What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • 10 questions arising from the misogyny of a “headship” bishop

    Plans were announced last night to appoint a new bishop in the Church of England who will specifically believe that women are subordinate to men to minister to, encourage and represent those in the Church of England who believe this, ie that men have been given headship over women by God, to be true.  (This isn’t a joke, this is real).

    This had been planned for some time and was part of the deal whereby that church agreed to open the Episcopate to candidates who happen to be female.

    It rather neatly proves some of the terrible things I was saying about the Church of England earlier in the week to be true.

    On this occasion, I take no pleasure in being right.

    The following questions arising from the misogyny of a “headship” bishop should now be raised:

    1. To Members of Parliament: Are you really comfortable with 1 million children being educated every day by an organisation with these values?
    2. To candidates in the next election: Will you support the disestablishment of the Church of England because organisations which behave in this way should have no privileged place in parliament?
    3. To the Archbishop of Canterbury: Do you realise that this makes you personally look like a misogynist too as suffragan appointments are always personal to the bishop involved?
    4. In the General Synod of the Church of England: …. and if people ask for a bishop with racist views to represent them, will we do that too?
    5. To the BBC: Why are you not covering this story as a major news item?
    6. To those who serve in Church House, Westminster: Why do progressive changes to the Church of England have to go through years of debate at General Synod and regressive ones don’t?
    7. To Primates around the communion: Why is this novelty and abuse of the episcopate acceptable when the appointment of a man who happened to be gay was so unacceptable?
    8. To the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time: Does the Prime Minister share the concerns of many in this country that the Church of England is institutionalising misogyny.
    9. To the silent Church of England Bishops who believe themselves to be liberal: How do you sleep?
    10. To the first woman to be consecrated as bishop in the Church of England: Was it worth it on these terms?

     

    , , ,

One response to “Odd”

  1. Avatar
    Kelvin

    Re: Odd
    Hi,

    I happened by because I was googling o­n the word “thurible”.  I'm a US Episcopalian, and I'm currently in the Inquiry process about becoming a vocational Deacon… which, as you know, is supposedly a lay ministry. 

    But I know what you mean… we do a commissioning sort of a thing every year for our vestry and teachers, but it's all ad hoc and out of various slightly suspect books of supplemental rites.  It would be niceto have an approved liturgy for blessing a Lay Eucharistic Minister, for example.

    If you don't mind, I'll be about again… feel free to look at my blog, http://www.livejournal.com/users/lirazel/.

    I'm 50, with a lot of younger friends due to interests in Japanese animation and science fiction and such… so please pardon us of some of the language is even more opaque than is commonly the case when people from the British Isles and Amurrrricans try to understand each other.

    Regards (how appropriate for viewing someone's blog!)
    Lirazel

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Bad PR

    If Christian Aid think its clever to employ someone from a PR agency to sit typing a charity spam letter into my own blog contact form, then the only conclusion that I can draw is that they currently have more money than sense. As a motivating technique for trying to get me to get other…

  • Election Thoughts

    Very many clergy steer very clear of party politics and won’t say anything about it at all. That’s probably a reasonable strategy for the many but its never going to satisfy the few. Perhaps inevitably, I’m one of the few. I was a candidate at the last General Election, something that was known about and…

  • On Holiday

    I’m on holiday, by the way. If you are trying to get hold of me, I’ll be back in the office next Friday. I’m not reading e-mails for a week and any posts on here may or may not have been posted in advance. As I’m not available to provide entertainment and delight, you could…

  • Sermon preached on 25 April – all about bishops

    What with the reading being all about sheep and shepherds and with +Gregor being consecrated, it seemed like a good weekend to preach about the episcopate. Here's what I said: On Friday evening, this place was packed full with guests for the consecration of a new bishop. People had come from all over the diocese…