Women bishops (2) - yes or no?

The New Testament teaches us that all Christians are one body in Christ; Members of General Synod were reminded of this last year by the Theological Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity, Dr Martin Davie, after responses to the Church of England’s debate on women bishops were received from Christian partners here and abroad. They were, he said, an important reminder that the issue should not be discussed purely as an internal matter, but also in the context of its effect on wider, ecumenical Christian Unity.  This month our contributors look in on the debate from outside the Church of England.

Relating to each other as men and women
By the Revd Dr Mary Cotes, Ecumenical Moderator, Milton Keynes

THE recent pilgrimage to Bethlehem of four church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke powerfully about the current ecumenical climate in Britain. It highlighted the fact that ecumenical relating and action, rooted from the first in mission, embraces far more than issues of faith and order, and engages us as human beings who belong to the body of Christ with the very human concerns and struggles of our world.

The pilgrimage also, I think, clearly showed that at the moment, the ecumenical movement at a high level presents a model of human relating which is very largely if not entirely male.

I am an ordained Baptist minister, and work as the Ecumenical Moderator in Milton Keynes. Asked to comment on the question of women bishops from an ecumenical point of view,  I might offer a fairly predictable reply: that it is not just women bishops, but bishops in general which raise ecumenical questions, especially  for churches  with congregational government. Having said that,  the consecration of women bishops may well  bring the Church of England nearer to the Free Churches, who have a tradition of women in leadership, than to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Looking at the question from another point of view however, it seems to me that if the ecumenical movement is to be a genuine laboratory for human, rather than simply male, relating and reconciliation in Christ,  it urgently needs greater participation from women in every sphere. 

While an encouraging number of women currently serve as ecumenical officers, few  are present in ecumenical affairs which draw together leaders and theologians at  high levels. If I may speak personally;, often when I attend ecumenical gatherings of regional or even national church leaders,  I find myself as a woman in a small minority, if not in a minority of one, and I am left with the impression that patterns of ecumenical relating are still very largely masculine. 

In the end, the ecumenical vision is not only about theologies and ecclesiologies; it is also about our relating to one another as men and women,  and in my view the presence of Anglican women bishops would only serve to enhance and enrich the humanity of our pilgrimage together.

No place for discrimination in the body of Christ
By Anne Leck, lay chaplain to Methodist Church House, London, and former Vice-President of the British Methodist Conference. She lives in Woodstock.

I AM a laywoman who works with children and young people within the Methodist Church. I have never felt a call to be a preacher, but Christian theology is at the heart of my work. What follows is my personal reflection on the Women Bishops debate within the Anglican Church.

There is plenty of debate about episcopacy within the Methodist Church, but no doubt at all that all positions of leadership should be open to people of both genders. Women were first ordained in the British Methodist Church in 1974. Women have served as President of the Methodist Conference (the titular head of the Church, who changes annually). The Church’s Northampton District, which includes most of the area covered by the Oxford Anglican Diocese, has a woman Chair, Alison Tomlin.

In one of his earliest letters, St Paul wrote: ‘There is no such thing as Jew and Greek, slave and freeman, male and female, for you are all one person in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28). Although Paul persuaded the early Church not to discriminate between Jew and Greek, it seems that as a first century Roman citizen he could not see all the implications of the rest of this quotation. Nor did most of the church leaders who followed him. However, 200 years ago it came to be recognised that the institution of slavery was an offence against Christian justice; and the Methodist Church, like many other Christians, now believes that sex discrimination, in the church and in society, is equally unjust.

As is said in the Bishop of Rochester’s report ‘Women Bishops in the Church of England?’ (2004), ‘The ordination of women as bishops in the Church of England would remove an obstacle to the development of Anglican-Methodist relations under the terms of the Anglican-Methodist Covenant.’

Many Methodists feel passionately that even the system of flying bishops in the Church of England is inconsistent with the God-given equality of man and woman. Those with this view would find it impossible to move towards organic unity with any Church which was not firmly committed to opening all offices within it to people of both genders.

So let’s be bold and prophetic in our thinking. After all, those outside all our Christian denominations wonder what all the fuss is about!

A matter of church order
By Dr Henry Mayr-Harting, Emeritus Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Oxford

LAST issue I followed the discussion in the DOOR on the theological aspect of the issue of women bishops. But, unless one makes no distinction between a matter of church order and a matter of theology I cannot see, as an historian, how it is a matter of theology at all, or indeed how theology can help the discussion.

This applies equally to my own Roman communion. Recently a papal or Vatican statement spoke of the non-ordination of women (to the priesthood, so a fortiori to the episcopate) as part of the ‘ancient deposit of faith’. This statement was not made solemnly ex cathedra, despite some extremist claims to the contrary; and it still needs explanation how the issue can be a matter of faith at all. Acceptance of the rule, yes: but faith?

If the Church of England were to embark on the consecration of women bishops, it would be hard to see this as seriously detrimental to relations with Roman Catholics. The degree of unity existing now, compared to what there was in my boyhood (1950s) is remarkable and something to be deeply thankful for.
It was never likely that this could extend to the final unity of church order. Such unity will not, as of now and in any case, happen in the foreseeable future. Indeed much harm could be done by trying to force the pace.

On the other hand, there lurks an ecumenical danger in one of the arguments being used by some of those Anglicans who are pro-women bishops: that women might as well be made bishops now, since the office of bishop is decreasing in importance, what with synods and the like. If I were an Anglican I’d think that slightly demeaning of women priests.

As an historian, I say that the episcopate has been woven into the very fabric of the Christian church order since its first century, and ought not to be diminished because of a few committees.

While as an ecumenist, I mention that during the past half century, the episcopate has been waxing in Roman Catholic thinking (if not always in practice admittedly), because of the concept of collegiality.