewpoint to such a simplistic equation.

Nersen,

You write - 'It would be great to see practical concern from the pro-WO side  (especially evangelicals) for retaining those who do not agree on that issue' ...

Does it help to know of evangelical bishops and senior staff who have made themselves tirelessly available to individuals and groups who are unable to accept a church with ordianed women in it? (I know of many personal examples)

Does it help to know of ordained women who have initiated meetings with finf colleagues in their area to share and talk and pray - at some personal cost? (I know because I am married to one who does this).

Surely the last 17 years are ample evidence that no one is trying to kick any group out. We have all been trying so hard. But decisions - arrived at after very lengthy and careful process - do have consequences. (And here Jeremy sums up my position compassionately and practically - and more eloquently than I could.)

But can I ask you again Nersen to discuss this issue in a way that includes a 'practical concern'  for ordained women and their experience.

No man has been through selection, training and ordination and then been required to minister and live under legally discriminatory employment practices just because they are men. Or expected to serve under a bishop who does not believe in their calling and will not physically lay hands on them because of their gender.

The church has not offered compensation, pastoral support and help with housing needs to ordained women who feel they can't minister in such a church anymore. And who could blame them.

No ordained man has lived with the validity of their ordination being continuously publically debated and held in question for the last 17 years. No man knows what it is like, for example, to read the latest Reform press release declaring their ministry unbiblical on grounds of gender - to take just one example.

Nersen,  You write -  'I would like to see some practical suggestions from people who support change but have some concern for those who do not...... '

Why are you talking as if this hasn't been discussed at any practical level yet? What do you think the recent synod debate and vote was about? What has the Revision Committee been agonising over?

And please at least acknowledge there are two groups of people whose integrity, conscience and ministry need honouring if we are to move forward - not one.

I welcome Fulcrum's clear statement on this (and even more welcome the change of mind of the Revision Committee).

Approaching half the ordained work force of the CofE are asked, day to day,  to accept, work and flourish in an institution that trained and ordained them and then provides for legal discrimination against them solely on grounds of gender where communities so choose. No ordained men can have any experience of what that must be like. But we might at least have the decency to feel some shame at this way of proceeding.

There is simply no honourable future in making the legal wall even higher to 'protect' certain groups from women bishops. The NT also has very critical things to say about Christians who resort to law to achieve their aims in any case - one of the scriptures curously ignored in this whole debate.

The proposed provision, agreed by Synod, for those who cannot accept the episcopal leadership by a woman is perfectly workable and it has the merit of not requiring discriminatory practice against women to achieve it.

We have been working and feeling our way towards this for a very, very long time. It won't be easy. It will go on being painful, but it is time to move on. There is more to gain than to lose.  Bishop Nick Baines sums it up for me on his recent blog:

'Many of those who approve of women bishops have a great concern to keep as many traditionalist Anglicans in the Church as possible. But it might be seen in the future to have been a mercy that the issue has now been forced, that reality has to be faced and that the time for clarity – however painful for everyone in the church – has come.

It is still possible that some workable compromise might be found, but it isn’t looking likely. Which means that we need to pray for and offer support to those who now find themselves in a ‘crisis’ (in the proper sense of the word) – that is, a time to decide and then commit themselves to the consequences of that decision.'

David H, you continue to surprise. One moment you are arguing how the Romish innovations of the 1928 Prayer Book fatally misled the 'protestant Church of England'. Next moment we discover that your guiding example for standards of Christian behaviour, truthful speech and confession of error is the Pope.

Pageantmaster,

You say 'no one can conceivably describe the spokespersons of WATCH as "invisible". Well they can actually. With all respect I wonder how you can possibly know what it has possibly been like for a such an organisation to find a voice in a church like ours.

But actually I said women were invisible in your last post - and you promptly do it again.

'The issue', you say, is solely about what is provided for those who cannot accept the decision of the church on this. But it is not just about them. It is about women too. It is about their honouring and reverencing within the ministry and leadership of the church and the partnership of men and women in the life of the Kingdom.

Legal discrimination will never be a way of achieving that and it is an approach that is very hard to defend from the New Testament in any case.

Pageantmaster,

You write about the speeches given to 'the recent FiF conference of the people who are being affected by this directly' ....

Actually there is another large group of ordained people in the church affected at least as directly but who are still rendered invisible by just that kind of comment - and who have, for example, to wait while the Church Times gives three whole pages coverage to the the FinF/Rome news.

It just isn't a level playing field out here fellas and the inability to recognise that for what it is remains a source of shame.

Pete. OK - but I only make one passing reference to WATCH in a longer post that quotes and commends a very different tone and quality of response - but no less direct. So I hope this does not distract from the burden of what I have tried to commend here.