TEC dishonesty, ineptitude cited as contributing to defeat of women bishops in C of E

from Stand Firm by Timothy Fountain 

Anglican Ink has comments from a supporter of women’s ordination and women bishops, who this week voted
against a measure that would have allowed for the consecration of women as C of E bishops.

His central concern was that the measure watered down to the point of eliminating promised protections for Anglo Catholic and Evangelical Anglicans who could not accept the change.

Part of his concern was shaped by The Episcopal Church’s word tricks and inept conflict resolution over LGBT issues, reflected in significant losses of active church people,

“The truth is that, in July with Clause 5.1.c as then proposed, the Measure stood a chance of being accepted by those most adversely affected by it and I might have voted for it then. But after that clause was watered down and talked merely of respect - a word which is no reassurance at all to anybody who has been attending to developments in The Episcopal Church on the other side of the Atlantic - it was likely to lead to grief and further departures. And I absolutely do not want to see the Church of England ending up as a result of our in my view correct determination to include women in the ordained ministry at all levels with an even smaller footprint. I do not want the Church to vote to shrink more…”

It is ironic that TEC, run nationally by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and her inner circle, contributed to the defeat of a measure to allow women bishops in the Church of England.  The “tolerant, inclusive” American denomination is earning a well deserved reputation for saying one thing while practicing something else, and even progressive members of other provinces seem to be catching on that TEC’s “tolerance” tends to be for insiders only, and its “inclusion” is for a favored few, to the exclusion of anybody who disagrees:

“The Church needs to speak not with one tongue, but with many tongues as it always has. Legalism and intolerance are bad Christianity, but they are what the proposed Measure was very likely to increase. We were told over and over again that provision was being made for those who reject women clergy and bishops. But this was simply untrue. It was a lie. These minorities had sought arrangements on which they could rely. But instead what they had said they needed had been consistently rejected - or, when the Archbishops made some effort to achieve a compromise that would work for them, neither Archbishop managed the process of promoting what they were proposing at all well. That was how the Church arrived at this situation fraught as it was with dishonesty and illusion. That the vote went against the Measure despite the immense pressure placed on the Laity should suggest that what was being proposed was seen as a serious problem. It was defeated by a coalition that included many lay people who want there to be women bishops but not by dishonest inadequate means that were demonstrably not fit for purpose.”