Synod and women

The Church of England’s General Synod starts meeting today, and one of the big issues this time is women bishops – should there be any? It may not surprise you that I heartily support the right of women to become bishops – and the church’s obligation to appoint them. However, what really gets my goat about this debate is that it consists almost entirely of rehashing the arguments against women priests, even though that debate was over a long time ago. Now, I can understand the arguments against women priests – it’s a logical , coherent theory – even though I believe that it’s flawed biblically, theologically, ecclesiologically and culturally. What I totally fail to understand is how there can be a coherent position that accepts the right of women to be priests in the Anglican church but denies them the right to be bishops. A bishop is simply a priest writ large – there is no qualitative difference that I know of between their roles, only one of scale.

Indeed, having talked this morning with a friend who’s going to General Synod (and has been going for years), there doesn’t seem to be any such coherent position. The arguments about women bishops are simply the same arguments already used against women priests. Which is strange – one would think that, having lost the debate, the proponents of this position might have reassessed their beliefs and either produced new, stronger arguments or accepted that perhaps the Church is wiser than they themselves are.
But it’s even worse than this. The opponents of women bishops (and priests) want to have their cake and eat it. They want to keep the “traditional” view of women as needing male stewardship, of women as being weaker, gentler and less wise than men, of women as needing protection and guidance from men. However, the really offensive part is that they don’t really seem to want this. What they want is to keep women “in their place” without keeping alongside that the “traditional” obligations of men towards women – of respecting them and not giving gratuitous offense, of protecting them from harm, of providing all that they need. What they seem to want is to take the parts of modern culture that suit them (especially, those parts that free them from having to take on responsibilities towards people they disagree with) while disregarding the parts that actually provide the basis for the rest (equality of gender, colour and creed).
I could respect someone who was genuinely of the opinion that women needed protecting and actually lived that out – I wouldn’t agree with them but I could respect them, because such a belief should produce a man who behaves extremely well towards women.
What I cannot respect is someone who denies women something because of some superiority of man over woman, but also denies women any of the advantages that this would entail.
Neither equality nor true “headship” or stewardship; what are we to make of such a man?

pax et bonum

Article posted at 10:43am on 14 February 2005
Category: Faith, Musing