{"id":341,"date":"2012-02-08T12:50:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=341"},"modified":"2012-02-08T12:50:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T12:50:00","slug":"a-few-thoughts-about-women-bishops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=341","title":{"rendered":"A few thoughts about women bishops"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a bit depressing following the shenanigans at General Synod about Women Bishops. (+Alan expresses why quite succinctly<\/a>). I thought I’d put a few thoughts down about my own position. <\/p>\n

1. I believe that the CofE has authority in this matter. If I didn’t believe that I’d be a Roman Catholic. <\/p>\n

2. My understanding of ordination and episcopacy is that they are indissoluble – the former derives authority from the latter (and not just in the ordination of a priest but in any subsequent ministry – “this ministry which is yours and mine<\/a>“). So to my mind the fundamental decision was made in the early 1990s. What is happening now is about taking the process to a logical conclusion. For what it’s worth, I suspect that the *specific* decision made in 1992 was the wrong one, for all sorts of reasons. However, what’s done is done, and there is no going back. <\/p>\n

3. I believe that there are objections to the ordination of women that are non-trivial and that are not rooted in anti-women prejudice (there are, of course, many objections that are trivial and rooted in prejudice). In particular, this is not a matter of ‘equality’, ‘discrimination’ or ‘justice’ – except derivatively so, from a broader theological framework. That is, there is a genuine debate to be had here about what it is to be a priest, what it is to be a bishop. The greatest sadness for me is that the argument has been hijacked by secular thinking (on the pro side) and reactive, panicked negativity (on the anti side). In so far as there has been higher quality theological reflection on it (and there has been some) it hasn’t filtered down. <\/p>\n

4. To my mind, the root issue is that vocation is not reducible to biology. That is, to be a priest or to be a bishop is not a matter of having the correct chromosomes – nor is that a necessary condition – but rather it is entirely <\/i>a question of character. Who or what is this <\/i>person called to be? If we had a better theology of ministry and discipleship, and a clearer understanding of what it meant for any individual Christian to be called to ministry by virtue of their baptism, then we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves into this mess. We are reaping the bitter fruits of several generations of theological illiteracy. Which is the real reason why the CofE is dying<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a bit depressing following the shenanigans at General Synod about Women Bishops. (+Alan expresses why quite succinctly). I thought I’d put a few thoughts down about my own position. 1. I believe that the CofE has authority in this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ang-communion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-5v","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}