Ladies who are Reverend, Very Reverend, Right Reverend and Most Reverend

Greetings from the West Coast as we head fast towards Easter with Septuagesima near.

May I make a comment on the absorption into the Anglican Communion Network of the Forward in Faith of North America groups.

It seems – if I understand aright - that the leadership of the Network holds the view that the ordination and deployment of women in parish ministry is not a cause for breaking Eucharistic fellowship, that those who are for, and those who are against, the ordination of women should exist together in the same Province or Network, rejoicing in what they hold in common and making secondary that in which they disagree.

This position is perfectly understandable for it assumes that there is agreement in what is opposed (“revisionism” of ECUSA) as well as in what is confessed and taught, and further
that there are secondary matters that may be held but are not essential to fellowship and cooperation or to corporate church life. In essence this is the kind of Anglicanism commended by the Eames Reports and their new doctrine of reception and it has held not a few Provinces together during times of controversy and theological high temperatures. Whether it will do so in the near future (watch the C of E) we cannot tell.

What I think the Network position does not take into account as a real empirical fact of contemporary church life, especially in the West, are these things.

1. That there has been present in the West for forty years or more strong women’s and feminist movements calling for full rights for women. There is no doubt whatsoever that in the ECUSA it was this liberation movement which pushed for not only the ordination of women (done illegally in 1973 and approved in 1976) but later for the serious changes in the language used in the churches and especially for the naming and addressing of God, YHWH. So much so that many in the Network take inclusive language at least for humanity as a done deal, and they use dynamic equivalency versions of the Bible. For good or ill the presence of ordained women is the story of the triumph of human rights,
   Further, with these changes in the life and tradition of the Church there has occurred also serious changes in the way that the Bible is read and interpreted (as Forward in Faith of the UK has demonstrated in its recent book Consecrated Women? ) leading to changes in piety and spirituality, as well as to doctrine. For example, even though the Bible is filled with it, patriarchy has been used as a “dirty” word in terms of church and family, even by those who still call God “our Father.”
2. That since the ordination of women entered the ECUSA as an aspect of full rights for women, it has become a basis for other groups to call for their full rights (as understood in a modern democratic society) to be recognized and implemented. Here of course we think of the calls from persons claiming to be Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay. “If they got their rights, we should be given ours.” In ECUSA they have been successful.
3. That the tortuous forms of biblical interpretation required to make the New Testament teach the possibility of women as presbyters and overseers in the Church of God also serve to justify the claims of the LesBiGay for full inclusion also made from the same texts of Scripture. Indeed there is a commonality to the forms of Bible interpretation used since the 1960s to justify women’s ordination, the blessing of serial monogamy and the acceptance, blessing and ordination of Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Gay persons. All these forms are in one way or another the rejection of divine order in creation and in the new covenant and thus all require a special kind of way of reading the Bible – unknown to our forefathers -- to make them acceptable in a culture where human rights is the language of morality and acceptability.

So, what I am suggesting is that by accepting the ordination of women as a possibility and by welcoming ordained women as fully accredited clergy, the Network (and the Fin F NA) is causing itself to read and interpret Holy Scripture in ways which cause a disconnection to those standard ways in place before the 1960s; and further is opening the door for the use of the claim of human rights to function if not today then tomorrow in its ranks – not necessarily on behalf of LesBiGays but maybe for serial monogamists and other persons with dis-ordered lives.

Finally, what I am stating does not in any way detract from the commitment, godliness and sincerity of ordained women in the Network. If they are part of a process of disorder then, whatever their gifts and graces, and through no personal fault of their own, their presence actually serves to keep the Church from being what She as the Bride of Christ is called to be. If there is blame it is to be attributed to the Bishops who ordain women.


Yours most sincerely,

Peter Toon