Tenth Anniversary.

In some circles, especially feminist-inclined, there will be celebration this weekend, for there is an important TENTH anniversary of a victory for women.

The Church of England decided by a majority vote in its General Synod on November 11, 1982 that henceforth women could be ordained as presbyters/priests in the Church. Looking back over the ten years (and of course much longer in the Episcopal Church of the USA) what can one say, in brief, about the decision? I offer some thoughts as discussion starters.

1.It was a major innovation for there is no sure record of women as presbyters in the Catholic Church before this time. Whether it was right or wrong, good or bad, it was an innovation, which both the R C and Orthodox Church state that they can never follow. As an innovation it has changed the nature of the Threefold Ministry as it is known in the Anglican Family.

2. As an innovation, it involved the Church of England in pressing to the limits, or probably beyond the limits, the doctrine of provincial autonomy. This innovatory doctrine had not been first decided by the whole Anglican Communion and then implemented locally where desired, but simply adopted by individual provinces claiming their rights as autonomous units. It helped to establish thereby a dangerous precedent.

3. As an innovation it was energised, if not given birth by, the human rights and feminist movements in secular culture. This is not to say that MANY godly women were not caught up in it and had the best of motives to serve the Lord, but it is to say that without these secular movements and agendas, there would not have been such decisions for women presbyters made by Church Synods. These godly women would have remained godly but laywomen.

4. Once the innovation was in place, and once its knock-on effects were seen & felt in terms of impaired communion and relations within the Anglican Communion of Churches, then there was need for further innovation in terms of creating a doctrine to cover this strange and disturbing state of affairs. So a Commission produced the doctrine of reception, which states that the view that women are proper recipients of the sacrament of ordination is a doctrine which is in the process of being received for the purpose of testing within the Communion of Churches. And as such, the final result of the reception and testing could be the wholesale adoption or the general rejection of the innovation. (It has to be said that in practice only lip service is usually paid to this doctrine by provinces which have women in place as priests. Too often people do not know or pretend not to know that this doctrine exists! Thus those who do not favour the ordination of women are passed over for promotion and sidelined in general.)

5. Again, once the innovation was in place the calls intensified from the feminists for adjusting the language of worship, doctrine, and practical faith. They insisted that women as ministers of word and sacrament could not be expected to use language that was supposedly heavily laden with sexism, patriarchalism and androcentricism and the like. And their cries have been heard. Modern liturgical language is thus wholly unstable for it is in a continual process of adaptation to the last call for inclusion.

6. Since the C of E legislation of 1992 only covered the ordaining of women as priests, there is now in place a Commission looking into the ordaining of women as bishops and the impact this will have on the Church. It is likely that this Commission will suggest ways for protecting the consciences and livelihoods of those who cannot receive women as bishops. If it does so then it will have learned a lesson from North America!

7. Once a Church knowingly and deliberately innovates in a major area and that area is one which runs parallel to what is happening in society (as with ordaining of women) then it has made it more difficult not to innovate in other areas when there is societal & cultural pressure - as we see with such matters as divorced persons remarrying in church, divorced clergy being licensed to serve in parishes, active homosexual persons being ordained and placed in important church positions, and so on. The more the Church door is opened the more the wind from outside is felt inside. Instead of overcoming the world for Christ's sake the present tendency in the western Church seems to be absorbing the world for the devil's sake - that is if you believe that the 1960s and post 1960s zeitgeist is not wholly from the Lord!

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America