Gender (In)equalities

By Colin Gibson in All Sorts

Commentary on the debates still raging about the role of women in church leadership brought about by people brainwashed by generations of biblical literalism and engrained social custom.

I couldn't believe my ears. Here was I standing in the kitchen of my daughter's house in the little village of Cranbrook in comfortable, wealthy south-eastern Kent, England, listening to a BBC radio programme in which two Anglican women priests were slugging it out over the issue of whether the Church of England should allow (allow!) women to become bishops.
I might have been listening as I did twenty years previously to the same debate, the same arguments being hurled at each other by two Anglican women, on a BBC television programme exploring the vexed question of
7
whether Christian women should ever be allowed to become priests in the Church of England. I recall with delight the way in which the cameras moved back from the nose to nose opponents to pick out in the back row of the fiercely engaged audience several silent women. They speechlessly represented the real world and the status of religious women beyond the hot-house confines of the Anglican Church of the time: Methodist and Presbyterian woman ministers, a Quaker leader, a Sikh female priest, a Jewish female Rabbi, besides several others.
But back to the present and BBC radio. Both speakers were Anglican priests and chaplains, one pro, the other anti women bishops. The woman arguing for change pointed out (mildly enough) that since there were now more than 30,000 ordained Anglican women whose existence had certainly not brought down the wrath of God on the Church of England-a church which without such leadership could now no longer supply even its dwindling congregations with ministry-the more able among them were surely entitled to the more senior position of bishop.
The conservative argued that since Genesis (that is, the second version of the creation story-though she didn't seem to know about the two creation stories) describes women as subordinate to men in their creation (the rib and the snake stuff) it was unthinkable for a woman to exercise any position of authority over men, either as wife-she always took her husband's say as final, she told us, and was so much happier as a result-or as a bishop. And hadn't St Paul instructed women to 'be obedient', and didn't Jesus choose only men as disciples? It was breathtaking stuff: a twenty-first century woman arguing for a pre-historic social contract.
Only days later, on Granada television I caught a Muslim woman commenting on the debate from another faith perspective. Enlightened? No suree! Women, she declared, were all ritually unclean (she was referring to menstruation, I suppose) and therefore could never be religious leaders of her own faith or of any other.
In the event, the General Synod, having at least defeated a proposal to allow second-class women bishops who would not have equal authority with male bishops, decided to postpone any decision on the matter, on the grounds that that would allow the warring parties to cool down and possibly come to agreement. In November of this very year of our Lord, 2012, the Synod may-or may not- decide whether to permit its women
8
priests to dream about becoming bishops of their church. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
This to my mind ridiculous situation, brought about by conservative women and men brainwashed by generations of biblical literalism and engrained social custom, proves that patriarchy is alive and well; that the kind of gender inequality described so well by Trish Patrick in her reflection on the position of women in society and the church during the Explorers' services held in this parish only a few weeks ago, persists to this day.
But before we throw any bricks at English Anglicanism, let us make sure that New Zealand Methodists (and that includes Dunedin Methodists) have clean hands in the matter. Let us make sure that there continues to be a balance between men and women in leadership positions at all levels of our Church; that our worship services acknowledge and honour the feminine as well as the masculine sides of our human nature; that we live in a society where women and men, girls and boys, enjoy the full respect and support that every human deserves. Jesus showed the way. Let the Church not block it with road signs saying Keep out! Not you! Or worse still, They shall not pass!