Where to Start?

I went out on Wednesday morning not really wanting to put my collar on. The General Synod's vote against the legislation allowing women to be consecrated bishops made me feel positively ashamed. I hadn't expected that kind of emotion; I find myself the public representative of an organisation whose thinking is not just at odds with that of the society around it, but actually incapable of being explained in terms that society can understand. I wanted to apologise to everyone I met. How can I even begin to explain what this is about, or to relate it to Jesus of Nazareth who I exist to introduce people to?

My reaction was, and remains, frustration that we have to go through all this again at some point in the future. I have used incautious and unpriestly words to describe all the 'this' through which we will be going, such as 'bullshit', and 'crap'. This is because the argument is settled, and what we are debating is how the minorities who dissent from the decision are to be protected: it means Codes of Practice, legal divisions of powers and responsibilities, interpretations of words within documents. It means endless effort to try and link all this in some remote way to the Gospel of the Kingdom we are supposed to be proclaiming. It is not what I want to be doing, not what I want people to ask me about, and not what I want to hear bishops wasting their breath on either.

Yesterday morning I read our church secretary 1Corinthians 11.3-15 and 1Timothy 2.8-14, the core of the Scriptural case against women exercising any authority. Her response was to laugh: the Apostle Paul's arguments about how women should behave don't make any sense to her, don't relate in any way to her experience of living. I asked her what she does when she and her husband disagree over something, and she said he invariably does what she wants: so much for 'male headship'. The truth is that people outside the Church not only think the Church is 'out of date' regarding the role it allocates to women (as though that was itself of any importance), but can't understand the terms in which the argument is couched. There will be some Christians who regard the scorn and derision of secular society as a sign that they are following what is in truth God's will; they are wrong. Sometimes you're a laughing stock not because you're holy, but because you're ridiculous. Jesus's challenge to his world was perfectly clear and explicable; those who turned on him didn't do so because they didn't understand what he was saying but precisely because they did. If people can't work out what you're talking about, perhaps, just perhaps, you ought to start considering whether you're actually saying anything sensible. There are truths buried in those Scriptural passages, of course - how could there not be? But they don't half need a lot of unpacking. In contrast, the trad Anglo-Catholics' basic position - 'The Roman Catholics don't ordain women. We want to be as close to what the Roman Catholics do as possible' - is at least comprehensible, but open to the pretty obvious question, Well, why don't you just become Roman Catholics?

There are plenty of other questions I'd like to ask than that one. I'd like to ask the conservative Evangelicals why exactly they think male headship means that women can't be bishops when it doesn't appear to mean they shouldn't be heads of companies, legal practices, Prime Minister or Head of State? (Of course they used to argue all these things, and use the same passages of the Bible to justify them, but strangely have gone quiet now that it's socially inconvenient to hold such opinions. It is all, I'm afraid, bollocks). I'd like to ask my fellow Anglo-Catholics, including people I actually love, what they think Catholic words like 'obedience' and 'authority' actually mean? Can they really mean insisting that the only people you'll obey will be people you choose to obey on the grounds that they think the same way you do? What kind of obedience is that? Seriously, not facetiously, what kind of Catholics do you think you are?

At the heart of the whole thing is a neglect of the Gospel. Christians are called to follow Jesus to the cross and that actually means sacrifice. It means giving stuff up. It means choosing to be humble, choosing to have your interests neglected, choosing not to fight your corner, choosing to lose, choosing to obey even though the authority figure set over you is clearly an idiot, choosing vulnerability, openness and the possibility of error. It means acting as though we believed that because Jesus died and was raised, so we must die in order to be raised. That the only way to life is through the Cross.

Where is all that? When the pro-women crowd bleats that certain legal safeguards for the antis are incompatible with the dignity of potential women bishops, is that willingness to be nailed to the Cross? When the antis demand that they be shielded from every effect of the change; that there can be women bishops provided their own ecclesial life is fenced off so it can go on completely unaltered, what exactly is being sacrificed there?

Well, we have this ridiculous voting system in the Church of England to ensure that minorities can't be steamrollered, and no other organisation on earth, not even any other Church, works this way. Let's assume it must serve some Godly purpose somewhere and, in that case, let us ask ourselves some more questions.

Let the pro-women bishops party ask: Why should we reconcile the antis? I can think of three answers: Because we promised to; because various things about them are positive and we don't want the Church to lose them; and because Christians breaking relationships with each other is an appalling act which should have us tearing our clothes and weeping. If the answers are anything like that, well, let's get on with it and reconcile and not stand on our dignity.

Let the anti-women bishops party ask: Why the hell should we be accommodated? We lost the argument and in any other organisation would have to put up with the consequences or get out. Why do we deserve any kind of consideration? (Actually I don't see there is any obvious answer to this, other than the three abovementioned, but you're welcome to try and think of one).

Perhaps going some way to answering these questions might lead to some positively Christian conclusions which the uncomprehending world beyond the church door could at least respect.