Recently I have been writing a lot about bishops, Anglican and otherwise, on this blog. And, sadly, most of it has been negative. But I don’t want my readers to think that I have something against bishops in principle. I will show this by for once quoting a bishop very positively.
The blogging bishop of Buckingham, Bishop Alan, writes about the background to the Church of England’s latest thoughts on how to introduce women bishops, the Manchester report, which I have already referred to. Thanks to Maggi Dawn for the link. Bishop Alan first affirms the principle of women bishops:
the practical sociology of Christian ministry has always been contextual, not absolute, reflecting the reality of the social structures around it. … Absolutising 12th century cultural assumptions, whilst cutting free from the (frankly ludicrous) anthropology of female subordination that validated them at the time, seems to me historicist weirdness, ignoring truths recovered by the sixteenth century Reformation.
He then notes how the proposed partitioning of the Church of England into pro-women bishop and anti-women bishop dioceses mirrors 20th century British government policy of partitioning colonies before independence. He points out the disastrous results of this partitioning – but I could add that the results of British decolonisation without partitioning has often been just as disastrous, as in Iraq, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Yet he is right that the church needs to learn from history:
We are still struggling with deadly institutionalised schism in the Middle East and India. Of course in Church everything is entirely different, but history is reality written for our learning, and I can’t get enthusiastic about elegant churchy versions of the kind of statesmanship that so delighted 20th Century Sir Humphreys. They got their knighthoods but they also got the big picture dangerously wrong.
3. To return to Church history, formative Anglican theologians did not attempt to build the church by cobbling together some kind of synthetic panjandrum out of the most extreme positions, to keep everyone on board politically. Rather they centred everything back on the Scriptures and the Creeds. This method worked for them, anyway. Perhaps we should try it. This is no time for Ecclesiastical Heath Robinson Engineering.
Amen!
My former bishop, Victoria Matthews, never tired of pointing out that ‘woman bishop’ is grammatically incorrect, because ‘woman’ is not an adjective. The correct form would be ‘female bishop’.
Maybe not in Canadian English, Tim. She will now need to find out if it is true in Kiwi speak. At least they will understand her use of “eh?” (For those not in the know, Victoria Matthews has recently been appointed Bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand, a beautiful city which is aptly named after Christ Church college, Oxford.)
‘Appointed? No, Peter – that only happens in England! Victoria has been elected as bishop of Christchurch!