to be totally perplexed by the Church of England's latest decision?

[KnockMeDown]

So they won't allow women bishops, but married gay male bishops are ok? Can someone please explain the reasoning behind this, if in fact there is any? And married, or in civil partnership, but celibate? How is that supposed to work?

C of E pecking order

Heterosexual men > Celibate homosexual men > Practising homosexual men (as long as they lie, because no one is going to actually check are they?) > Women

Yep you certainly know your place

Annie, without wanting to be needlessly pedantic, it depends how you define 'the church'; are you talking about clergy, or bishops, or General Synod (which is made up of clergy, bishops and laypeople)? Or the small groups which are put together to discuss specific issues and recommend a way forward on them (which is what happened with this latest legislation)?

The reason I ask this is because many clergy and bishops are bored and embarrassed by the various sexuality debates, many wish that we could all just move on. I can't see, in all honesty, that they are any more penis-obsessed than anyone else.

I think it's more accurate to say that over the last decade, sexuality has become the litmus test of whether someone is 'liberal' or 'traditional'; why it's ended up as such is a really interesting question. But the reality is that debates about sexuality have become a shorthand way of defining subgroups within the C of E, and the real problem beneath the surface is the fact that within one church, there are people who profoundly and maybe irreconcilably disagree with each other. That's why these issues haven't been solved yet, and it's why the impression of the c of e is often exactly what you have described, that we're all juvenile misogynists obsessed with penises.

Some people think that the only real solution is for the church to split; I am against that, as I believe that Christians should be united. But it is hard, and Rowan Williams really got sledge-hammered with the full force of the church's internal politics.

How weird is it that the C of E let women practice as vicars, which I would imagine involves much more influence over parishioners and how individuals interpret the Bible e.g. weekly sermon but not let them be middle managers in big hats i.e. Bishops.

So clearly it's not the issue that the C of E doesn't think it's inappropriate for women to preach the word of God, but just that they shouldn't be managing others of both genders so it must be a social issue rather than a scriptural one i.e. seen as inappropriate to have a woman in charge of a man.

As an atheist, I thought this was exactly the Kind of Thing churches of God were supposed to avoid as they were supposed to base decisions on what God wanted, rather than the 'fashions' of contemporary society?!

But Beveridge, see my post above; what or who do you have in mind when you say 'the church of England'? Bear in mind that 93% of people in the Church of England want women bishops, and that it was the 63% yes-vote among laypeople at Synod (the decision-making body) that stopped the legislation re women bishops going through (it needed to be a two-thirds majority in all three 'houses', i.e. laypeople, clergy, and bishops. Clergy and bishops voted overwhelmingly in favour, lay people still had a majority of yes-votes at 63%, but it wasn't quite enough of a majority. 4% more yeses in the House of Laity would have done it.)

The underlying issue really is whether people with such polarised views, and duch different worldviews underpinning thise views, can be held together as one church.

We know not everybody in the church agrees with what it does. However, when whichever subset of the hierarchy makes a decision, somebody issues a statement on behalf of the whole organisation. Thus, whereas a majority may have been in favour of women bishops, the church as a whole has, at the end of all the voting, remained with the status quo. A small committee decided the gay bishops as-long-as-they-don't-actually-do-anything-gay licence, and that's what The Church is now doing. Of course it's not a homogeneous mass. There are people for, against and undecided on each issue. But when The Word issues, the net result always seems to have a penis in it somewhere.

I know what you mean Annie; I'm an exasperated Anglican :) What exasperates me most is that ultimately, I really don't think that it's not about sex at all, it's about religious authority and the mediation of that authority. Sex is just the tangible issue that is shaping the answers to this abstract question. So an Anglo-Catholic who self-identifies as 'traditional' answers the question of sex / gender by talking about the nature of the church as defined by particular theologians, who are, to the Anglo-Catholic in question, qualified to articulate and mediate religious authority. An evangelical says 'well, the Bible says...' and then goes on to interpret the Bible along the lines of different theologians, whom the Evanglical sees as qualified to articulate and mediate religious authority. Liberals see themselves as thinking more of themselves, i.e. They see themselves as qualified to mediate religious authority, but even then, liberals are shaped by a different yet group of thinkers whom they have, maybe subconsciously, deemed qualified to mediate religious authority. So this is the real question; how does one church deal with this? The reasons that penises keep hoving into view ;) is that for various reasons, people on the c of e have started using the issue of sex as a kind of lens through which to see how this question of authority works. Does that make sense?

Sorry for enormous paragraph!

I respect your views hugely, but I've got to say, I don't agree, and I do believe it is about sex.

Authority is part of it, but I think at the root of all these debates about authority is this problematic issue that people who have power and authority do not like to give it up. So they form hegemonies. I think this is something that runs through all of human history.

Ironically, the whole message of Christianity is telling us that this cannot work. So there is a real struggle between people who wish to keep their authority, and the demands of the faith to give up that authority. And it is complicated because people in authority tend towards the paternalistic. It's like the pharasees being genuinely concerned about all these zealot blokes going around and upsetting the status quo, damaging their people's lives.

I think it is rooted in gender issues because the people who have the power in the Anglican Church have always been men, and even if you go back in church history to the second century, you can already see people codifying and restricting authority along gendered lines.

I personally think the CoE is obsessively religious. Religion as a hierarchical framework without faith is a bad thing IMO

They have lost the plot

As ever, the CofE is tying itself in knots trying to balance out the different factions. What they're suggesting for bishops is the current situation for priests already. Needless to say it's totally ridiculous and I can't imagine the ordaining bishop really interrogates the would-be priest - 'so, Bernard, I know you're in a civil partnership, but do you and Nigel, er, have you ever, er...'

I assume the situation is the same for women priests - it's OK to be in a lesbian civil partnership but not to have sex. Curiously, however, I have never heard this issue raise, and can only assume it's part of the Cult of the Penis mentioned by Annie...

I'm not even sure us women have souls, I believe that was debated by the church as one point.

Seriously the CofE is likely to implode with all the cognitive dissonance they have to use to just keep united.

I did have a colleague once who told me in all seriousness that women don't have souls. But then he was mad.

HolofernesesHead- your posts are thought provoking and rational and have actually inspired me to read on even though my instinctive reaction is to just laugh in exasperation at the Anglican church these days.

Where I think the real shame lies is that there are many intelligent men and women out there who would make, or have made excellent priests yet they are turning their backs on the church because of the rank hypocrisy around them. I personally know two people who have done this fairly recently. They both say that their main driver has been honesty. They want to be honest about who they are, yet the church finds it more acceptable for them to be dishonest.

I have felt for a long time that the Anglican church is in crisis, but actually I now wonder whether one could
Even call it crisis. It's just an irrelevance. A lot of very privileged power hungry people fighting among themselves While the People who Who are genuinely ministering to people are at the grass roots level right down the heirarchy.

at pam.

(And WTF at whoever debated that one.)