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Women set to be bishops within next seven years
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The LONDON TIMES
As Church prepares to vote on women bishops, measures to quell opposition are on the agenda
THE Church of England could have women bishops within seven years under proposals to be debated by the General Synod next year.
A bishops’ report yesterday set out a range of options from maintaining the status quo to a simple change in the law making it legal to ordain a woman to the episcopate.
The Church is likely to appease opponents by making pastoral provision for the minority who still oppose women’s ordination. It may even impose a “stained-glass ceiling” to ensure a woman cannot become Archbishop of Canterbury. The report acknowledges a lack of consensus in the Church on women’s ordination, with traditionalists and conservative evangelicals strongly opposed.
The report pleads for harmony. It says: “This world will one day pass away and the ecclesiastical structures on which we expend so much time and energy, important though they are, will pass away with it.
“In the light of this fact, we need to give the highest priority to deepening the quality of our love for the other members of the body of Christ, perhaps especially those with whom we most strongly disagree on issues such as the ordination of women to the episcopate.”
The Church will debate the report at the next synod meeting at Church House, Westminster, in February. In July, the synod is expected to vote on a motion to remove the legal obstacles to women bishops.
The measure will then be debated by diocesan synods. If a majority agree, it will need final approval with a two-thirds majority from bishops, clergy and laity before it can be approved by synod. This process will take about four years.
The measure will then go to Parliament’s ecclesiastical committee and be voted on by both houses of Parliament before it can receive Royal Assent and then be “promulgated” by the synod. This could take at least another year.
It would then be up to the Crown Appointments Commission to select a woman for a vacancy and the Prime Minister would make the final decision of recommending the woman to the Queen for the post.
But a diocesan bishop could appoint a woman as his suffragan immediately after the measure became law if he wished. Of the 44 diocesans, 39 support women bishops.
Canada, the US and New Zealand already have women bishops. Scotland has voted to consecrate them but no woman has as yet been selected.
More than 700 submissions were received by the bishops’ working party set up by the General Synod at the request of the Ven Judith Rose, former Archdeacon of Tonbridge.
The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, chairman of the working party, made up of lay and ordained men and women from across the different church traditions, said: “We have looked at what the Bible as a whole says about men and women in the world and in the Church.”
Most of the traditionalists on the Anglo-Catholic wing who opposed women priests believe that it is nevertheless illogical to ordain women priests and not bishops. Their main concern will be to secure adequate pastoral oversight and they will campaign for a third province, or church within a church, to sit alongside Canterbury and York. The chief opposition will come from evangelicals, who cite St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11: “The man shall be the head of the woman.”
But Dr Nazir-Ali, who advocates women’s ordination, said this chapter also made clear that women had a ministry in the early church.
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