So today there was an important vote in the ruling body of the Church of England. In effect it was on whether to finally allow women to ascend to the highest ranks of the church hierarchy and become bishops, but because this is the Church of England it was actually a slightly more complicated vote. They were voting on whether to continue to 'debate' the introduction of women bishops for the foreseeable future or whether to cease debate and accept a compromise that would allow women to be bishops but let some church groups reject their authority in favour of a male alternative. Anyway, apparently even that fudge was a bridge too far for the traditionalists as the vote failed and the church will now continue to 'debate' the matter until the next time someone dares to bring the issue to vote at a future Synod meeting. I put debate in sarcasm air quotes there because really there is nothing left to be said. The failure of the vote partly reflects the unwieldy governing structure of the church which rivals the US in the ability of a small minority to block anything they disagree with. The motion needed to get 2/3 support in all three 'chambers' and in the end it only failed to do this in one. Whatever the mechanics of it though the result is the same, the church has failed to modernise to even 20th century levels and this was supposed to be the easy battle to win. Much more divisive is the church's current stance on homosexuality, especially among the wider Anglican communion. US branches of Anglicanism have already allowed gay bishops but much of the African churches are bitterly opposed and for the looks of things so will be enough of the current English church. The current Archbishop was a moderate who tried to soothe the divisions but ended up satisfying nobody. He retires this year to be replaced by a more hardline candidate who opposes homosexual acceptance within the church. The future for the church seems bleak, increasingly out of step with mainstream society, blighted by a conservative system of government and facing ever declining church service attendance. I'm not sure how much longer it can stumble onwards in it's current state before facing renewed demands for disestablishment.
That seems pretty crucial, and a bummer. The combination of a "liberal-ish" US church and Williams as minipope made the whole church seem vastly saner than the recent Catholic church, in spite of the emphatic opposition of conservative factions. May we hope that a conservative archbishop at least has less power to wrench the whole mechanism rightwards, as John Paul II and Benedict did the Catholic church?
Well he is nowhere near as conservative as the catholic popes, indeed he argued in favour of women's bishops today. He is just more conservative/traditional than the outgoing archbishop. I suspect his role will be to oversee another decade of slow decline. The Guardian's main writer on religious affairs had this to say: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/nov/20/women-bishops-debate-suicide-note
Well, at least we can take comfort that the Church of England is now largely irrelevant & impotent, so even if they do fail to modernize, it probably won't matter much.
It's sort of ironic that the head of the church can be a woman but the next highest offices in the hierarchy can't.
I don't know what you expect; to embrace homosexuality and female priests and have any sort of theological rigeur other than some wishy-washy Jesus is Love stuff means throwing out most of Paul's writings and much of the Old Testament, which means tossing out the Nicean canon and I guess rewriting which books are scriptural or not. Needless this is not going to be something that's in any hurry to happen. What I mean to say is that I'm always surprised at people surprised at Church institutions being conservative and preservationist rather than progressive and reforming; that's just the nature of religion. The Chuch of England is still the established faith and has 26 seats in th House of Lords.
It worked for the Swedish (formerly State) Church. And yeah, I know the scriptural support for it is a lot less coherant than the scriptural opposition to it. But the church can either move with society, which thinks that women and gays are no longer second-class citizens, or it can stick to orthodoxy and become increasingly marginalised.
Well many or most clamoring for these changes aren't actually religious themselves, won't become so if these changes are adopted, and usually think it's all bunk anyway, please die out and go away, religion. It works for places like Sweden (IMO) just because everyone is on the same page, but there is a much greater diversity of opinion in Britain and moreso of course in the US. I'd also guess that part of the reason the CoE rejected this is because there has been some chatter about rejoining with the Catholic Church, and staying "Catholic as possible" helps make a future reconciliation and/or joining plausible. I'd actually expect the CoE to seriously consider joining with Rome if it ever is disestablished in the future.
I'm not terribly happy at exempting religious organisations from anti discriminatory legislation but if we're going to allow angry men in dresses to be bigots where we'd nail any other organisation to wall for it then I don't think they should have any say in our state legislative process.
Perhaps a compromise: Woman can aspire to the position, but only if they wear dresses and massive wigs. No wait, that's barristers.
No, the new archbishop is anti-bummers. Though often those who are most against it are suspect etc etc.
I've got nothing to add other than the Episcopal church (Anglicanism in the US) is awesome. I grew up in it and regret none of it. They are generally the most inclusive set of folks I've ever met. Though the Church of England would probably like to know that the Episcopal church raised me to be an atheist and they (the Episcopal clergy I've spoken to) are a-ok with this. So maybe not a winning strategy there.
It is a bit weird that the US branch of Anglicanism would end up as the most liberal when in most respects the US is one of the most religiously conservative first world countries. My guess is that the market for conservative churches was already completely saturated so the Episcopal types had to find their own niche.
