This is real patriarchal conditioning in action

Part of the argument is that if you are a member of the CofE, and you don't believe that ordained women are really priests, you can turn up at a random church, see the priest is a woman and go elsewhere to receive sacraments. That means it was possible to keep the church together and still include people who remain opposed to women's ordination.

If women become bishops, they can then themselves ordain priests. That would mean that an Anglican turning up to a church would not be able to tell if the priest was, in their eyes, really an ordained priest or not, because many male priests would have been ordained by a female bishop. As they don't believe women can carry out the sacrament of ordination, then anybody ordained by a woman would not really be a priest and cannot carry out the sacrament of communion. So an individual lay person would then have problems receiving the sacraments.

I think the CofE has served its purpose anyway, and is going to be on its way out. I don't see how it can continue to hold together people who have disparate beliefs when there are other denominations available for them to go to, especially as most people in the UK are now only culturally Christian and are not interested in the religious, church attending element.

Oh, and someone asked about this: the CofE was specifically exempted from equality legislation when the legislation about women priests went through. Many of us feel this was a mistake.

tribpot Sorry this got so long.

1. The problem is that the CofE's Synod (its decision making body) fudged this when the original decision to ordain women priests was taken. It decided to leave the question of consecrating women bishops until a later date. This was basically to make women's ordination more tolerable for those opposed to it - plus opponents were allowed to pass resolutions at an individual parish level relating to women's ministry. These are known as Resolutions A, B, and C: A was that a parish community would not accept a woman celebrating the Eucharist or pronouncing absolution in their church (the main priestly functions); B was that the parish community would not accept a woman as priest-in-charge of the parish; C was that the parish would refuse to accept oversight from a bishop who had even ordained women. This is where the extra 'flying bishops' came in to cater for these parishes.

Many, but not most, parishes adopted some or all of these resolutions, basically barring women from applying for jobs in their parishes, which mean that for the time being objectors would not be confronted with the issue of ordained women in their own churches. They were able to live with the idea of women priests within the CofE as long as they didn't have to have them themselves. Now that the issue of consecrating women bishops has come back, there is nowhere left for them to hide: if there are women bishops, they will have to accept oversight from them if they are in their diocese.

It was a terrible mistake to postpone the decision on women bishops, because women's ministry has been structurally humiliated by allowing these compromises, and, as you say, if you accept women's ordination it makes no sense at all to bar them from being bishops - I have had RCs say this to me! And if the RCC ordains women (as I think it eventually will) it will admit women to all three orders at the same time. But at the time the CofE was desperate to ordain women - there was a generation of women already trained for the priesthood who feared they would lose their opportunity for ordination if the church waited until it could win the argument without compromises.

2. Yes, it's a really bad argument, especially as women were considered apostles by the early church. But historically the RCC has not been crazy about e.g. ordaining men with disabilities - I think there used to be a bar on ordaining them. It is now possible for disabled men to be ordained in the RCC under some circumstances, but I don't know very much about this.

3. The Queen is not the Head of the CofE - she is the Supreme Governor! It's all about fudging the language! Although in practice she does not have much authority over the church, which I suspect is how people who truly believe the headship thing manage to live with her as Governor.

4. Yup. The reason this is such a sticking point comes down to the dual catholic/protestant identity of the CofE. You will always have people in the CofE who essentially see themselves as catholic (I happen to be one of them). For many of them, the idea that we are moving away from unity with the catholic churches is especially distressing. My personal take on it is that the other catholic churches will have to listen to the Holy Spirit and make these changes themselves (I think the RCC will).

Anyway, women bishops will happen. The issue now is how many people will bugger off to Rome (the RCs don't particularly want them, btw, there are plenty of people there campaigning for women's ordination) and how much screaming they will do in the meantime.

Akermanis - are we not meant to be doing that to stubborn children now?! No-one sent me a memo.

If anyone ever quotes " Its in the bible " perhaps retort with " so you suggest we execute all homosexuals ", oh and the bible says " stubborn children should be stoned by their parents "

The list goes on and on

That's very interesting, FairPhyllis, thank you for writing that.

1. How does this pertain now that women have been ordained? Cat's out of the bag, surely.

1. So Jesus was meant to choose a group of Apostles who represented some or all of the characteristics essential to the apostolic mandate. I think one of the Apostles was African but there must be large parts of the world's ethnic groups who weren't at the table either. Certainly no northern Europeans? Any Europeans at all? And no disabled Apostles, no gay ones ... Logic fail? Did Jesus actually choose the Apostles he felt had the right spiritual characteristics for the job, I wonder.

1. The Head of the Church is a woman. Surely Prince Philip is not seen as a 'side-car Church Head' in the manner of the 'extra Bishop' notion mentioned in earlier posts. There is no hope for the Church if Prince P is meant to be providing some kind of spiritual guardianship to it

1. Seems to believe that the symbolism of acts is more important than the intention of them. But, as you say, all previous comments apply to counteract this assertion.

1. Other churches have bad ideas too, so we have to stick with them if we want reconciliation. Weird - like not introducing democracy because eventually you want to reconcile with another country that has a dictator.

1. Cat's out of the bag here too, then.

I hope that sense can prevail but have no doubt it will be a torturous road to get there.

Sigh. I am an Anglican feminist who supports women bishops. Here you go: someone asked, so here is possibly more than you ever wanted to know about the arguments against the consecration of women bishops ...

1. The same arguments as against ordaining women at all: i.e. at the Eucharist, the priest represents Christ at the Last Supper. However women cannot represent Christ as they are not male. I think this is bollox, plus we know that women in the early church were ordained. So there is no impediment to them celebrating sacraments. And as Christians we believe that women and men are created and baptised equal (and have scriptural assurance for this). God is not gendered either - there is female imagery of God in the Bible. There is also an ancient tradition, now suppressed in the RC church, of venerating the Virgin Mary as a priest.

2. The Apostles (who were the 12 principle disciples), who were the predecessors of the bishops, were all men, and were the ones given the apostolic mandate (the command to go out and teach people about Jesus) at the Last Supper. Therefore women cannot be bishops. This IMO is also bollox. If the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, as we are reasonably sure it was, there would have to have been women present, so the mandate would have been given to them too. We also know from Acts that men and women were equally filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Paul refers to a woman as an apostle in one of his letters and Mary Magdalen is often venerated as 'the Apostle to the Apostles,' because she (with other women) was the first person to know about the Resurrection.

3. Headship - the concept that women cannot be in authority over men. All the references to this are in contexts that are culturally specific or do not apply to women having church authority over men. Also important to remember is that St Paul honestly thought the world was about to end, and wasn't interested in building a church structure that would have to last millennia. But - crucially - we know from his letters that women did have positions of authority in local churches.

4. Invalidity of the lines of ordinations - the CofE, like several other churches, derives part of its spiritual authority from its claim of having apostolic succession - i.e. that its bishops are in a direct line of spiritual succession from the Apostles and Christ Himself. This gives them the authority to ordain deacons and priests. If women were bishops, the argument goes, they wouldn't be validly consecrated bishops (because they are not men), and any ordinations or consecrations they performed would be invalid, thus disrupting the church's spiritual authority. See above for why this is bollox - they will be validly consecrated.

5. Difficulty of unity with the RC church: one hope of Christians is that we will all one day be reconciled with each other and be unified in one church. It is argued that consecrating women bishops will make unity with the RC in particular difficult. This is very emotionally charged for many Anglicans as many see themselves as part of the catholic church. Response: there is a whole host of theological issues preventing unity with the RCs, so not having women bishops isn't going to magically make everything better. Plus, having women bishops will also make unity with the Methodists possible.

6. Authority to make decisions: some people argue that the CofE does not have the spiritual authority to make decisions like this without the rest of the catholic church (i.e. RC church and the various Eastern churches). However this seems to show a lack of faith in the CofE's decision making authority. It has already independently decided to allow priests to marry, for example. If you really don't think it has the authority to make its own decisions, you shouldn't accept married priests either, and should probably be thinking about making the RC church your home.

I suspect however that the real problem is plain misogyny and a theology of taint, and that if the people who have a problem with it joined the RC church, and the RC church subsequently changed its mind on the issue, they would kick up a huge fuss about it there too.

Those women were just jealous because they knew they wouldn't look good in purple silk.

How sad - and how unsurprising!

I don't think that 'but it's in the Bible' really flies as an argument here: so is the commandment for slaves to obey their masters. So is Jesus demanding that his followers must hate their families. I'm not even going to mention anything out of the Old Testament.

Basically, there are numerous religious instructions that are taken in a non-literal sense or regarded as reflexions of their time. The fact that apparently this is different where women are concerned is not so much about religion as it is using religion as an excuse IMHO.

That having been said: I'm an atheist and admittedly have a hard time imagining a reality in which the contents of some old book are actually relevant to my life to such an extent - so I may be missing something here.

See what you're saying BigFat but belonging to a particular religion doesn't necessarily mean that you agree with every interpretation all the time. People still have free will to make their own minds up. Otherwise denominations would not have moved on from the days of sacrificing animals. People are not sheep - whatever their faith or lack of - and should still be made to think about the choices they make when they appear to be at odds with modern society. It's a long slow process though...

My point (maybe worded badly) is that to be a part of the church and accept it's teaching is to accept that women are less than worthy. So you would have to be against women bishops, right?

BigFat The point of this thread is more like black people petitioning to keep black people out of certain jobs. It's bizarre.

Is it just me who doesn't see what the issue is here. The church isn't pro woman (unless you're a virgin mother of Christ). To me it's like being shocked if Nick Griffin started a petition to say he would prefer it if Asian and black people stayed out of BNP meetings.

Trib and Heath, what about those wo can only count in prime numbers? They too need salvation. And people who can only converse with ants.

Religion is appalling crap sometimes I have to say. How is it ok for debates like that linked above to be going on? It's appalling? I'm aghast and don't see how anyone can defend it.

Five? Five? It should be six I tell you, for those who don't like odd numbers.

Jux, I think bishops should travel in packs of no less than five, in the hopes that one of them will be non-offensive. What if you don't like tall people or blondes? It must all be catered for.

I think all the male bishes should have a female counterpart for people who don't like male bishes.

The whole religious thing is a lot of illogical nonsense anyway. It's not worth analysing!

I thought the point about the Epistles, both Corinthians and Ephesians, was that they are letters to groups of early Christians, containing Paul's advice and opinions. Paul is not considered to be a prophet and it's only what he thinks, it doesn't have the same weight as the gospels.

Disclaimer: I am actually an atheist, but this is my understanding of it.

The Bethany Hughes series recently was very interesting on the subject of women in the early years of both Christianity and Islam, where it seemed they were allowed to play a greater part than in later years. However, I'm not sure it really requires a historical precedent; women couldn't be queens in their own right (mostly) until recently, or go to university or indeed vote. I guess all belief systems (not just religious ones) go through evolutions - the Founding Fathers of the US believed passionately in democracy and equality. Er, for white men. And preferably not Catholics. Etc. Etc.

People objected when the Mass was held in the local language, not Latin, as well - or when people could read the Bible for the first time instead of have it interpreted for them by their priests.

One of my favourite quotes is from The West Wing (of course):

ABBEY [The First Lady]: It was a perfectly lovely homily on Ephesians 5:21. "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her."

BARTLET [The President]: Yeah. She's skipping over the part that says, "Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord, for a husband is the head of a wife as Christ is the head of the church."

ABBEY: I do skip over that part.

BARTLET: Why?

ABBEY: Because it's stupid!

to take the bible, in this case the new testement, would be applying a 2000 year old document to 2012, of course there will be problems. but if we took the bible on a fundemental level, we would be burning animals on the church alter, executing homosexuals and there would be no law against slavery.

my examples are old testement, but you get the idea.

if your a christian, interpreting the bible for the modern world we live in isnt an option, it's compulsory. unless your in northen nigeria.

sharia law is ment to evolve, it isnt a form of law without provision for change, however, it;s the fundemental application dateing from 670ish AD thats the problem.

anyway, i dont think corinthians should be such a hard book, unless you want to take it word for word applying anceint wisdoms to today.

well, in 1 Corinthians ch 14 v33-34 it says "As in all the churches of God's people, the woman should keep quite in the meetings. They are not allowed to speak; as the Jewish Law says, they must not be in charge."

1 Corinthians is a hard book for a lot of modern Christians, it's got a few points that are hard to square with standard society views now, however, in our church (with a vicar and majority of congregation who are pro-female Bishops), it's been discussed as being more advice from Paul to the church in Corinth and the advice while right for the situation those early Christians found themselves in, it doesn't follow that Paul would give the same advice to the Church now.

What no-one has ever satisfactorily explained to me is why only some things in the in the bible apply to us now in the twenty-first century. Who gets to choose?

agree with tribpot and mrskbpw