When the first women were priested in Bristol Cathedral in 1994, there had already been female priests in other countries for some time. But although those women – in New Zealand and Canada and the States and elsewhere – were an enormous inspiration to those of us in the first generation of English female priests, we weren’t just following a bright idea from somewhere else in the world. The argument for women’s equality in Church and in society at large had been going on throughout the 20th century in this country. Maud Royden, a campaigner for women’s suffrage, was among those who founded The Church League for Women’s Suffrage (CLWS) in 1909, and in 1913 turned her interest specifically to women in Anglican orders, although she accurately predicted that getting the vote for women would be a picnic compared to seeing them in Hoy Orders. The campaign for suffrage was put to one side during the Great War but revived soon afterwards, and 1929 saw the first General Election in which women voted on equal terms with men in England. 1929 was also the year in which women became “persons” in their own right, by order of the Privy Council. And that same year, the Society for the Ministry of Women was founded, Maud Royden being a leading member.

Maud was an outstanding writer and speaker, and one of her observations was that it was a distinguishing feature of Christianity among the world religions to ignore the differences between men and women. It was at the heart of Christ’s teaching, she said, to treat people first as human beings and only secondly to pay attention to their gender. Maud Royden was right: this is one of Christ’s most extraordinary, radical and liberating teachings, but alas the world at large has proved slow to accept this, often seeing it as a threat, not a potential freedom.

This morning, 17 years on, I opened my calendar at March 12th and realised that the anniversary has fallen in the same week that saw the exit of a small group of Anglicans who have decided to join the Ordinariate – and the primary issue over which this shift in Church allegiance has occurred is the presence of women in Holy Orders, and the perceived “threat” to traditionalists of them becoming Bishops.

Some simply dismiss those who are against women’s ordination as misogynists. Personally I think that’s too simplistic: the human frame is far more complex than merely falling into love or hate. There are some misogynists in the Church, for sure – I’ve been spat on in Vestries before now. But for most it’s far more complicated than that; some genuinely feel that it’s essential to the integrity of the Church to demarcate the differences between men and women, and to reserve some areas of authority only for men. Others say that the decision to leave was, in the end, motivated by the sense that they no longer wanted to live inside a church that is marked more by politics than spirituality (although again that’s complicated – it’s a feeling I can sympathise with completely, having been on the receiving end of unpleasant church politics for most of my life precisely because I am a woman who was born with gifts that fit comfortably into ministry).

It is, I suppose, just a coincidence of the moveable feast of Easter that the exit to the ordinariate and the anniversary of the first ordinations fell within the same week. For those who left, I wish them well, and hope they are happy in their new home. And I hope for everyone’s sake that the political infighting will now recede.  But it still seems sad to me that two millennia after Jesus spoke such extraordinary words of inclusion into a society that treated women as mere property, it’s still apparently impossible for women in the Church to be treated as fully equal human beings. So much so that there are those who have to leave the Church because they cannot worship side by side with women who dare to lay claim to their God-given equality.

You can read more here about Maud Royden, Constance Coltman, Isabella Gilmore (whose legacy included a scholarship that helped to fund my own studies at Cambridge) and other leading figures in the early movement for the ordination of women.

more on the story from Andrew Brown

I daresay the Archbishops are disappointed that their idea didn’t fly, as will be those who voted with them. But the ABC himself told Synod “this is not a test of loyalty” – in other words, let the idea be tested, don’t just vote for it because we are the Archbishops. Disagreeing with authority needs doing graciously and with humility. But true authority will hear disagreement, not react like a toddler. I think the ABC and the ABY showed true leadership by allowing their idea to be tested, rather than manipulating the system.

There has been much commentary in the week folllowing, among which one of the most useful is Ed Beavan’s summary in the Church Times (scroll down for a useful panel on what happens next in the process)

I’ve  collected some blogs that have reported or commented on synod at the weekend. If you have links I’ve missed, please add in the comments.

My posts, here, and here

the voice of sanity on Jeremy Fletcher’s new blog

Nick Baines wondered out loud whether any useful parallels could be made with narcissitic personality disorder. and follows up  today with more nuance on the use of the language of power and victimhood

Bishop Alan Wilson says it’s time for faith

Andrew Brown reports a triumph

good in parts prays and hopes

Revd Lesley Fellows celebrates the Eucharist

church mouse gathers up the news

peter ould hopes that the measure might yet be stopped.

thinking anglicans (several posts and updates from the floor of synod)
church times blog

and more (thanks, commenters):

sue blogging from york has some great perspective on the issues

dodgy liberal

gen-syn blog

and a word from nancy on the eve of synod
ruthie gledhill recorded Bishop Tom’s valedictory:

It seems there is a broad consensus that the proposals are good, although there are also a few vocal and determined detractors. The debate is no doubt going to be intense at Synod this time round. But it must, surely, be time to move forward.

Two clergymen in Kent are preaching not only the old chestnut that  women should be silent in church and submit to their hubands “because the Bible says so”, but even that divorce is the woman’s fault! (And where does it say that in the Bible, I ask? yep – nowhere at all)  The more junior of the two clergymen has apparently said in his sermon that the rise in the divorce rate is due to the behaviour of women. (Never to mens behaviour? Or to economics, or education, or a culture that – thank God – no longer believes that a woman is the property of her father or her husband?)

The lines of argument being rehearsed in this Kent Church have proved so offensive that women are leaving the Parish church (good decision) and cancelling their financial support. Offensive, yes, but also risible for their total lack of logic. What are single women to do in Church? (With no husband to submit to, and no husband to speak on her behalf, is she to be returned to being a chattel among her father’s property?) And even more illogical – as Mouse has found out – the leaflet accompanying this line of teaching was written by a woman!! This part isn’t offensive, it’s just laugh-out-loud stupid. Get the rest of the skinny from Church Mouse: Woman teaches men that they should not be taught by a woman.

Here’s a clip from the latest one, by Rev’d Canon Jackson:

“Can we stand back a moment and remember: What is the fundamental question? The Church is trying to resolve one of the most fundamental questions of all – What is the nature of a human being? and, more specifically:

(a)Which human-beings can be regarded as normative, or representative, of humanity as a whole and thereby are capable of receiving the grace of ordination, for sacramental ministry?
(b)Which human beings, in God’s determined order of creation, may be assigned authority to lead human society and human institutions and thereby are capable of fulfilling a role of headship?
(c) In relation to both of these, can women do so, or not? i.e. has God assigned these roles in the created order differentially among human beings according to their gender, or not?These are fundamental ‘first order’ issues, because neither women nor men can control what gender is assigned to them at birth, nor can they in any sense be held responsible for it.  As Maude Royden summed it up, “I was born a woman and I can’t get over it”.

Read the rest here

I've been sent the links below – if you feel strongly that you want to see this happen, you can sign a letter at one of these locations:

(You may have to do Ctrl + click to access them instead of the usual double click.  Please sign up and share them with your own networks and as many people as you can.)

For women clergy at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/31823.html

For men clergy at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/31836.html

For the laity at http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/31837.html

“You are the Devil’s Gateway. It is you who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree. You are the first who deserted the divine law. You are the one who persuaded him whom even the Devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die. . . Therefore cover your head and your figure with sack-cloth and ashes.”

Augustine, On the Trinity: “Why must a woman cover her head? Because, as I explained before, the woman does not possess the image of God in herself, but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, the she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God, just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.”

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: “As the philosopher says, ‘Woman is a misbegotten male.’ Yet it is necessary that woman was made in the first production of things as a helpmate. Not indeed as a helpmate in any other works than procreation, for in all other works man can be more efficiently helped by another man than by a woman, but as a helper in the work of generation… The woman is in a state of subjugation in the original order of things. For this reason she cannot represent headship in society or in the Church. Only the male can represent Christ. For this reason it was necessary that Christ be incarnated as a male. It follows, therefore, that she cannot receive the sign of Holy Orders.”

Malleus Maleficarum (fifteenth-century manual of the Dominican Inquisitors against witches): “When a woman thinks alone she thinks evil, for the woman was made from the crooked rib which is bent in the contrary direction from the man. Woman conspired constantly against spiritual good. Her very name, fe-mina means ‘absence of faith’. She is insatiable lust by nature. Because of this lust she consorts even with Devils. It is for this reason that women are especially prone to the crime of witchcraft, from which men have been preserved by the maleness of Christ.”

Martin Luther. ‘On Marriage’: “Eve originally was more equally a partner with Adam, but because of sin the present woman is a far inferior creature. Because she is responsible for the Fall, woman is in a state of subjugation. The man rules the home and the world, wages war and tills the soil. The woman is like a nail driven into the wall, she sits at home.”

Rosemary Radford Ruether, 'Women-Church Theology and Practice of
Feminist Liturgical Communities', Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1985,
pp. 137ff

The question of the week is about what the impact will be of the Pope's invitation to Anglican priests to come under the umbrella of Rome, an invitation largely offered, it seems, in response to priests who don't like women or gay people doing anything more than sit in a pew in CHurch.

I took the line that it's one thing to move somewhere just because you feel more at home there, but if your move is motivated by anger, you'll probably just take your discontent and unresolved attitudes with you.

I see that Church Mouse also has a piece in there.

One weekend recently I wore full clerical garb all weekend, as we had services in Chapel and two outings with the Choir.  In the middle of the Saturday afternoon I stood outside shaking hands and chatting with one of the congregations, and suddenly realised that I was getting seriously cold. I sent my sacristan off to get my cloak, a huge, all-enveloping, hooded and double lined wool melton that I bought just before I was ordained. My first Parish was in the Fens, and the only small pimple of a hill in the area was the graveyard, where the winter winds came whipping over direct from Siberia. I learned to dress for funerals so that I could still speak at a January graveside without my teeth chattering. There is something about the more formal and sombre Church occasions that (IMHO) requires the Priest to be efficiently at ease with all her duties. You shouldn't melt into the background, but you really don't want to become the focus of attention because of personal quirks, anxieties and awkwardness. Chattering teeth at the graveside? Not helpful.

Anyway, back to that weekend – I was amazed at how many comments I got from passing students on how fantastic the cloak was. I think it's very gothic and a bit odd. They thought it was extremely desirable, and someone even asked if they could borrow it to go out on the town. (I said no, by the way.)  So – all commenters on this post – a new solution to the problem of the shirt may be to wear the cloak over the top…