ViaMedia

Tag: discrimination

  • Safeguarding and Patriarchy in the Church of England

    by Revd Martine Oborne, Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    The 253-page Makin report on the Church of England’s handling of the John Smyth abuse case – that has brought about the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury – has been pored over by many people in recent days. But one part that has so far been overlooked is the section that links the abuse with patriarchy.

    In 9.1.9-10 the report describes the patriarchal culture of the camps at which the abuse took place and how this was conducive to that abuse. Makin says that the camps were entirely run by men and a victim states: ‘…it was an incredibly sexist set up, a group of people called lady helpers, many of whom were either wives of the leaders or female undergraduates. These lady helpers were kept out of sight, out of mind, they’d be doing the cooking in the kitchen…’

    The report goes on to say that clinical psychologist, Dr Elly Hanson, also explores how this patriarchal approach… ‘was a conducive cultural and organisational factor,’ describing the impact in relation to this case as follows:

    “Misogyny and patriarchy: men are seen as in authority over women… men are granted more power than women and treated as having more wisdom and insight. As a result, John’s behaviour and justifications may have been given more legitimacy; his focus on young men was not questioned; and potentially valuable perspectives from women were absent.”

    The Church of England still uses its exemptions under The Equality Act 2010 to discriminate against women on the grounds of their sex. For example, it is still permissible for churches to ask only male candidates to apply for a post as a vicar. It is permissible for such churches to limit women’s ministry and prohibit them from preaching to, or teaching, men. It is permissible for such churches to say that they cannot accept oversight of a female Bishop but need to be overseen by a male Bishop such as a ‘flying bishop’ like the Bishop of Ebbsfleet. There are many such churches in London and big university cities and they include All Souls Langham Place, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Andrew the Great in Cambridge and St Ebbe’s in Oxford.

    The flip side of this permission is alarming: no one can be considered for training as a priest in the Church if they want women and men to be treated equally and do not accept the institutional discrimination that has been in place for thirty years, ever since women were first ‘permitted’ to be priests. And those who critique this discrimination find it very hard, if not impossible, to progress to senior posts in the Church. Ironically, the arrangements are referred to as ‘mutual flourishing’ which is shorthand for the expectation that both women and those who don’t fully accept women’s ministry can flourish.

    This ongoing discrimination is an injustice to women who, both ordained and lay, work hard throughout the country serving their churches and communities and who deserve to be treated equally with their male colleagues.

    And it is also unsafe.

    A culture which is essentially an old boys’ club is a fertile environment not only for abuse but also for its cover up, as we have seen in the Church regarding the Smyth case. Furthermore, it is an environment in which one entitled group is facilitated in exerting coercive control over another group.

    The Bishop of Newcastle has shown great integrity and courage in upholding safeguarding standards in the Church, not only by calling on the Archbishop of Canterbury to resign but also by publishing a letter she received from him and the Archbishop of York recently, which was patronising and coercive in trying to get her to adopt a certain position on another safeguarding issue relating to John Sentamu.

    Women are called to show ‘gracious restraint’ in the Church and to accept that some of their colleagues have the right to limit their ministry. This practice is essentially coercive, requiring women to accept a diminished status without complaint and gaslighting them, if they resist, by calling them unkind and saying that they are marginalising others.

    Although, as a result of the Makin report, there is an immediate need to arrange for independent safeguarding in the Church, safety will not be fully addressed without changing the culture that has been an old boys’ club for far too long. One helpful step would be to put an end to institutional discrimination by sex. If the Church won’t do this itself then maybe Parliament should consider removing its exemptions under The Equality Act – so that it would be illegal for the Church to continue discriminating.

    And, hopefully, it could then authentically become the spiritual voice for the nation – both safeguarding the vulnerable and treating all people equally.

     

     

  • Holy Discomfort: Time to Restore the Unity of the Church?

    by Theo Hobson, who has written various books and articles about the  Church of England and theology and writes regularly for The Spectator. He blogs at theohobson.com

    1 Kings 3: 16-28

    One day two women came to King Solomon, and one of them said:

    “Your Majesty, this woman and I live in the same house. Not long ago my baby was born at home, and three days later her baby was born. Nobody else was there with us. One night while we were all asleep, she rolled over on her baby, and he died. Then while I was still asleep, she got up and took my son out of my bed. She put him in her bed, then she put her dead baby next to me. In the morning when I got up to feed my son, I saw that he was dead. But when I looked at him in the light, I knew he wasn’t my son.”

    “No!” the other woman shouted. “He was your son. My baby is alive!”

    “The dead baby is yours,” the first woman yelled. “Mine is alive!”

    They argued back and forth in front of Solomon, until finally he said, “Both of you say this live baby is yours. Someone bring me a sword.”

    A sword was brought, and Solomon ordered, “Cut the baby in half! That way each of you can have part of him.”

    “Please don’t kill my son,” the baby’s mother screamed. “Your Majesty, I love him very much, but give him to her. Just don’t kill him.”

    The other woman shouted, “Go ahead and cut him in half. Then neither of us will have the baby.”

    Solomon said, “Don’t kill the baby.” Then he pointed to the first woman, “She is his real mother. Give the baby to her.”

    Everyone in Israel was amazed when they heard how Solomon had made his decision. They realized that God had given him wisdom to judge fairly.

     

    This story came to mind recently as I pondered what’s happened in the C of E while preparing to speak to the trustees of WATCH, Women and the Church. Maybe it’s a bit self-righteous to put ourselves in the place of the true mother who eschews self-interest and just wants the safety of the baby, and to say that the traditionalists are happy for the church to be cut in two if they can’t have it all.

    But the story does perhaps sharpen our thinking about division and unity. In what sense is division acceptable, a pragmatic way forward? Solomon’s initial solution seemed to be fair on both women, to respect the rights of each – but it forgot, or pretended to forget, the even deeper truth, that the baby’s life mattered above all.

    You could say that the Church has forgotten this – that it has been an anti-Solomon, allowing itself to be divided so as to be fair to both sides. The importance of unity has been sidelined – to bring it up is to question the wisdom of the Church.

    This signals a change of approach that I think WATCH should take. That also applies to other campaigning groups in the Church of England. Their main message should be the unity of the Church. And they should be wary of the language of rights, of discrimination.

    First let me say something about my own engagement with this issue. In my youth I was never very focused on the issue of the ordination of women – it didn’t feel like my business. I vaguely disapproved of the traditionalists being given so much space but when I heard female clergy complaining about this I still had a sense that it wasn’t really my business, and also that their campaign resembled secular campaigns for equal rights.

    When the Church finally decided to ordain women as bishops I had a vague sense of – well, surely it’s all over now, so surely we don’t still need campaigning rhetoric from the women clergy. It felt like they were being sore winners, stuck in campaigning mode, echoing the rhetoric of identity politics.

    On one level I knew that the issue was about the division of the episcopate, and therefore of the Church. But I didn’t really focus on this. Maybe because the issue of episcopal unity felt rather Catholic, and I’m not very high church so maybe that’s not my concern. Also, most Anglo-Catholics seemed ok with alternative episcopal oversight, so maybe it wasn’t a problem.

    A few years ago my attitude changed a bit. I visited a local parish where the priest is Forward in Faith but the parishioners seemed mostly unaware of their allegiance. It felt like a hindrance to the C of E’s identity, that this dissenting body was tolerated.

    Also, I didn’t like the idea of a big theological issue – the unity of the Church – being off-limits, just because it was so contentious. I became suspicious of the idea that both sides had agreed not to re-open the wound, not to question the other side’s right to exist. The Church had decreed that it was virtuous to accept this form of disunity, and unhelpful to re-start the old painful debate by questioning the Act of Synod.

    I began to think – why don’t WATCH come out and say that alternative episcopal oversight should be ended? The reason, of course, is that the Church has de-legitimised that position – to speak of re-unifying the Church has become taboo, for it means wanting to exclude a portion of one’s fellow Anglicans. But what a strange situation – that a Church should strongly discourage the desire for unity, treat it as a subversive desire.

    So that’s my analysis of where we are – WATCH has a dilemma. Should it demand the repeal of the current arrangement, and sound aggressive and un-Anglican? Or should it accept the basic set-up, but call out instances of discrimination? If so it is forced to sound like a marginal campaigning group, complaining about the status quo, but not daring to try to change it.

    The current approach, it seems, is a half-way house: it says that the whole set-up is discriminatory, but doesn’t quite follow through with this and call for its repeal. And it stays within a rather secular framework of rights, when its approach could be more boldly theological.

    How can we get out of this rut? I suggest we need a new narrative.

    It comes from seeing that since 1993 we have not been living in normal times – and acknowledging this is only slowly growing on us. In normal times, the moderate centre of the Church defends its unity from factions on each side. But in recent decades the moderate centre of the Church has condoned disunity.

    So, the old idea is still ingrained in us, that bringing unity is what the moderate centre does. We are still not really used to the new era, in which the moderate centre gives its blessing to disunity. And of course so do the traditionalists. The conservatives and the moderate centre have agreed to define unity in a spurious way – to say that it means peace between separate factions – but no church has ever really survived with that idea of unity, with a divided body of bishops. And the Church is now being asked by some conservative evangelicals to do this again over the gay issue.

    It’s a weird state of affairs, that the ideal of unity must be reasserted, but now from the fringe. And I suggest that WATCH has not quite grasped this, in its campaigning – it still sounds like it is representing the interests of a minority, a faction.

    The real task is to launch a new sort of campaigning rhetoric. To say, let’s restore the unity of the Church. It’s the rhetoric that used to be owned by Anglo-Catholic traditionalists, but they have now lost ownership of it, by condoning a divided episcopate – so it’s for liberals to own it.

    This means moving away from the rhetoric of rights, and instead for liberals to present themselves as the champions of unity. The language of rights is unhelpful, because the traditionalists also have rights, according to the official policy of the Church. For liberals to assert the superiority of their rights, because they align with general human rights, sounds secular, and allows the traditionalists to sound more boldly Christian.

    Such a move will attract criticism – that this approach is aggressive, that it seeks to kick out the traditionalists. But this will wake people up to the reality: that the desire for unity has been de-legitimised.

    Is this what a movement such as WATCH is for? I think it could be said that if WATCH doesn’t make this move it is contributing to the status quo. It endorses the official view that unity has been redefined, that a united episcopacy is an illegitimate goal. To put it more provocatively, WATCH can be seen as obscuring the issue of the Church’s disunity. For the average liberal thinks, Oh that’s the job of WATCH, to challenge alternative episcopal oversight, it’s their issue. But of course the unity of the Church is the concern of all.

    If WATCH does move in this direction, its name might be a problem, for its name ties it to the rhetoric of minority-rights-campaigning. To go back to my engagement with the issue, I assumed it wasn’t really my business – because of the word ‘women’. But a campaign to re-unify the Church would have got my attention, drawn me in.

    In conclusion, I think that WATCH has a fascinating challenge. Today, it has a special role in re-unifying the Church. Why? Because the rest of the Church has drifted into accepting disunity as normal, inevitable. Only here is there a real discomfort at disunity – a holy discomfort that can lead to renewal.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Leadership for Change: A Response to ‘The Sexism Women Continue to Face in the Church of England’

    by Rev Dr Stacey Rand, Senior Research Fellow in Social Care at the University of Kent

    Revd Martine Oborne’s recent article explored the experience of discrimination faced by many female clergy in the Church of England. It offers an honest and truthful description of the cost carried by female clergy, as they try to faithfully serve their communities.

    However, as many female clergy will know first-hand, it is risky to voice these experiences openly. Why? The view of many, including of female clergy themselves, is that it may deter other women from exploring vocation to ordained ministry. It presents the Church of England in a negative light.

    I am a priest: how I express this on my Twitter bio is “Somehow, also a priest in CofE”. I want to bring my own experience to the points about discrimination made by Martine, particularly around issues that relate to access to theological education and support in ministry. Both of these have had – and continue to have – an impact on my own ‘flourishing in ministry’.

    Access to theological education

    I was recommended at selection in 2013 (aged 30) to begin training for ‘incumbent status’ ordained ministry. I was strongly guided towards part-time training, which was self-funded (except fees) and up to Undergraduate diploma level.

    This is an unusual pathway for a younger candidate. The Diocesan Director of Ordinands (DDO) explained that I was perceived to be a ‘risk’ as a ‘young married woman, who may become pregnant’. It was also said that it would be better to train part-time, as it was far cheaper than full-time residential training. There was no conversation about or consideration of my training needs, formation or future ministry.

    My experience is not unique. Ministry statistics for younger candidates (under 40) show that, whilst roughly equal numbers of women and men train on non-residential pathways, men are more likely than women to train full-time, residentially.  Of course, part-time pathways may enable women (and men) to train alongside family, caring, work or other personal commitments. However, my experience warns that these differences may also reflect bias – conscious or unconscious – that assumes women are ‘risky’ and not worth investing in.

    Support in ministry

    Martine comments that:

    “More women are ordained later in life than men and they tend to get directed towards leading smaller churches or groups of small churches – often without a salary.”

    Since the ordination of the first cohort of women as priests in 1994, women have been over-represented among ‘non-stipendiary’ (unpaid) clergy. Currently, 35% of female clergy are unpaid by comparison to 22% of male clergy. Some of this may be explained by age profile. Women tend to come forward for selection later in life, so the impact of policies offering people over a certain age (usually in their 40s or 50s) no option but non-stipendiary ministry will disproportionately affect women.

    After my pre-ordination training, I was asked to complete a non-stipendiary curacy. In conversation around why I had been asked to do this, rather than being supported with a stipend (as I had indicated as my first preference), again, some assumptions had been made. It was expected that I would give up my paid work to be a parish-focused full-time unpaid curate and that, as a married woman, my husband would support me.

    Again, I had been stereotyped due to my sex/gender and marital status. Those who had made these assumptions would no doubt express their full support for women’s ministry, but allowed their internal assumptions about gender roles to shape their decisions in an unhelpful way. They had not been able to really see or understand the person in front of them. We are all capable of such mistakes; the issue is about creating a culture of self- and mutual accountability that mitigates against this.

    Does it matter?

    Why does the Church of England not act more decisively on this discrimination? There are only approximately 2,400 female clergy serving in paid or stipendiary roles and a further 1,300 non-stipendiary clergy. Perhaps some think we face more important challenges: recent census data, for example, shows that affiliation with the Church of England has continued to decline since 2011.

    But discrimination against female clergy does matter. The Church of England serves communities, locally and nationally, from local community projects to the House of Lords, and needs to maintain some degree of alignment with those communities. We live in a society where women have equal access to education and opportunities to paid work, even if barriers and challenges remain.

    Martine’s article alludes to the settlement intended to protect and accommodate those who are unable to accept women’s full ministry. While greater transparency – for example, requiring local churches to clearly state their position on websites – could help to some degree, the discrimination faced by female clergy is not limited to those churches, which from their complementarian or traditional catholic convictions conclude that women cannot serve in leadership roles and/or be ordained priest.

    The experiences of training for ministry, which I’ve described here show that, sadly, the problem goes beyond the small constituency of churches who do not recognise or support women’s ministry. Sexism remains persistently embedded, in a way that goes far deeper.

    Next steps?

    We need greater accountability, transparency and shared commitment to specific actions; for example, the development of consistent maternity leave policies across the Church of England. Local or national review of access to theological education should show full commitment to the idea that women should be allowed to flourish in ministry.

    While organisations such as WATCH work on national level awareness-raising, or local advocacy and case work, individual bishops make their own policy and, if such policy discriminates against women, there is no accountability. Consistency across dioceses is lacking in many areas, including in training for ministry.

    But we also need to develop a culture of attention, with space to listen and understand people, rather than relying on short-cut assumptions about individuals that may be inaccurate, misleading or even harmful. We are all part of the problem – when we collude in silencing each other when we ought to speak, reflect on and discuss the issues, or when we minimise or ignore the negative impact of discrimination on human flourishing. Therefore, we all need to share the leadership for change.

     

  • Thirty Years On

    by Rev Martine Oborne, recently appointed Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Thirty years ago, in 1992, I was appointed to the main board of an investment bank in the City called Rothschilds. I was 34 and the youngest woman to have been made a Director in the firm.

    At the same time, a battle was being fought in the Church of England to dismantle the legislation that blocked women from becoming priests. I was almost unaware of this at the time because I had largely given up going to church and would barely have called myself a Christian. Nonetheless, as I look back on 1992 today, I think how I might have been in the thick of that battle if I had stuck firm to the calling I had first received as a child – that God wanted me to be a vicar in his church.

    I didn’t come from a churchgoing family, but my parents sent me and my sister to Sunday School to get us out of the house so that they could have ‘a bit of time to themselves’ (whatever that meant!). And I became a very spiritual child, praying, reading my Bible, enjoying being in Church, watching my vicar Father Stephen and feeling that one day I might grow up and do the things he did. Lighting candles, reading from scripture, talking about God and chatting to old ladies.

    One day at school when I was about ten, my teacher started asking the class what we wanted to be when we grew up. One kid said an astronaut, another said Prime Minister, another said a film star and so on. But, when it got to me, I blurted out that I wanted to be a vicar. This was greeted with much laughter from my friends.  And then my teacher said, ‘Well, you can’t do that, Martine – they don’t have women vicars.’ And, at that, the whole class collapsed into fits of mirth while I just sat there feeling an idiot.

    I felt not only stupid but also confused.  It was the late 1960s and brave women were battling to breakdown discrimination in all areas of the public sphere.  And they were succeeding.  So why was it that I could not be a vicar, just because I had been born female?

    I began to wonder what my calling might be.  In my mid teens I had a time of worrying that I might be called to be a second Virgin Mary and I remember praying that God would send a dream to my mum, rather than to my boyfriend, to explain what was going on.

    But I guess, in all seriousness, this was the start of my giving up on my calling, setting aside the foolish things of my childhood and seeking other paths in life.  I got a place at Oxford, a job in the City and good things followed – a nice home, a family and a rewarding career where I was valued and treated as an equal alongside my mostly male colleagues.

    I started going back to church in my mid thirties to get the children into the local church primary school and I thought I could then drift away again after this mission had been accomplished.  But God took the opportunity to renew my faith and my calling and I discovered that, thanks to the persistence and sacrifice of brave women and men like those at MOW (The Movement for the Ordination of Women), women could become priests and vicars.

    That was, therefore, the beginning of a journey that finds me now happily serving as the vicar of a small parish in West London, doing all the things that Father Stephen had done many years ago.

    End of happy story, yes?  But also no.

    Because, although I am a vicar in the Church of England, I am not a vicar on the same terms as I would be if I were a man.  Although almost every Anglican in the land has wanted ministry in the Church to be equally open to men and women from the 1970s onwards, there have been certain small powerful groups within the Church that have resisted this vigorously and viciously.  This meant that legal provisions were made in the 1990s to allow parishes, if they wanted, to say no to women priests.  And then later, in 2014, when the barriers were removed that had prevented women priests from becoming bishops, new legislation enabled ‘flying bishops’ to be appointed so that parishes, if they wanted, could say no to women bishops.

    So I serve in a church where parishes can still advertise for a new vicar and ask for men only to apply, where bishops who are women are required to delegate their authority of oversight to male bishops for some of their parishes, where some of my colleagues espouse a theology that says God created men to lead and women to be led, and where some of my colleagues believe I am not actually a priest (that my ordination was invalid.)  And the official position of the Church is that we want these people, with the theologies that underpin their positions, to flourish.

    But hang on a second, I hear you say.  Isn’t this kind of discrimination illegal in the UK today under The Equality Act 2010?  And the answer is that yes it would be – except the Church of England has exemptions under that legislation which allow it to discriminate.

    OK, you might say.  But people like bishops who hold public office can’t be exempted under the Act.  And that’s true, which means that women bishops should operate on precisely the same terms as men bishops.  But in 2014 the Church got an amendment to the legislation saying that, for the purposes of the Act, bishops do not hold ‘public office.’  Which is somewhat extraordinary, since twenty six of them sit in the House of Lords.

    So what on earth is going on?  How can we be in 2022 and the national Church is still discriminating against women, who represent about two thirds of their congregations and half the population?

    The arguments boil down to largely two things: one, those who say we can’t have women priests because the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t allow them; two, those who say God created men, and only men, to be in charge and the Bible attests to this.

    I can’t get into the response to all this in this short post.  Suffice it to say that the arguments and theology have been hotly contested over the years and millions of words have been written.  But the Church’s legislative council, General Synod, came to the conclusion that there is no theological basis for women to be prohibited from being priests or bishops.  Which should have been an end to the matter, as the purpose of such councils is to resolve theological disputes and make decisions to bring unity and then allow the Church to move forward.  When the apostles Paul and Peter in the early Church debated whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised or not, they came to a conclusion and special provisions were not made for dissenters.  Nonetheless, two thousand years later, special provisions were made for those who continue to say no to women priests and bishops.  And, because of these provisions, the old discredited arguments and theologies not only continue, but are often seen on a par with the arguments and theology underpinning the validity of women’s ministry.

    My personal belief is that we are a separate Church from the Roman Catholic Church and can make our own decisions on women’s ministry, as we have on many other areas of doctrine such as allowing priests to be married.  And I believe that God created humankind in his image, in his image he created us, male and female – as we read in the first chapter of Genesis.  So that we do not reflect that image of God when men and women are not equal in the Church.

    The women and men behind the Movement for the Ordination of Women did great work back in the 1990s and earlier, and we have so much to thank them for.  But the work for equality for women in the Church is not done.  This is why I have accepted the role of Chair at WATCH (Women and the Church), which campaigned for women bishops and now seeks equality for all in our national Church.  I hope and pray that, in my lifetime, I will not only see the Church give up its exemptions from UK equalities legislation but also come to truly value women, both ordained and lay, and lament how it has treated us in the past.

    Please join WATCH here to help.