What is in Kelvin's Head?

The Church of England and its Bishops

20/11/2012

There is no pleasure to be taken in the vote in the Church of England’s Synod today which failed to reach the majority required to proceed to having bishops in that church who happen to be women. However, I did say a little while ago that had I been in England’s Synod, I think I would have voted against the measure that was proposed even though I’m personally in favour of opening the Episcopate to women and men equally and indeed voted in favour when we faced a similar question in the General Synod in Scotland. (Women can become bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church but not have done so yet).

The trouble with the measure in England from my point of view is that it was a compromise far too far. It was not a vote for or against women bishops, it was a vote for or against allowing women to become second-class bishops. Churches would have been able to opt out of a female bishop’s care (though not from a male bishop’s care) and request oversight from someone sharing the same theological views. It is the Church of England’s preferred heresy at the moment and it is probably a good thing that it has failed to go any further now though a horrible mess. The Church of England looks foolish and we all end up being tarred with the same brush.

There will (and should be) much soul searching. The abject failure of Rowan Williams’s archepiscopate is now complete. Things will probably not start to get much better in the ChurchÂ of England until confident voices who hold sway start to say that out loud. That however will be a long time coming. (It is like the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg – the only hope is in repudiating all he has stood for yet the voices that will continue to be heard in the Lib Dems continue to support policies which are electoral suicide).

There are other lesser failures though. Liberals in the church tend not to be nearly so good at arguing for progressive causes as conservatives are for the things they hold dear. Conservative spokespeople have been popping up everywhere but there has not really been any united campaign group working for equality. Even up to the last minute, groups supportive of women in the episcopate found it hard to say what their members should do because their members were divided. Many believed that the proposal on offer was as good as it was going to get and were prepared to compromise and vote for it, even though they felt like holding their noses whilst doing so. Others, who knows, maybe enough to have swayed the vote, were unconvinced.

This vote was only lost by six votes after all.

Things might be better if there were groupings of people who were working for equality and not prepared to compromise on it.

Looking on at the passion of the Church of England from outside, one finds oneself trying hard to substitute compassion for pity.

There are many fine women priests and the cause for treating them equally in Canon Law is an easy one to make but one which has not been made often enough. Those female clergy deserved better than this measure. The whole church deserved better than this and now has the chance to try to find its way towards it.

The Church of England gets its chance to prove that it worships at something other than the altar of compromise.

bishops, Church of England, Rowan Williams, women

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply