(before reading this it may help to read the earlier piece, “Alignment and Re-Alignment in American Episcopalianism” posted above or at www.american-anglican.fsnet.co.uk )
Here I want to make the point that even if it were the case, and all agreed to it, that the ordination of women as deacon, priest and bishop is consonant with Holy Scripture (as the Bible is interpreted according to modern Evangelical, scientific methodology) yet such ordination would not be appropriate or wise for the Church in the West today.
That is, I want to advance an argument that is pragmatic and relates to the Church being placed in the Western society where She is called to be in the world and for the world but NOT of the world.
First of all, I must make the point as clearly and forcibly as possible that in the reckoning of God and in the Body of Christ men and women are equal, both loved with an everlasting love and made his children by adoption and grace. Secondly, I need to emphasize that the ministry of godly women in the local church is absolutely indispensable for its well-being and its missionary task.
This said and accepted, I move on to claim that any new alignment of the American Anglican Way needs to get off to as good a start as possible. It needs to be as free as possible from anything that has the potential to put it into instant trouble and problems. The new body does not want to repeat the post 1970s history of the ECUSA! Therefore, any innovation introduced by the ECUSA General Convention from the 1960s onwards needs to be examined thoroughly before being retained in the new emerging entity/body/province.
There is no doubt but that the ordination of women was/is an innovation (see the Eames Commission Reports and my new booklet, “Reforming Forwards? The Doctrine of Reception & the Consecration of Women”, Jan 2004, Latimer House Trust, London).
I submit that if this innovation of women in orders is retained within the new emerging Province/National Church in the USA, then many people will see it as the recognition by the new Entity of the place of human rights and of equal work opportunities for women in this new Church. It will be a clear message that this Church is all for modern approaches to human rights and this proclamation will remain the case even if all the women clergy are of the highest godliness and good learning and themselves deny that they have actually pressed for their rights as women.
Further, it will be seen to have, and will actually have, the effect of making the norm, within the new entity, that of the modern Evangelical “critical” way of reading & interpreting the Bible, especially the New Testament – for it is only by this method that justification can be made from the Bible for the making of women into elders and bishops (as also for the re-marriage of divorcees and even, in its extreme form, of same-sex relationships). In other words, what has seemed to be the plain sense of Scripture and what has been the approach of the Church in history will be rejected because of a new way of interpretation that sees the ancient supposed cultural and patriarchalist context as determining what the apparently plain sense of the Bible actually states, and of the need, therefore, to find the true principle behind the apparently clear text.
Let us be honest with ourselves. The power of the Zeitgeist in the West is so powerful that the Church has to be most careful how she opens her windows and doors, because this secularized wind will blow into the sanctuary and cause changes which will seem reasonable and even fine – i.e., as seen from the vantage point of the human rights and self-worth culture. However these changes in the long term will be seen to be important moves that caused the Church to be in the world and for the world but sadly also OF the world. Allowing the innovation of women in orders will be the means by which (as it was in the ECUSA) of the admission of further innovations and of conforming to the world.
Women in orders now in the ECUSA who move to the new Anglican Entity must of course be treated fairly and generously and their gifts and graces used fully for the common good but in non-clergy ways. This way forward is not harsh for it is implicit in the Doctrine of Reception adopted in the 1980s & 1990s within world Anglicanism. The experiment it has often been said can lead in either direction!
The Rev’d Dr Peter Toon, Nov 13th 2003
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