Seems that the Church of England has been getting its cassocks in a bunch over females bishops.
Some 1300 of the clergy had threatened to leave if the Church of England's ruling body, the General Synod, voted to confirm the ordination of women bishops.
In a narrow victory tonight, the Church of England voted to allow women Bishops so now it looks as though the new female Bishops will have the opportunity to step straight into Bishopless parishes.
This from a Church that only came about because King Henry VIII wasn't allowed an annulment under the rules of the Catholic Church so set up his own, named himself Supreme Head of the Church of England and granted himself a divorce and shacked up with Anne Boleyn.
So why were 50% of the population disallowed from taking up the cloth if they so wish despite the top dog collar belonging to the Queen who just happens to be female?
According to our neighbourhood Priest, it all goes back to a certain carpenter who chose men as his twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose them to succeed them and so on and so forth so the Church sees itself as bound by this choice made by Jesus himself.
The furore over women bishops comes after rifts within the Church over its interpretation of biblical issues. These disagreements centre on how strictly it should interpret the Bible, for example, whether it should be read as classing active homosexuality as a sin.
Such is the outrage over the direction that the CoE is taking, 1100 of the clergy have presented a 'Jerusalem Declaration' which is calling for Old and New Testaments to be read, preached, taught and obeyed literally.
Channel 4 has reportedly expressed an interest in bidding for the rights to televise the weekly stoning of non-virgins and blasphemers.
5 comments:
"He said Jehovah!"
To more seriously comment, I don't know how helpful it is for a non-Anglican and certainly a non-Christian to try to interpolate his or her antitheist logic and understanding on a religious matter.
For instance, I don't think that there is something fundamentally wrong with a "Bible literalist" view. The Bible can be "taken literally", or if you prefer "understood to be inerrant", in many different ways. There may be a lot of problems with a prima scriptura view that a sola scriptura or other less individually interpretive understanding solves.
-Nog
I'm pleased women are getting a fair go - but they are all quite mad, I fear...
I don't know why, but when I first heard this story I started hearing the voice of Bill Hicks in my head, speaking to me from beyond the grave, albeit about a different issue i.e. that of 'gays in the military'...
"Anyone DUMB enough to want to be in the military should be allowed in. End of f*cking story. That should be the only requirement."
Same sort of thing going on here, I think ;-)
All i have is the sound of John Cleese turning around to the beard wearing stone throwers and asking "Is there any women here today?"
A life in the Church sounds as appealing as having your figernails removed with pliers but have to agree with Bill and say if they want it, let them have it. If the Bishops have fallopian tubes shouldn't be the first concern to the CoE in an increasingly secular country.
I left the Anglican Communion long ago and always had a liberal live and let live outlook, yet I understand the conservatives' position. Equality of opportunity is predicated on the assumption that men and women do a given job equivalently. For most things this is true and equality is still a proper goal. But for some things it isn't true, for ex I personally would not want a male therapist or a female physician. It may be that for people of a certain spiritual mind, a woman or a gay man simply cannot believably shepherd the flock any more than a man straight or gay can believably run the daycare centre. To each their own of course, but the Judeo-Christian outlook is fundamentally patriarchal.
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