Women and the Church (WATCH) has just launched its campaign to bring motions before all diocesan synods calling for the end of the 2014 settlement; a settlement with no specified time limit and with a framework at its core which provides a home in the Church of England for those who are opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate.
It is important to note that the nature of the Church of England’s provision for those conscientiously opposed is such that it explicitly references the roles of the wider Anglican Communion and indeed of the church universal. This is demonstrably, therefore, a matter of ecclesiology rather than of gender per se.
While such opposition represents a minority viewpoint in the Church of England, it reflects the practice of by far the greater part of the church universal. As result, we should in fact be defined by being in favour of something – the practice of the church universal, inspired by the Holy Spirit and representing something much bigger than any of us can claim for ourselves in England – rather than being opposed to something.
The Bishop of Croydon, one of those who sat on the committee which devised the Five Guiding Principles underpinning the settlement, said to those assembled at the recent WATCH conference held to launch the campaign: “I think in honesty we also thought that as society changed and as views became more open-minded among growing numbers of younger men and women, the culture of the Church would change like the culture of the wider society.”
Given that we are only just over a decade on from the settlement being put in place, and mutual flourishing is in its infancy, such attitudes do not bode well for any settlement emerging for evangelicals from their opposition to the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF). What are they, and others, to make of the promises made to Anglo-Catholics, which some appear so keen to renege on so soon after those commitments were made?
