Why the church should break the law

Priest in Eucharistic vestments (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the immediate aftermath of the recent Anglican vote against having female bishops the press was pretty much universal in its hatred for the decision. One particular title to a letter from a reader caught my eye:

The church isn’t above the law

Obviously the opinion stated was that if the Church of England is going to continue operating as a charity in the UK with the significant position it does, it should at least obey equal opportunities laws and so on.

But that doesn’t really work when it comes to faith, does it? The church must submit to a higher authority than the Government, so if the Bible says ‘you must’ when the Government says ‘you must not,’ the church ‘must’. Agreed?

‘Well,’ comes back the response, ‘that’s all well and good when you’re talking about what days of the week to work on, but really you Christians should catch up with modern society.’

Now, that all sounds ok until you ask where the line is; a couple of hundred years ago it would have been completely irrelevant for the church to have women leading churches at all, let alone as bishops! How would a woman, whose role in life was to be wife and mother before anything else, have anything useful to say to men? And before that offends you, think a couple of hundred years into the future. What will western society look like in 2100? Maybe we will continue on the same trajectory of the past century and become even more liberal (I can’t even imagine how!) but maybe we’ll end up having our minds changed and swinging in the opposite direction – we can’t predict the future.

But God can, which is why in his grace he wrote us a book.

Four observations on the vote against female bishops

English: Logo of the Church of England (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not really involved in the Church of England, but I’m pretty sympathetic towards it. I’ve been to General Synod twice and try to follow Anglican news stories, so I found yesterday’s vote really interesting. Just a couple of initial observations, if I may.

1. The Anglican voting system has been carefully designed; those on both ‘sides’ should accept the result within the sovereignty of God, not get bitter, and trust the system.
2. Linked to that, the Church of England has been characterised over the past decade or so by internal disagreements over homosexuality and gender roles. I think now is the time to move forward and unite over things which we can all agree are more important: the Gospel, social action, and reaching the lost.
3. I found it really interesting that the more ‘senior’ the voter, the more rebellious; the ‘yes’ vote lost (I don’t think ‘no’ really won) only because of the laity. Only two bishops voted no, and three bishops abstained despite the Archbishop’s specific instructions for people not to.
4. The result was probably the safest one for the future of the Church of England. Those voting ‘no’ weren’t being sexist, they were wanting to be faithful to the Bible, whereas some voting ‘yes’ (certainly not all) were directly challenging the Bible’s authority and relevance. If the door had been opened to female bishops it would only be a matter of time before pressure started to mount for more controversial motions to be passed. That said, it definitely leaves the Church of England in a tricky, slightly hypocritical situation in which ladies can be ordained but no more than that.

I suppose I’m glad the weight of making such significant decisions doesn’t rest on my shoulders – we should pray more for leaders.

Related articles

• Church of England votes against allowing women bishops (guardian.co.uk)
• Church of England rejects female bishops by six votes (religion.blogs.cnn.com)
• Church of England General Synod votes against women bishops despite late plea from next Archbishop of Canterbury (independent.co.uk)