Church of England debates allowing women bishops

[Liberal_in_LA]

Church of England debates allowing women bishops

Associated Press July 9, 2010

0 3 0 (07-09) 05:34 PDT LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) --

The Church of England's governing body is opening a five-day meeting dominated by more arguments about allowing women to be bishops.

The General Synod, which begins meeting Friday afternoon, has scheduled 15 hours of debate about provisions for those in the church who refuse to accept women as priests or bishops.

The church began ordaining women to the priesthood in 1994, and five years ago the General Synod voted to start a process to allow women priests to be promoted to bishops.

Opponents of women as bishops want a structure which guarantees that they will be supervised by male bishops. :eyes: :eyes:

Advocates for women bishops say they should serve on the same basis as men do now, without any restriction on their authority.:fistbump:


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/09/international/i053400D98.DTL#ixzz0tDNWaypP

[CTyankee]

1. Can anyone explain to me what the official rationale was against

women being bishops?

[canetoad]

2. By coincidence, I was reading this yesterday

While not really an explanation of the resistance to female bishops, it's a good acount of the Anglican/Episcopal schism.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/08/anglican-schism-history

The first issue was women priests. Although a couple of Chinese women had been ordained as an emergency measure in Hong Kong during the war, they renounced their orders after the 1948 Lambeth conference, the 10-yearly gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world, which as far as possible decides what the communion stands for.

The American women who put themselves forward for ordination after the first wave of feminism in the 70s were less disposed to submit to authority. The 1978 Lambeth conference asked in vain for there to be no further women ordained; by 1988 the conference was trying to stop the Americans electing a woman bishop. In 1989 the diocese of Massachusetts chose Barbara Harris anyway.

But members of the Episcopal church of the US did not all share the liberal values of New England. In the south there was a noisy and well-funded conservative backlash. In 1998, the central arguments at the Lambeth conference were about gay people, and the conservative Americans, who saw this as the issue on which to avenge their defeat over women, recruited hundreds of African bishops to their cause in advance. One of these tried to exorcise a gay Christian in front of the TV cameras.

With the enthusiastic encouragement of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, the conservatives pushed through the conference a resolution on sexuality which liberals could not accept. (more at link)

[MineralMan]

4. It's simple. They's wymynz.

It's neither rational, nor sensible, but that's the deal.

We're bizarre, we humans. Sometimes you'd think we hadn't a brain in our collective head.

[gratuitous]

3. My friend has a button

And though I'm not Church of England (rather, a member of the True Church ;)), it seems appropriate: If you're not going to ordain women, stop baptizing them.