THE 2012 SPITTLE-FLECKED RAGE TOUR
Continuing our look at the Anglican left’s meltdown after the recent defeat of women bishops at the Church of England’s General Synod brings us to the Picar of Vutney:
I am ashamed to be a part of the Church of England. The suicidal stupidity of voting against female bishops has further discredited an organisation that has been haemorrhaging credibility for years.
Giles was not happy, in other words.
But this is not simply a problem internal to the church itself. For as an established church, this decision represents a scandal that burrows deep into our whole political infrastructure: we now have 26 places in the House of Lords deliberately reserved for a male-only club. Before this, it could have been put down to an accident of history. Now it is deliberate.
This is wholly unsustainable. Cries for disestablishment are inevitable – though most politicians will run for cover at the prospect, not knowing what our polity could possibly look like once we start tumbling down that particular rabbit hole. For now, the prime minister was content simply to express his disappointment and urge the church to ”get on with it”.
But get on with what? It is in no way obvious how things go next. The church is stuck with a hapless decision-making structure which can only amplify the sense of acrimony that is now coursing through its veins.
The legislation that failed represented a real stretch for liberals, with many only just being able to vote for an arrangement that they believed would create a special category of second-class bishops just for women – and was thus already an institutionalisation of misogyny.
With the failure of even this compromise, there is little prospect of liberals playing ball again. They won’t say this out loud. But the truth is: next time it is all or nothing. Women must be bishops on exactly the same terms as men or not at all. Forget all that stuff about this not being a zero-sum game. Now it is.
On the positive side – and I am working hard to find a silver lining to all of this – it is unlikely that the Church of England will be able to wield as much clout against the idea of gay marriage. With its moral credibility so badly shot, why should anyone now listen?
Within a couple of hours of the vote being announced, my own church council celebrated the eucharist together then gathered in the pub to sit with our curate and to let her know how much we love her and value her ministry. It felt ever so slightly last supperish. Not least because, like then, we all feel so thoroughly betrayed.
Note Fraser’s childish sense of absolute entitlement. Note also his intellectual tantrum. A handful of votes inone body of a three-body Synod merely delayed what just about everybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows is inevitable. But because Giles Fraser didn’t get his way RIGHT NOW, he is “ashamed” of an institution that has “thoroughly betrayed” him.
In the immortal words of the late Warren Oates, “Lighten up, Francis.”
Something else should be obvious to those Anglican traditionalists, on that side of the Atlantic or on this one, who cling to the comforting illusion that you can cling to “official” Angicanism as long as “accomodations” are made. Giles Fraser has just made it abundantly clear how much “respect” the Anglican left has for the conservative position.
So let me bottom-line it for you, traditionalist Anglican. You can either leave “official” Anglicanism or get thrown out. But one way or the other, you’re leaving.
Someone named Sarah Coakley drives that point home. “Accomodation” is over.
As was again proven by the dismal decision of the General Synod, what our Church now requires is not some sort of palliative or merely pragmatic compromise, but a fresh and uncompromising focus on the underlying theological and philosophical issues which cannot credibly be gainsaid, and without which no lasting solution to the issue of female bishops can be achieved.
Such a coherent “theology of women bishops,” if there is to be such, must be therefore be a renewed and distinctly Anglican theology of the episcopate in toto, and not a capitulation to a second-order “female” form of the office, or to any other political compromise which hides an actual theological contradiction, or – again – to some negotiated pragmatic stand-off which continues to distract our gaze from the already-undermined position of women clergy in our church.
Twenty years ago our Church voted to ordain women. We have arrived at the point when all the indications are that the current theological anomaly of priests who cannot by definition be bishops has become an unacceptable skandalon to the Church’s life. This is not because of a capitulation to secular feminism; it is, as I’ve tried to demonstrate, because of a commitment to the historic nature of Christian ordained ministry and in particular to the distinctive theological principles of Anglicanism.
While I am fully committed to the attempt to find courteously-ordered arrangements for those who currently disagree, I am completely opposed to the introduction of new incoherences into the theological picture. It is truth that is at stake. And while truth can be two-eyed, it cannot be two-faced.
What say we admit the obvious. Intellectually, the liberals have won the argument (contra Ms. Coakly, the theology is another matter). If your church ordains women as priests, the idea of forbidding the episcopate to women is absurd.
And let’s go there, shall we? If you’ve got absoutely no problem whatsoever associating with a church that ordains non-celibate gays to the priesthood, then breaking communion when that church gives a pointy hat and hooked stick to one of those non-celibate gay priests is just as indefensible.
I am ashamed to be a part of the Church of England. The suicidal stupidity of voting against female bishops has further discredited an organisation that has been haemorrhaging credibility for years.
Giles was not happy, in other words.
But this is not simply a problem internal to the church itself. For as an established church, this decision represents a scandal that burrows deep into our whole political infrastructure: we now have 26 places in the House of Lords deliberately reserved for a male-only club. Before this, it could have been put down to an accident of history. Now it is deliberate.
This is wholly unsustainable. Cries for disestablishment are inevitable – though most politicians will run for cover at the prospect, not knowing what our polity could possibly look like once we start tumbling down that particular rabbit hole. For now, the prime minister was content simply to express his disappointment and urge the church to ”get on with it”.
But get on with what? It is in no way obvious how things go next. The church is stuck with a hapless decision-making structure which can only amplify the sense of acrimony that is now coursing through its veins.
The legislation that failed represented a real stretch for liberals, with many only just being able to vote for an arrangement that they believed would create a special category of second-class bishops just for women – and was thus already an institutionalisation of misogyny.
With the failure of even this compromise, there is little prospect of liberals playing ball again. They won’t say this out loud. But the truth is: next time it is all or nothing. Women must be bishops on exactly the same terms as men or not at all. Forget all that stuff about this not being a zero-sum game. Now it is.
On the positive side – and I am working hard to find a silver lining to all of this – it is unlikely that the Church of England will be able to wield as much clout against the idea of gay marriage. With its moral credibility so badly shot, why should anyone now listen?
Within a couple of hours of the vote being announced, my own church council celebrated the eucharist together then gathered in the pub to sit with our curate and to let her know how much we love her and value her ministry. It felt ever so slightly last supperish. Not least because, like then, we all feel so thoroughly betrayed.
Note Fraser’s childish sense of absolute entitlement. Note also his intellectual tantrum. A handful of votes inone body of a three-body Synod merely delayed what just about everybody with eyes to see and ears to hear knows is inevitable. But because Giles Fraser didn’t get his way RIGHT NOW, he is “ashamed” of an institution that has “thoroughly betrayed” him.
In the immortal words of the late Warren Oates, “Lighten up, Francis.”
Something else should be obvious to those Anglican traditionalists, on that side of the Atlantic or on this one, who cling to the comforting illusion that you can cling to “official” Angicanism as long as “accomodations” are made. Giles Fraser has just made it abundantly clear how much “respect” the Anglican left has for the conservative position.
So let me bottom-line it for you, traditionalist Anglican. You can either leave “official” Anglicanism or get thrown out. But one way or the other, you’re leaving.
Someone named Sarah Coakley drives that point home. “Accomodation” is over.
As was again proven by the dismal decision of the General Synod, what our Church now requires is not some sort of palliative or merely pragmatic compromise, but a fresh and uncompromising focus on the underlying theological and philosophical issues which cannot credibly be gainsaid, and without which no lasting solution to the issue of female bishops can be achieved.
Such a coherent “theology of women bishops,” if there is to be such, must be therefore be a renewed and distinctly Anglican theology of the episcopate in toto, and not a capitulation to a second-order “female” form of the office, or to any other political compromise which hides an actual theological contradiction, or – again – to some negotiated pragmatic stand-off which continues to distract our gaze from the already-undermined position of women clergy in our church.
Twenty years ago our Church voted to ordain women. We have arrived at the point when all the indications are that the current theological anomaly of priests who cannot by definition be bishops has become an unacceptable skandalon to the Church’s life. This is not because of a capitulation to secular feminism; it is, as I’ve tried to demonstrate, because of a commitment to the historic nature of Christian ordained ministry and in particular to the distinctive theological principles of Anglicanism.
While I am fully committed to the attempt to find courteously-ordered arrangements for those who currently disagree, I am completely opposed to the introduction of new incoherences into the theological picture. It is truth that is at stake. And while truth can be two-eyed, it cannot be two-faced.
What say we admit the obvious. Intellectually, the liberals have won the argument (contra Ms. Coakly, the theology is another matter). If your church ordains women as priests, the idea of forbidding the episcopate to women is absurd.
And let’s go there, shall we? If you’ve got absoutely no problem whatsoever associating with a church that ordains non-celibate gays to the priesthood, then breaking communion when that church gives a pointy hat and hooked stick to one of those non-celibate gay priests is just as indefensible.
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