Two southern provinces and their clergy...

A little while ago the Church of England just failed to pass a measure that (as its principal function) would have allowed women to become bishops in that church (the Anglican provinces of York and Canterbury).  It was nail-bitingly close, and one of the houses just didn't quite make the 2/3 majority needed.

Why care? As a Scottish Episcopal priest, it won't affect life.  We are allowed women bishops up here already.  At that point the complacency ends.  We haven't had one, although there have been attempts (we vote for bishops up here). Staggeringly few women are even in the few senior posts in the church, the deans and the provosts.  Only ever 2 female provosts and one female dean.  Not a particularly good track record.  But it takes years for a change to flow through a church, especially one that is contentious from a theological or traditional view.

I was ordained in England, and have many, many friends in ministry there.  Some of them are wrapped up in the campaign for women's episcopal ministry.  They will be hurting very much this evening.

But the vote was much more subtle than just the straightforward issue of gender justice, as Kelvin points out. The continued issue of maintaining a sanctuary for traditionalists who don't wish to accept the ministry of women bishops has also been rejected.  That was a live issue when I was still in the C of E, and I found myself taking a rather hardline against any compromise, and signing petitions etc. against such measures.  Go and see how green the grass of non-conformism or the ordinariate actually is, I muttered.

But how pyrrhic a victory is rejecting compromise at the expense of delaying female bishops for further years?  It is a hard, hard place that many English clergy will find themselves tomorrow morning.  Many of them have tweeted 'Ashamed to be Anglican,' and rather than pedantically correcting them, I share some sympathy.

Our house in Scotland is equally not in order from a gender justice point of view: no sanctuary for traditionalists, a canonical structure that allows female bishops: and we have still not made it...

And as for the issue of some other moratoria.  We'll let that lie for the moment.

Female bishops - a view from Scotland

Have just signed the Church of England WATCH petition to lobby the house of (English) bishops to withdraw clause 5.1c of the amendment to the female bishop legislation.

Why, as a Scottish Episcopalian, did I do this?  I asked the same question of myself, and have hesitated to do so for some time because of this.  The Scottish Episcopal Church allows women bishops - we have just never had one (yet).

I was ordained deacon and priest in the Church of England, and did not expect or intend at that time to move north of the border.  I served my title in an English parish.  It was a rich, full and rewarding time of ministry.

I am now in a church that has maybe a little as 1-2% of the full-time clergy that serve in the C of E (I think there are 16,000 C of E clergy, and maybe 170 or so SEC clergy who are paid - this is a bit of a hazy guess...).

But there is an issue of justice here.

I am an Anglican priest - part of something much bigger than the charges I serve, the diocese in which I work and the province that I find myself within.  The rules in all the many Anglican provinces on gender and ministry vary, as do they on, doctrine, inclusion etc. etc.  There are plenty of justice issues in this world, but to perpetuate, even implicitly, division and historical reaction WITHIN our church structures.  I feel the theology of this issue is tainted...  We need bishops who are humans - that is what the incarnation teaches...

Show me a petition about a human justice issue lying within our Anglican Communion, and I will, as an Anglican priest, sign that petition...