EACH MAN, Oscar Wilde wrote, kills the thing he loves; and, put into inclusive language, this is a suggestive maxim for church politics. Each division or faction tends to cherish one principle above others. As it pursues its priority with the intention of overriding others who think differently, it contributes to a result that may be as far from its own original intentions as from its opponents’. A historic example is the papacy’s zeal for unity or the English Puritans’ notion of freedom. Today’s Anglicans often pride themselves on a zeal for inclusivity or orthodoxy; yet the more they seek to impose their understanding of either on their fellow-believers, the more they may find that the achievement of one big happy family, commending a common interpretation of the Christian faith to the world or enjoying an ever-widening ecclesiastical comprehensiveness, eludes them.
After last week’s vote in the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, no party to the debate on women bishops can reflect for long on the overall picture and be hugely encouraged. For the opponents of women bishops, the small margin by which the Bill was lost is not reassuring. The debate itself confirmed (if further evidence were needed) that an uncompromising attitude is taken by a great many of its supporters. While some of these may think that it will now be only a short time before they have their way, they are no closer in reality to having women bishops than they were. Moreover, the example that they have set, if it were followed on the other side of Offa’s Dyke, might lead to a very long delay indeed before women became bishops in the Church of England. They may, too, have sent a provocative message to other provinces of the Communion about the treatment of a minority.
Each side in this disagreement accuses the other of seeking an innovation that impairs the integrity of holy orders — whether it be female episcopacy in itself, or a new scheme of oversight that would limit the ministry of any future woman bishop in relation to the totality of Anglicans in her diocese. Whatever the introduction of women bishops has achieved so far, however, no one would put church unity at the top of the list; and there is nothing, therefore, in the Welsh decision to prevent the Church of England’s continuing to explore whether a further innovation is possible to prevent a bitter schism over this issue. After several decades of change led by Episcopalians in the United States, the mood in the Communion now seems to be against radical innovation on principle, and there are moves to place a heavier burden of proof on its instigators; and yet a shift in Anglican ecclesiology is necessary to achieve that. No one in the Churches in Wales or England can assume that any decision on women bishops means a safe dock in a quiet harbour. |
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