Women speaking in Church...

[Woolmark]

If an Anglo Catholic priest is fully against the ordiantion of women, is it possible he is also against women speaking in a church service at all?

Well, I do believe it says somewhere in the bible that women are not suppose to speak in church.

So there you go...

"1 Timothy 2:11-12: Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence."

I shouldn't have thought so women might do the Bible readings, or the prayers of intercessions, or be readers or deacons. Ango-Catholic priests who are against the ordination of women are usually against it on sacramental grounds to do with apostolic succession it is conservative evangelicals who normally support male headship and the prohibition against women speaking in church. So if he's AC then he would be in the wrong tradition to be against women speaking in church.

As niminypiminy says, Anglo-Catholics who are against women's ordination tend to be against it for other reasons, like 'the apostles were all male' or because the priest 'represents' Christ at the altar, or because we should be trying for greater unity with the RC church and therefore not making decisions which increase the distance between us. Usually, the 'not speaking in church' and 'man is the head' arguments tend to come from a conservative evangelical standpoint.

But of course that doesn't stop any specific AC priest from being negative about women being involved in church (apart from making tea and doing the flower arranging) just because of his own individual prejudices.

I don't understand how people who are against the ordination of women have come to the conclusion that the sacramental reasons should be followed to a tee, yet I'm sure they don't follow everything else in the New Testament word for word. It is slightly hypocritical and it makes me think there is more to it than just sacramental reasons, unless of course they adhere to everything else it says.

Can anyone shed some light on who 'elects' the priest, is it the congregation?

The PCC (Parochial Church Council, normally has the vicar, churchwardens and members of the congregation elected at an annual meeting) employs the priest, so they will have to agree that the priest's theological views and all his or her other qualities are what they are looking for in a vicar.

If the priest disagrees with the ordination of women for sacramental reasons this is usually more to do with how he understands the traditions of the church rather than interpreting the Bible literally -- as AMuminScotland says, because he sees the priest as representing the risen Christ, or because he sees priests as descending in a direct line of ordination from the apostles, or because other branches of the church (eg Roman Catholic, Orthodox) do not have women priests.

Thanks Niminy, for me, getting tied up in the 'traditions' of the church is verging dangerously close to pharisee type behaviour. I don't think Jesus would advocate it, could be wrong though!

Maybe it's more a case of balancing tradition (which includes all the great theologians of the past), and the Bible, and reason -- these are the three things that the Church of England regards as authorities for deciding what is right. (Methodists add in experience to this as well.)

I'm fairly new to Christianity, I don't know much about Methodists, I've always assumed they're similar to Baptists but perhaps not!

Niminy, were did you learn all this, where you raised a Christian or have you researched it?

Methodists are probably closer to the Church of England than they are to Baptists. There are quite a lot of differences between Baptists and Methodists in terms of their traditions and beliefs, even though sometimes their services can seem quite similar (and sometimes Methodist and CofE services can seem similar). Tis confusing!

Our Church is very smells & bells, with a sung Eucharist every Sunday, even though it's COE. I was baptised as an adult It's the only Church I've ever been to.

No, I wasn't raised a Christian (was brought up in an atheist family) and in fact I was only baptised a few years ago. But I'm training to be ordained so I guess I have researched it quite a bit.

The main thing I'd want to say is that although there are some priests (and some lay people) who don't believe in it, most people in the Church of England really support women's ordination and think it's been a huge blessing for the church. That's the majority view now. And up and down the country there are women doing all sorts of things at church, in services and in other kinds of church activities. That's the reality on the ground, as it were.

A Church of England vicar/rector is not employed by the PCC of a church. A priest holds his or her office on a licence from the diocesan bishop . However, representatives of the PCC have a say in the process which selects the priest and churchwardens take part in the Institution service which marks the beginning of a priest's ministry in that place.

Thanks Niminy, that's really inspiring! Good luck in your training & career. A bit off topic but can you recommend any theological books? I've read a few books the priest gave me before I was baptised and also the Bible (which took a while) but would like to dig a little deeper.

vicarlady you are right -- I was using 'employ' in a loose sense.

woolmark : will have a think and pm you!

Woolmark - I posted on your other thread, but I just wanted to stick my nose in here too to say that it's possible to find churches within the CofE that are liturgically traditional ('smells 'n' bells') but theologically liberal (vis-a-vis women clergy, and all the other controversial stuff...). I came back to faith after a long time away and was worried I wouldn't find a church that combined both these things, but in the end it didn't turn out to be a problem. Good luck!

Thanks Tuo, I'm definitely theologically liberal but am a sucker for the smells 'n' bells and a sung Eucharist! Did it take you long to find the right Church?

Hope you find something that suits you, woolmark :)

I can never understand how those who purport to be against women speaking in church at all balance the passages from Paul's letters advocating women speaking in church, and in fact praising many who do. And why they do not research the context and etymology of such passages as the Timothy one above. It baffles me.

People can be against ordination of women but happy for women to speak in church though. It's the authority issue (even though that whole argument is based on a mistranslation)

I was outside the UK when I started going back to church, Woolmark, and just got lucky and found something I liked (there wasn't a lot of choice where I was living, but there was one that advertised a 'praise band' and one that didn't, and I went for the latter!). When I came back to the UK I consciously looked for a church that would fit the bill - I knew my local parish church was a bit too evangelical/happy clappy/loud/whatever for me, and the AC parishes near me were all explicitly Resolution A/B/C (i.e. no women clergy) so I started going to my local cathedral, which is the perfect mixture for me - very open, lots going on, but traditional(-ish ... partly it depends which service you go to) too. If you're near enough to your local cathedral I would recommend it, though I think they probably vary according to where they are as to whether they have a real community feel, as mine does, or have a more transient tourist-boosted population. Good luck!

my reverend friend (male) told us this in a sermon:

When Jesus rose from the dead the woman had gone to the tomb to lay spices and stuff. tombs empty.

Mary Madgs sees a man and thinks hes the gardener.
turns out its Jesus.

Jesus tells her, a woman, to 'go and tell the good news'.

good news means Gospel.

as a poster upthread said, women do readings in church. Where from? the Gospels. going and telling (preaching).

Nuns teach in schools.

This reminds me of this last year
Bristol University's Christian Union Bans Women From Speaking At Meetings

what about women leading worship groups and stuff?

Speaking in Church.

All the passages in the new testament are very easily understood and they are not saying women can't speak in church. However you need to search for it.

You need to know that there was no punctuation in the original manuscripts, the context of the letter and who Paul is writing to, the talmud and its views on women - which are that women can't speak in public, that there is no where in the whole OT that says a woman can't speak in a public religious assembly, plus the words that are used in the original Greek.

Because funnily enough??? Our translations don't make it very easy to see what Paul and Co are saying.

However when you know that you can read things like this when he says 'women can't speak..says the law' and then you know that he is responding to a letter in which they have written to him about stopping women from speaking because the talmud says so. Because there is no law in the OT to stop women speaking. He is quoting it back and telling them they haven't quite hit the mark.

A good book on this is 'In the Spirit we're equal' which you can download from Amazon.