by Rev Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England
A couple of years ago I was talking with a bishop about the LLF debates and he sighed and said, ‘Well, at least we’ve sorted women.’ I’ve got to say this is one of the most offensive things a bishop has ever said to me. I let it go at the time – it was on a zoom call with about 50 other clergy – but I felt angry for everyone in the Church who currently has to accept discrimination against women, even though we believe that it is right and true to the Gospel that women should be treated equally with men.
As the decades go by, now three, since women were ‘allowed’ to be priests, it seems that discrimination has been hard-wired into the Church and even talking about equality for women feels taboo. We welcome and promote female priests and church leaders but we also welcome and promote those who don’t accept them and their ministries. And, under the merry banner of ‘mutual flourishing,’ everyone is happy. But are they? And perhaps more importantly is this truly the model of the Kingdom proclaimed by Christ? Are we going to live with discrimination against women in our Church forever?
On Saturday 20 April 2024 Women and the Church (WATCH) is pleased to be sponsoring the Not Equal Yet Conference at St John’s Church Waterloo.
This will be an opportunity for women and men to come together and explore what it means for both women and for the future of our Church, if we choose to continue discriminating against women.
The lead speaker at the Not Equal Yet conference will be the Rt Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover, who said recently, ‘In 2024, 80 years after the first woman was ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Communion, women are still having to step aside from many roles and continue to be humiliated by a Church that tells us on a daily basis that our ministry is still “in reception.”’ At General Synod in July last year, speaking of the arrangements made in 2014 to enable women to be bishops on the condition that those who did not accept them were ‘protected,’ she said, ‘The women bishops thing ain’t working – and we are paying the price…’ Bishop Rose also asked in a recent sermon, ‘If God entrusted women to carry the living Word, will he not also entrust us to bring good news to the oppressed?’
Other people, including several who have written for Via Media before (click on their names to read more), will address other aspects of discrimination against women in the Church of England:
- Revd Canon Prof. Mark Chapman, Vice-Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon and Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford, will ask whether it is appropriate for the Church of England, as the Established Church with its 26 seats in the House of Lords, to go on discriminating against women.
- Dr Sharon Jagger, Senior Lecturer in Religion York St. John University, will reference her recent research that shows how lay women are diminished by the arrangements that limit their roles and discourage vocations.
- Theo Hobson, author and theologian, will ask whether the arrangements limiting women’s ministry in the Church have brought more division than unity – with some clergy, including bishops, not receiving communion from others, including from the Archbishop of Canterbury because he has ordained women.
- Revd Naomi Nixon, CEO of the Student Christian Movement, will reference the Honest Church Campaign which calls for transparency about the limits that some churches put on women’s roles.
- Prof. Alex Fry, sociologist at Bournemouth University, will speak about recent published academic research which shows that the theological arguments used to limit women’s ministry are principally ‘system justification’ arguments made by those benefiting from ongoing discrimination.
- Dr Jeremy Clines, Chaplain, University of Sheffield, will speak about ‘the unseen cost’ of discrimination; how the well-being of women is affected by living and working in an institution that discriminates on the grounds of sex, even if they accept this.
Discrimination has always existed in the Christian Church – despite Christ proclaiming that there should be no first and no last, if we live the way God wants us to live. Arguments have been made from scripture and tradition to support all kinds of discrimination, including apartheid in South Africa and the Klu Klux Klan in the US – which are now seen universally as wrong, including in the Church.
WATCH is a campaign group that wants to see a Church where all people are treated equally and we hope that the conference will free people to start having conversations that question the legitimacy of discrimination against women and to see that it is unjust, untrue to the Christian message and unsafe.
Why does this matter so much? Aren’t there more important things we should be worrying about?
Women are constantly told there are things which are ‘more important’ than equality for them. But accepting injustice not only distorts the Gospel, it is damaging. There are women and girls and men and boys all over the country attending churches that teach either directly or indirectly that women need to be under the authority of men and this needs to be recognised as wrong and frankly dangerous. It also makes it impossible for the Church to play an authentic role in standing up for much-needed gender justice in other parts of the world.
We hope that the Not Equal Yet Conference will be an important milestone in finally bringing discrimination against women to an end in the Church.
Book your place – in-person or online – through this link.
Any thoughts?