WATCH’s proposal to abolish the ‘House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests.’

The Church of England is a church in which women can be ordained as deacons, priests and bishops. It is also a church in which provision is made to protect the convictions of those in the Catholic and Evangelical traditions who cannot accept that it is theologically legitimate for women to be priests and bishops and who are therefore unable in good conscience to accept their priestly or episcopal ministry.

This position is set out in the ‘House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests’ which accompanied the legislation passed by the Church of England to allow women to become bishops.[1]

The campaign group Women and the Church (WATCH) is now calling for the Church of England ‘to find a generous way to bring the Declaration and its arrangements to an end.’ [2]The question that arises from this call is what would replace it. WATCH have not yet spelled this out in any detail, but their direction of travel is indicated by their explanation of what they see as the problem on their ‘Not Yet Equal’ website. This states:

‘The Church of England, with its 26 seats in the House of Lords, has exemptions under the Equality Act 2010, giving it the legal power to discriminate against women.

Did you know that the Church uses this power to allow churches to:

·      say ‘no’ to female priests applying to be their vicars?

·      say ‘no’ to female priests blessing the bread and wine in services?

·      have a special male bishop if their bishop is female or is a man who has ordained women as priests?

There is no requirement for churches to be transparent about these things, so often people attend churches, and support them financially for many years, without knowing that they are churches that discriminate against women.

Many large inner-city churches, such as All Souls Langham Place and St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London, St Andrews the Great in Cambridge, and St Ebbe’s in Oxford, do not allow a woman to be their vicar.

One in 12 bishops in the Church of England do not fully accept women as priests or church leaders.

The appointments system for diocesan bishops is skewed so that only two out of the last 11 appointments have been women.

And the situation is getting worse.

Every year more and more clergy are appointed who don’t recognise female priests or actively restrict women’s leadership.’ [3]

If that is the problem, then presumably the ‘generous’ solution would have to involve prohibiting the ordination to the episcopate of anyone who cannot accept the ordination of women as priests or bishops, abolishing the current system of Provincial Episcopal Visitors (the ‘special male bishops’) serving Catholic and Evangelical parishes unable to accept the ordination of women as priests or bishops, prohibiting parishes from not allowing women to be incumbents or serve as priests, and prohibiting the appointment and ordination of clergy who cannot accept the ordination of women as priests or bishops.

This in turn would mean the end of the Church of England’s commitment to the ‘mutual flourishing’ of both those supportive of the ordination of women as priests and bishops and those who oppose to it. It would mean that those unable to accept the ministry of female bishops and priests would have to change their theological position, or act in a way that they believe to be contrary to God’s will, or leave the Church of England.

In New Testament terms there are two fundamental problems with this approach.

The first is that it goes against the principle set out by Paul in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8 that a Christian who believes that certain things are permitted under the new covenant should respect the conscientious scruples of other Christians who believe that these things are not permitted, and not put them in a position where they are led to act in a way that they believe to be contrary to the Christian faith: ‘for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’ (Romans 14:23).

The second is that it involves some members of the body of Christ saying to other members of the body of Christ ‘I have no need  of you’ (1 Corinthians 12:20). In this specific case it means those who support the ordination of women as priests and bishops saying to those who do not: ‘We have no need of you in the Church of England.’ This is a breach of that love for others without which, as Paul insists in 1 Corinthians 13, anything else that Christians do is of no value.

A further problem is that what WATCH is calling for sets a very problematic precedent with regard to the eventual outcome of the LLF process in the Church of England. If there are now those who are proposing the abolition of the arrangements solemnly entered into to enable the flourishing of those who hold to a traditionalist position on the ordination of women, then what is to say there will not equally be those a decade or so down the line who propose the abolition of whatever safeguards are put in place to enable the flourishing of those who take a traditionalist position on marriage and human sexuality?  What guarantee do traditionalists with regard to marriage and human sexuality have that the Church of England will not sooner or later say to them ‘We have no need of you?’ just as WATCH is proposing that the Church of England should say ‘We have no need of you’ to those who cannot accept the ordination of women as priest and bishops.

This is where the CEEC’s proposal for provincial settlement as the outcome of the LLF process comes into the picture. Such a settlement would enable both positions in the current discussions over marriage and human sexuality to get what they want and in a settlement that would give them a guaranteed place in the Church of England that those who take the opposite position would be unable to abolish.

So what does this all mean? It means that the Church of England should reject the WATCH proposal and that it should begin a serious discussion of how a provincial settlement to the current divisions over marriage and human sexuality would work.

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[1]  House of Bishops Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests at:https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/hob-declaration-on-ministry-of-bishopsand-priests.pdf.

[2]  Women and the Church, WATCH says, ‘It is time for the Church of England to find a generous way to bring the arrangements set out in the 2014 settlement to an end’ at: https://womenandthechurch.org/news/watch-says-it-is-time-for-the-church-of-england-to-find-a-generous-way-to-bring-the-arrangements-set-out-in-the-2014-settlement-to-an-end-2/.

[3] Women and the Church, ‘Not Yet Equal Campaign’ at https://womenandthechurch.org/campaign/.

Geographical episcopacy – a further response to Charlie Bell.

In my previous article on this site I responded to Charlie Bell’s article ‘Finding a way through’ by explaining that the proposal put forward by the Church of England Evangelical Council and the wider Alliance movement for a provincial solution to the current divisions over marriage and sexual ethics in the Church of England is not contrary to Anglican ecclesiology and would allow both liberals and conservatives in the Church of England to get what they want. Given that this is the case, I finished my post by asking why this proposal is considered problematic by Bell and others on the liberal side.

Bell’s response to my article was to post the following on X:

‘Au contraire, Mr Davie. The position you set out here in both unachievable within Anglican ecclesiology (hello geographical nature of the episcopate) and this demonstrable nonsense as a starting point. Folks, you gotta do better than this.’

If we set aside the unsubstantiated claim that what I wrote was ‘demonstrable nonsense’ what we find is that Bell’s objection to the provincial proposal is that it is  out of line with Anglican ecclesiology because of the ‘geographical nature of the episcopate.’

In the remainder of this article I am going to look at the issue of the ‘geographical nature of the episcopate’ and explain why it does not preclude the provincial solution to the current divisions in the Church of England advocated by CEEC and the Alliance.

When thinking about the nature of the episcopate the first thing that need to be understood is that the first bishops of the Church were the apostles. They were the people who were given authority by Christ to exercise oversight (episcope) over the elders, deacons and lay people of the earliest churches.

As Richard Hooker notes in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,  the apostles were originally bishops ‘at large’ but in time some of them at least became bishops ‘with restraint.’ [1] What he means by this is that originally the apostles were given by Christ an indefinite commission not restricted to any one place, as we see in passages such as Matthew 28:19-20, John 21:15-17 and Acts 1:8. However, from the New Testament, and from later Church historians, we also learn that the apostles, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, subsequently put limits or ‘restraints’ on the exercise of their ministry. To quote Hooker again:

‘….notwithstanding our Saviour’s commandment unto them to go and preach unto all nations; yet some restraint we see there was made, when by agreement between Paul and Peter, moved with those effects of their labours which the providence of God brought forth, the one betook himself to the Gentiles, the other unto the Jews, for the exercise of that office of everywhere preaching. A further restraint of their apostolic labours as yet there was also made, when they divided themselves into several parts of the world; John for his charging taking Asia, and so the residue other quarters to labour in.’[2]

What was at first a general episcopal ministry exercised by the apostles thus became over the course of time a specific episcopal ministry relating to particular people and particular places.

The principle that episcopal ministry relates to particular people and particular places is one that has been observed in the Church ever since.

The episcopal ministry given to bishops at their ordination as bishops can in theory be exercised anywhere in the world. Thus, a  Church of England bishop can perfectly properly confirm or ordain not only in England, but in Hong Kong or San Francisco. However, for the sake of good order in the Church bishops are given particular responsibility for specific places or groups of people. Thus, in the Church of England the Bishop of Rochester has a particular responsibility for those who live in the diocese of Rochester (West Kent and the London Boroughs of Bromley and Bexley), whereas the Bishop to the Forces has a particular responsibility for British armed services personnel wherever they are in the world.

The responsibility that most bishops have for particular places is what is meant by ‘geographical episcopacy’ and since ancient times a bishop’s calling to exercise episcopal ministry in a particular area has been symbolized by that bishop being given an episcopal title relating to a particular place within that area (hence Bishop of Rochester).

The provincial proposal being advocated by CEEC and the Alliance would involve the exercise of geographical episcopacy as it would involve bishops having responsibility for particular geographical areas. I have previously made this point in a theoretical description of what a conservative third province (the ‘Province of Mercia’) might look like.

‘Like the existing provinces of Canterbury and York, the new province would consist of parishes, deaneries, archdeaconries and dioceses. The number of dioceses that would initially be formed would obviously depend on how many parishes opted to join the new province, but one possible pattern would be for there to initially be four dioceses, one in the Southwest, one in the South and Southeast, one in the Midlands and East Anglia, and one in the North. Chaplaincies in Europe would come under the diocese for the South and Southeast.

Each diocese would initially have one bishop and one of these would be the archbishop of the province. There would be no fixed archiepiscopal diocese and the office of archbishop would subsequently be held by the senior bishop of the province.

A parish church in each diocese would be the cathedral. This would contain the bishop’s chair and would be used for diocesan services such as the enthronement of the bishop, ordinations, and the renewal of ordination vows on Maundy Thursday. The diocese would be named after the location of the cathedral and the incumbent would carry the title Dean. There would be no cathedral chapter and when not being used for diocesan services the cathedral would act as a normal parish church.’

As can be clearly seen in this description the geographical nature of episcopacy would be maintained in such a provincial arrangement. Bell’s suggestion that the geographical nature of the episcopate precludes a provincial solution is therefore mistaken.

One objection that has been made to the sort of provincial arrangement that I have described above is that it would involve the parishes of the new province being dispersed across the diocesan territory of dioceses belonging to the other two provinces. However, this is not a serious objection. There is no ecclesiological principle that says all the parishes of a diocese have to form a single geographical unit rather than being geographically dispersed. Until the Victorian period it was common for parishes to be situated in the midst of other dioceses (the parish of Croydon being a famous example) and today the 140 chaplaincies of the Church of England’s Diocese of Europe are widely dispersed across Europe, Turkey and Morocco.

If we therefore set aside the issue of geographical episcopacy as a red herring, what I would still like to know is what other problems Dr Bell and others have with a provincial solution.

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[1] Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,  Bk. VII.iv.1-2.

[2] Hooker, Bk.VII.iv.2. For the division of labours between Peter and Paul he cites Galatians2:8 and for John’s ministry in Asia Minor he cites Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Bk.III.16, andTertullian,  Against Marcion, Bk.IV.5.