Sixteen years after the first women priests were ordained in the Church of England, the bitter controversy about female authority in the church refuses to go away. This weekend it reached a new stage, when the archbishops of Canterbury and York narrowly failed to persuade the General Synod to accept a compromise on women bishops. Could it be time, perhaps, to end the acrimony and accept that the Church of England will have to split?
It is no exaggeration to say that the climate in the Anglican church for a generation and the whole of Rowan Williams’s seven-year tenure at Canterbury have been poisoned by the conflict between liberals and traditionalists, of which the role of women is a touchstone. The church is divided nationally, and it is divided even more deeply internationally. In essence, it could be said, there are already two Anglican churches, with the Archbishop of Canterbury striving heroically to hold them together.
Could there be another explanation for the “poisoning” of the “conflict between liberal and traditionalists”? Is it possible that the actions and inactions of Rowan Williams himself have more than “poisoned” the Church? His manipulations of the ACC, his duplicity in Jamaica, his deliberate refusal to act on the resolutions of the Primates’ meetings have all contributed to the mess in which the C of E and the Anglican Communion now find themselves.
Agreed, Dan. I can hardly wait for Dawn French to portray -and ridicule- the female Bishop of Dibley on television, thereby putting a final nail in the C of E’s coffin. In some respects I’m glad to have moved to the US.
There’s no doubt that schism in the Church of England is indeed under way, and the question of where the conservative bishops, clergy and their parishioners are headed now must be addressed. I would expect ++Rowan Williams to reluctantly side with Schori and Company, (Archbishop Sentamu’s choice, however, is up in the air, so to speak) while other prelates and their flocks could choose to swim the Tiber or continue as they are and form a new communion allied with the ACNA, GAFCON and the Global South. I do not see them joining with the churches of the Continuum.