How long to female British bishop?

... and how exactly will this deal work?

The Church of England has reached an historic agreement on the consecration of women bishops.

After years of struggle to avoid schism, bishops have agreed a formula that enshrines the principle of equality for male and female bishops while appeasing opponents of women’s ordination. The first women bishops could take their place in the Church of England within three years.

The deal, published in a new report yesterday, provides for a class of “complementary” traditionalist bishop for parishes that refuse to accept a woman diocesan bishop. Such “flying” bishops would have to abide by the authority of the woman bishop, according to the accompanying code of practice.

Supporters of women’s ordination welcomed the agreement to recognise male and female bishops as equal but many are unhappy about the guarantee of a place for parishes “unable” to accept the ministry of women bishops.

Traditionalists drew comfort from the report’s provision for the continuation of the Anglo-Catholic male-only priesthood in the Church of England. However, many remain bitterly opposed to the principle of women bishops. There is expected to be fierce fighting over the detail when the Church’s General Synod discusses the proposed legislation and code of practice in February.

The Church faces a potentially disastrous series of court battles. Because the code of practice will not be legally binding, a militantly liberal diocesan bishop could refuse to delegate his or her authority to a traditionalist as petitioned by an Anglo-Catholic parish. The parish will then be entitled to seek a judicial review, leading to costly legislation and damaging publicity.

The dilemma over women bishops is exponentially greater than that over women priests and has threatened to be more schismatic even than the debates over gays. Christina Rees, of Women and the Church, said that she was “very pleased” with the published draft measure, but the group warned that the very existence of complementary bishops could undermine the authority of women.

The Rev Rod Thomas, the chairman of the conservative evangelical group Reform, said: “The outlook is very sad. We now have the prospect of much wrangling in the General Synod.”

I love the use of the fear of Roman Catholic reaction. Since the Catholic Church has declared that all Anglican ordinations are invalid, it doesn't matter who we have as bishops, either, now does it?

This decision merely opens the way for female bishops. Since there aren't any in the pipeline, yet, it will probably be years before a woman is actually selected.

Fort Worth, Quincy, Pittsburgh, San Joaquin: A problem of love

Today the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth under +Jack Iker announced that it too is leaving the Episcopal Church and aligning itself with Archbishop Venables and the Southern Cone. This is now the fourth diocese to cast off its ties to the Episcopal Church over disputes which ultimately are about conservative versus progressive interpretations of the Scriptural witness to us as Christians.

Ultimately, this dispute is all about love. That means that, for many of us, this is a dispute about the very nature of God.

I think most of us (with perhaps the exception of +John Shelby Spong) would agree that we are called to live according to the precepts handed to us in Scripture as one part of the infamous three-legged stool that Anglicans use to craft our understanding of our faith and theology. The difference sadly, boils down to these two questions, and these questions alone:

Is God a loving God, or is God a judging God? Does God call us to love or condemn?


These questions are vital to one's theology literally as well as figuratively. I would actually state that these questions are vital to how we live our lives, which is what theology should be.

One of the flashpoints for conservative displeasure and censuring of the Episcopal Church has to do with homosexuality and its status in the interpretation in Scripture. One could even make the case that the anger of the conservatives is over the call of some people to love those of their own gender. So this dispute is literally about love, one could say.

Conservatives ultimately interpret the Scriptural witness in four or five specific verses to mean God wishes to judge and exclude homosexuals. Progressives interpret Scripture not based on specific verses but on Christ's action in sitting at table with the most marginalized and despised of his times to mean that God loves all and Jesus is sent to all in love. Ultimately, the dispute is about strict interpretation of the Bible versus loose interpretation of the Bible, similar to political disputes about the interpretation of the US Constitution.

We could rehash all the particulars of this dispute, but that's been done better by others elsewhere. I myself have great unease about +Gene Robinson's path to the bishopric in particular, but it's not his homosexuality per se that troubles me, as I have explained previously, and listen, defenders of Bishop Robinson, we are just going to have to disagree about that. Then there's the dispute many of these conservatives have about the leadership of women in the Church, but this point merely reinforces the definition of the problem.

But what troubles me more than anything else is the anger that radiates from those who are leaving the Episcopal Church, and their Global South counterparts who are welcoming the self-exiled into their diocese and provinces. They seem to lack any love for their fellow Christians save those who agree with them theologically. They are full of rage, bitterness, judgment, and vindictiveness. To them the Church is only a Church if it is an exclusive club and I mean both meanings of the word "club"-- as a group and as a blunt weapon.

Any cursory examination of the words and actions of Jesus instructs us to act otherwise. The one recorded instance in Scripture when Jesus showed anger was directed at those who had used literal interpretation of Scripture to defile the sacred sanctuary of God. Jesus clashed with the conservatives of his time over their wrong intent justified upon isolated bits of scripture and tradition. This sounds familiar.

We are called to proclaim Christ crucified, a Christ who loved us so much that he was willing to suffer and to therefore witness to us through that love. Jesus loves us despite our pettiness and brokenness.

It is love that joins us together.

It is love that calls us to a personal relationship with God.

It is love that calls us to be the Body of Christ in the world in fellowship to each other.

Love calls us into unity, not division.

How wonderful and wondrous! How miraculous! All else pales into insignificance.

And I must ask: where is the witness of love in this current dispute?

The Vicar of Dibley could now be bishop....

News from the Church of England General Synod: once again, +Tom Wright's knickers are in a twist, and this time over possible women bishops:

The Church of England's move to accept women bishops further roiled an already troubled Anglican communion Tuesday, infuriating conservatives and complicating efforts to promote unity with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Church of England's ruling body on Monday night voted to back women becoming bishops without giving traditionalist supporters of male-only bishops the concessions they had sought.

The Right Rev. Tom Wright, the bishop of Durham and conservative leader, said the General Synod's decision was muddled, just like one reached at a meeting of bishops in May.

"We should have pulled that debate then and there. It was the wrong time," Wright said.

Monday's decision also caused consternation at the Vatican.

It's "a further obstacle for the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

More than a dozen of the 38 national Anglican churches worldwide have authorized women to serve as bishops, but only four have appointed or elected a woman to the job.

The Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., is led by a woman, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Disagreement on the role of women has for years been quietly tolerated within the worldwide Anglican Communion, a 77 million-member family of churches that trace their roots to the Church of England.

But the long-standing divisions over how Anglicans should interpret the Bible erupted in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Conservative Anglicans from Africa and some north American and British churches are outraged at what they consider a "false gospel" that has led churches in the U.S. Canada and elsewhere to accept gay relationships.

The Anglican Communion is under intense pressure in the buildup to this month's Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade gathering of all Anglican bishops. Some traditionalist Anglican bishops are boycotting the meeting, which opens July 16, because bishops who consecrated Robinson were invited.

The communion is the third-largest grouping of churches in the world, behind Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

In the Church of England, both sides conceded that the tradition of male-only bishops would be changed. The lengthy debate Monday centered on what accommodation would be given to dissenters.

Hundreds of traditionalists have threatened to leave the British church if sufficient safeguards were not put into place for those who objected.

Advocates of women in the episcopate argue that any concessions would make women second-class bishops.

Monday night's vote authorizes a group to draft a code, which will be put to a vote by the General Synod in February. Further revisions requiring a vote could happen in 2010.

Then a majority of dioceses in England would have to agree to having women as bishops, which would lead to a further vote by the General Synod in 2011 or 2012.

The synod rejected forming a third Church of England archdiocese led by men and voted down another proposal for male "super bishops" who would assume oversight of parishes that reject female priests or bishops.

The Archbishop of York John Sentamu said the Church of England was wasting time on internal politics and ignoring the problems of the world outside.

"So I am praying very hard the Holy Spirit of God will breathe a fresh spirit of understanding into the Church," he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said he did not want to limit the authority women bishops had within the church.

"I am deeply unhappy with any scheme or any solution to this which ends up, as it were, structurally humiliating women who might be nominated," Rowan Williams said Monday.

Church of England officials say it is unlikely that any woman would be consecrated as a bishop before 2014. The church has ordained women as priests since 1994, but hasn't allowed them to become bishops.

Wow. Women bishops are "'a further obstacle for the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England?'"

Ouch. That one stings. But women clergy is certainly not the only thing standing in the way of unity between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, and if we were to hold our breaths until real, open, dialogue were to take place between our two churches, we'd all have turned blue and lost consciousness by now, much to my very real sorrow. But it has been my sad experience that "ecumenism" to the Papal Curia means, "Admit you were wrong and do it MY way."

I think this decision was already inevitable in 1994. But welcome news, nonetheless.

The Fight Against Modern Pharisees: the Limits of Biblical Literalism

I just got finished taking a brief tour around the Episcosphere, and ran across several posts talking about the visit of Archdiocese of the Southern Cone Archbishop Gregory Venables to Ft. Worth on May 3. Many of those who now call themselves "orthodox Anglicans" (which just shows how much they know about the history of the Anglican church!) were trilling rapturously about how the Episcopal Church is going straight to hell for its refusal to abide by Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality (see here and here and, of course, right here (pun intended).

"Look at what the Bible says! You must obey all of the Bible!" The fact is, though, that this is an impossibility. Much has been made of how one cannot be a "cafeteria Christian" in the use of the Bible as the Word of God.

Let's just totally leave aside the question of whether homosexuality is a sin, and look at the broader picture of whether it is possible to follow every verse of Holy Writ.

A.J. Jacobs (a favorite quote of his? "I’m officially Jewish but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.") has written a book about his attempt to live according to the rules embedded in the Torah-- and that's a whole lot shorter than the Christian canon.

But here's what he found, and I shall quote at length since people need to take themselves a whole lot less seriously:

THE RULES

At the beginning of the year, I wrote down every rule, every guideline, every suggestion, every nugget of advice I could find in the Bible. It's a very long list. It runs 72 pages. More than 700 rules.

Some rules were wise, some completely baffling. Some were baffling at first, then wise. Some were wise first then baffling. Here, some of the highlights, broken down by category.

MOST UNEXPECTEDLY WISE AND LIFE-ENHANCING RULES
Keep the sabbath. As a workaholic (I check my emails in the middle of movies), I learned the beauty of an enforced pause in the week. No cell phones, no messages, no thinking about deadlines. It was a bizarre and glorious feeling. As one famous rabbi called it, the sabbath is a "sanctuary in time."

"Let your garments be always white" Ecclesiastes 9:8. I chose to follow this literally - I wore white pants, a white shirt and a white jacket. This was one of the best things I did all year. I felt lighter, happier, purer. Clothes make the man: You can't be in a bad mood when you're dressed like you're about to play the semi-finals at Wimbledon.

No gossip. When you try to go on a gossip diet, you realize just how much of our conversations involve negative speech about others. But holding your tongue is like the verbal equivalent of wearing white. I felt cleaner and untainted.

No images. If you interpret the second commandment literally, then it tells you not to make a likeness of anything in heaven, on earth, or underwater. Which pretty much covers it. So I tried to eliminate photos, TV, movies, doodling. It made me realize we're too visual in this culture. It made me fall in love once again with words, with text.

Give thanks. The Bible says to thank the Lord after meals. I did that. Perhaps too much. I got carried away. I gave thanks for everything - for the subway coming on time, for the comfortableness of my couch, etc. It was strange but great. Never have I been so aware of the thousands of little things that go right in our lives.

MOST BAFFLING RULES TO THE 21ST CENTURY MIND
You shall not wear a "garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff." (Leviticus 19:19). At first, I thought this applied to any mixed fiber. So I cleared my closet of all polycotton T-shirts. But it turns out the truly forbidden combo is mixing wool and linen. Sadly, my only good suit - my wedding suit -- contained both wool and linen. So I had to embargo it for a year.

If you are in a fistfight with another man, and his wife grabs your private parts, you "shall cut off her hand." (Deuteronomy 45:11-12). Another rule you won't find engraved outside many courthouses.

If you suspect your wife is cheating, you shall bring her to a priest, who will mix a potion of barley, water, and dust, which the woman shall drink. If she's cheating, her stomach will swell. (Numbers 5:11-20).

If you set your slave free after six years, but he decides to stay, then you shall bring him to the doorpost and bore a hole in his ear. (Exodus 21:5).

RULES THAT I SUCCESSFULLY KEPT THE ENTIRE YEAR WITHOUT VIOLATING EVEN ONCE
You shall not marry your wife's sister (Leviticus 18:18) It helps that my wife doesn't have a sister.

You shall not plant your field with two kinds of seed (Leviticus 19:19). I did plant some cucumber seeds in some pots. But I kept it purely cukes.

You shall not eat eagles, vultures, black vultures, red kites, black kites, ravens, horned or screech owl, gull or any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.

Do not become a shrine prostitute. (Deuteronomy 23;17) I didn't become any kind of prostitute.

MOST DIFFICULT TO FOLLOW
You shall not trim the corners of your beard (Leviticus 19:27) My rabbinical beard became wildly uncomfortable, plus I was subjected to every beard joke in the history of facial hair, with about 412 ZZ Top references.

You should not lie on a bed where a mensturating woman has lain, and you can't sit on a chair where she has sat (Leviticus 15:20). That knocks out all subways and restaurants. See the Handy Seat section for my attempt to follow this.

You shall smash idols. The ban on idolatry is such a huge part of the Bible, I figured I should try to smash something. I ended up smashing my wife's fake Oscar statuette. But it felt like a hollow gesture, and it annoyed my wife by getting gold flakes all over the rug.

Put to death men and women who commit adultery. Though I did manage to figure out a way to stone adulterers. One adulterer in particular. A grumpy seventysomething man I met in the park. I used pebbles.

RULES VIOLATED AT LEAST ONE TIME PER DAY
You shall not covet. This is like asking someone not to breathe. Especially in New York. New York is a city that runs on coveting. On a typical day, I covet everything from Jonathan Safran Foer's speaking fee (allegedly $15,000) to our friend's sprawling backyard in the suburbs.

You shall not lie. Once I started keeping track, the number of lies was astounding. I lie to everyone - strangers, my wife, my three-year-old son ("No, we can't watch TV. It's broken.")

You shall stand in the presence of the elderly. I did try to follow this at certain points in my journey. Like the time I ate dinner in a Florida restaurant at 5 p.m. That was the highest concentration of elderly people in America. So I stood up from my chair every time a white-haired person entered the room, which meant I was bouncing up and down like a pogo stick.

You shall not utter the name of another God. English is filled with the names of pagan gods - even the days of the week are named for them: Thursday, for the Norse god of thunder Thor.

Be slow to anger (Proverbs 19:11). My anger isn't of the shouting, pulsing, vein-in-the-forehead variety. It's more of long-lasting resentment. I never fully got it under control, but the best method for putting the brakes on my anger came from the story of Jonah. (See the book for details)

I've gotta read that book. When summer comes....

This argument about the authority of scripture and literalism is, ironically, as old as the New Testament itself, for Jesus certainly spent a lot of time arguing with the Biblical fundamentalists of his day-- the Pharisees (see Matthew 12 for more detail). If you are a Christian, by the way, you believe that Jesus was right and the Pharisees were wrong. The Pharisees insisted that everyone make a big display of following all the laws of the Torah-- and the interpretation of the Torah that had developed over the centuries.

So, let's just take a cursory look at a few problems inherent in attempting to take every word of the Bible as true: In Romans 16:1-2, Paul praised Phoebe for her work as a "diakonos" of the Church. Opposed to this is I Corinthians 14:34-35, in which women are admonished to be silent in Church (and by the way, there are more instances of Scriptures honoring women's contributions than of muzzling them). And then there are the prohibitions against divorce, touching menstruating women, and the controversy over slavery. Meanwhile, King David is not only an adulterer but engineered the death of his pregnant girlfriend's husband for being too faithful to his cause and refusing to come home to sleep with his wife so that David's crimes could be covered up. Lot offers his two virgin daughters to a ravening mob rather than betray Middle Eastern rules of hospitality (Genesis 18), and these two daughters later get their father drunk and have sex him and bear him children (Genesis 19).

Matthew 6:5-7 basically puts every televangelist out of business (hey!....). Jesus at times ignores his family (Matthew 16) and then makes sure his mother is taken care of in the midst of his passion (John 19). Ever pledged money to the Church and then not been able to follow through? Acts 5 may not be very comforting to you. Are you married? Oh well, if you must, although Paul makes it clear you will live a kind of shadow life in the faith since you couldn't resist the lure of sex and worldly things. Are humans created by God on the sixth day after the creation of plants and vegetation (Genesis 1:26), or on the third day before there were any plants on the Earth (Genesis 2:4-8)? And we could play this game all day.

The Bible DOES contain all things necessary for salvation. But leaving aside scattered verses here and there, the message of Jesus is love: love for God and love for neighbor. The Biblical fundamentalists too often demonstrate very little of either one. They get so wrapped up in demanding adherence to verses that support their own prejudices that they lose the Spirit of the scriptures. Just like the Pharisees did.

No one follows every single word of Scriptures. We are all "cafeteria Christians," choosing which verses and proscriptions we like and studiously ignoring those that challenge our basic preferences and prejudices. Jesus insisted on honoring the original spirit of the Law. This eventually led him to be brought up on charges by those who insisted on following every jot and tittle of the Torah at the expense of living a sanctified life that truly honors and loves God. Which side are we on, anyway?

Is the Church THAT desperate for priests?

Oh, goody. Former New Jersey governor James McGreevey's divorce from his wife is in front of a judge again, and maybe we'll get to stop hearing about his alleged three-way sexual adventures and his affairs with/sexual harassment of aides and whatnot.

But I do wonder: is this the kind of person who has demonstrated the stability one would hope would be expected of a priest of the Episcopal Church? Do we really need someone who lies repeatedly, who makes vows he cannot keep, and who gave government jobs to his secret lover, and who, until these scandals broke, was an already once-divorced Roman Catholic? This man was received into the Episcopal Church on May 2, 2007, and immediately embarked upon the discernment process and entered General Theological Seminary. How did he get this sudden burning interest in the Episcopal Church and the priesthood?

He is obviously going through turmoil in his personal life. I have nothing but sympathy for people who have endured such personal trauma, even the self-inflicted kind we've seen in this situation-- but the last thing they need to be doing is ministering to anyone but themselves. Should entering the priesthood be even considered until his head stops spinning?

And I don't care if he's gay or straight. But let's ponder a question: would a straight man who had engaged in such behavior be allowed such latitude? Would someone who was not in the public eye in the same situation be allowed to jump into the process?

I doubt it. Is the Church THAT desperate for priests? Not from what I have seen. And let's also not forget how flighty and unhinged this makes the Episcopal Church appear.

One would hope that a requirement for Holy Orders would be that a person refrain if at all possible from unethical or hateful behavior, that he or she would "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I'm serious here. Priests are not saints (most of 'em), but I don't think that that standard is too high a bar for anyone. Religion should be about more than just beliefs-- it should be about behavior. We are called to walk in the footsteps of Jesus-- ordained or lay, all of us-- and I don't think Jesus ever used the excuse of "She knew I was having affairs because she was in on it, so that makes it okay."