Church House Bookshop Women Bishops? report

Women Bishops in the Church of England? is the preliminary report from the working group set up by the House of Bishops in 2000 and chaired by Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester. But what exactly is that "?" about?

The significance is best understood by comparing it with three recent publications:

The Call for Women Bishops
Harris & Shaw (SPCK, 2004)

This collection of essays has been compiled and edited by two Oxford clergy; Harriet Harris, chaplain of Wadham College, Oxford and Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of New College. It is an exploration of both vocation and demand. The contributors begin from different places geographically and ecumenically, but they unite in a common conclusion. In Shaw's own words:

"the question is not if, but when and how..."
(The Guardian, 17/10/04).

Their argument rests on three points: logic, precedence, and misogyny. For the ordination of women as bishops appears to be the logical next step. Women are already ordained priests. They perform the sacraments. So why not bishops?

The question is best understood with a little more historical background.

Women and Priesthood in the Church of England: Ten Years On
Jones (Church House Publishing, 2004)

Women and Priesthood... is a research report from Lincoln Theological Institute, focusing on the Church of England's initial experience of women priests. The author, Ian Jones, spent two years interviewing bishops, clergy, and laity. 'Ten years on' from the crucial 1992 vote authorising the ordination of women to the priesthood, Jones catalogued different reflections on the past and the future.

His first chapter outlines the events leading up to, and beyond, the ordination of the first women priests in 1994. He explains the background to the November 1992 vote, and offers a sociological explanation of the different responses. The body of the book goes on to look in detail at the statistics he has gathered. He identifies four types of reactions to women priests: "exclusion", "accommodation", "opportunism" and "indifference".

Jones also describes the background to the 1993 Act of Synod, which led to the creation of 'flying bishops'. This Act was a measure of compromise to stop conservative clergy leaving the Anglican Church. It proposed a separate episcopacy to sustain those parishes which refused to accept communion from Bishops who had ordained women. According to a contemporary paper from the General Synod:

"it will be a mark of continuing communion when a diocesan bishop in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood invites a bishop who does not accept it to minister to priests and congregations in his diocese who themselves do not accept it."
Bond of Peace, GS1074.

Ten years on the primates of the Anglican world are still struggling to hold their church together. Rowan Williams and more recently Archbishop Robin Eames have called upon the Communion to exercise patience and restraint. Their comments were made in the context of the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire and the debate over gay priests, not women. But one might infer from such remarks a straining Communion held together by half-hearted apologies.

The issue of women bishops is different to the gay question. Sixteen women have already been ordained as Anglican Bishops elsewhere in the Communion; the first, Barbara Harris, has been "Living the Change" since 1989. While Gene Robinson’s election has shaken the whole communion, the women bishops debate is, to an extent, internal to the Church of England.

But the recognition of episcopal authority is now a point of divergence. Worries that the side-effects of ordaining women to the episcopacy would be serious are grounded both in past experience and the contemporary situation. Women Bishops could prove to be the final straw for those who already refuse to acknowledge women as priests. So to the third publication:

Consecrated Women? A Contribution to the Women Bishops Debate
Baker (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2004)

Consecrated Women? aims to provide an account of "Catholic, Orthodox and evangelical perspectives". Harris & Shaw produced a book that is enthusiastically in favour of women bishops. Jonathan Baker - a member of the Anglo-Catholic organisation, Forward in Faith - has compiled a book with a very different consensus.

Forward in Faith (FiF) was founded in November 1992, in the wake of the decision of the General Synod of the Church of England to proceed with the ordination of women to the priesthood. It is a membership organisation, catering for "traditional Anglicans, who find themselves in conscience unable to accept the ordination of women". These are the clergy and parishioners served by the 'flying bishops'.

FIF objections were not simply due to intransigence, stubbornness or prejudice. Alongside a sincere belief in the scriptural authorisation of an all-male priesthood, their concerns included the potential impact on ecumenical relationships. When discussing threats of disintegration and breakdown in the Church of England, it is worth holding in mind the wider implications:

The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches do not recognise the ordination of women. In choosing to ordain women priests the General Synod effectively placed the inclusion of women ahead of moves towards the 'visible unity' of the global Christian Church. But that oversimplifies the ecumenical perspective: Other British denominations, including the Epsicopal Church of Scotland, and the Baptist and United Reformed Churches, accept the full equal ministry and leadership of women. The exclusion of women from the episcopate has already been a stumbling block in British ecumenical developments:

Moves towards an Ecumenical leadership in South-East Wales foundered when the Church of England vetoed plans (July 2003). Local churches working together had petitioned their national churches to create a unique appointment with oversight across the denominations. The non-Anglicans were unhappy that a woman could not be appointed, and the Anglicans felt unable to accept a compromise wherein the second appointee might well be female - women bishops via the backdoor.

FiF have already been successful in keeping one backdoor open: The 1993 Act of Synod was agreed as a provisional arrangement. It permitted a scheme of oversight outside the diocesan norm, with parishes overseen by bishops ‘untainted’ by the act of ordaining women. But it has laid the foundations for a third province in the Church of England, licensing a governance independent of Canterbury and York.

The ordination of women as bishops would create a new problem for members of FiF. It would no longer be enough to require bishops who have not ordained women. The parishes would require priests not ordained by women, and in a few decades time checking your priest’s provenance might take on all the complications of a police security check.

From a FiF perspective a break in communion would resolve the complex issues of lineage. But it would have severe repercussions for the 'visible unity' especially for those unwilling to leave behind their Anglican heritage... Is the 'third province' a tenable solution? Held in balance with the theological implications of full division, the Act of Synod is part of the complexity which keeps resistance rife.

Jones' closing chapter is entitled Women Bishops, the Act of Synod and the future. Here he examines different responses from Anglo-Catholic, Liberal and Evangelical Anglicans, observing the dominance of pragmatism over theology across the spectrum. But when it comes to the Synod debate, the theological arguments will be the ones which count.

Here the Rochester Report comes into its own. This is not because The Call for Women Bishops and Consecrated Women do not give careful and diligent attention to the theology. It is simply because where each arrives at is so clearly determined by the point of departure.

For the contributors to The Call for Women Bishops, the answer "yes" is not only their perception of vocations, but the outcome of simple logic. But this is a rhetorical "yes" to a rhetorical question. The Rochester Report takes this question out of the straightforward "yes" rhetoric. Women Bishops in the Church of England? offers an essential non-partisan starting-place for a theological debate which will be very very difficult.

Women Bishops in the Church of England? is due to be debated by the General Synod of the Church of England in February 2005.

Disclaimer: This article does not represent the official views of the Church of England.