I’ll start with thanks to the Twitter wag who suggested the stained glass ceiling should’ve been the headline this morning… That or ‘What the frock?’ Both lend the decision of the Church of England to reject female bishops the ridiculousness it deserves.
I’ll also declare my interests up front: I’m an athiest and a feminist so my reaction might be deemed predictable. But I want to reflect on this in a quiet, considered way, not just damn the Church as reactionary misogynist wankers who have lost touch with their flock and are making their beloved institution an irrelevant laughing stock.
I have friends, people I respect and admire, who are active members of the Church of England. They are appalled by this decision. The outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is gravely disappointed as is his replacement, Justin Welby, and my favourite of the CofE leaders, John Sentamu. There is a lot of explaining to do they say. Where might the explanation start?
A good point is the House of Laity. This is where the great no came from. Not from the Houses of Bishops and Clergy, the people who already do the job and know what it means, what it demands. They met the two thirds requirement. It came from the lay members. So when Dr Williams warns the CofE of the danger of seeming wilfully out of step with society, he’s actually addressing the ‘society part’ of the church. Where has this disconnection come from? It is no longer the priests who are troublesome…
I posit that church – not just the CofE but all churches – has become a refuge for the social conservatives. The little Englanders. Here is an institution worthy of upholding: it won’t, can’t, be changed on a whim by public opinion or a government in thrall to special interest groups. It has a long history and tradition that reflects what they want to see, what comforts them. A patriarchal structure. Rules. Commandments. Women in their place.
These are the people appalled by the idea of a bishop with a vagina. The people who argue that a yes would be pandering to modern society. That’s modern society in the way the Daily Mail might use the term. Pejorative, implying a multitude of horrors: the society that promotes homosexuality to children, pays for immigrants to live in palaces, hasn’t told the EU where to go, calls Christmas Winterval… Them. The ones who clamour for the right to shoot burglars, jail drug addicts for life and bring back hanging.
What puzzles me is the disconnect between those people and the people who run the church they say they’re saving. The clergy are preaching tolerance, equality, peaceful change, social justice, acting morally and living the tenets expressed in the Bible. So why aren’t they heard? While we’re at it, what about Jesus being heard? I don’t believe but I have read and reflected on what is attributed to him – and it is love, forgiveness, kindness, commonality.
The vote is, as many have said today, sad for all of us. But it is saddest for the CofE and the many men and women who choose to contribute to society through its auspices. There is anger now, the suggestion of parliamentary action followed by legal redress. That may happen. But what must happen, up and down England, is a discussion ‘in house’ about institution which has become weighed down by rules and arcane laws and is not free to behave in accordance with what it preaches.
differentiateddoormat 