it is true, were already very muddy. Absurd claims were being made by proponents (some of them detailed in this book), which any serious academic assessment would have to ignore or contest. And, in due deference to the ladies, no one really wanted to do either. But more than that, there was the overwhelming conviction of the bien-pensants (especially in the left-leaning academy) that this was an open and shut case. Even to argue in its favor was to demonstrate an unacceptable degree of political incorrectness. In the Church hierarchy, moreover, there was a cliquishness, which meant that this matter, like others which were deemed unstylishly contentious, had better be avoided. “His clear preference,” wrote Gary Bennett of Robert Runcie, in the fateful Crockford’s Preface, “is for men of liberal disposition and a moderately Catholic style which is not taken to the point of having firm principles. If in addition they have a good appearance and are articulate over the media, he is prepared to overlook a certain theological deficiency.”14 “I had to change,” said Rowan Williams to Angela Tilby of his early objections to women’s ordination, “after looking around at my side and seeing the company I was keeping.”15 The result was that the only serious theological study on the subject of women’s ordination available to English readers, then and now, was an American translation of the work of a German priest published in San Francisco in 1988.16 At a conference in St. George’s College Windsor in 2000, on the then fashionable “Doctrine of Reception,” I asked Dr. Mary Tanner (sometime Moderator of the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission and head of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and drafter of the 1988 Bishops’ Report) her opinion of the book. She had not read it.
The widening gap between the world of academic theology and the day-to-day life of the Church which this lacuna demonstrates—and the ecclesial dominance of what Bennett called men “who have nothing to prevent them following what they think is the wish of the majority of the moment”17—were the real marks of this debate. The General Synod routinely congratulates itself on the quality and tone of its proceedings; but there must surely, after reading the verbatim record of November 11, 1992, be room to doubt whether such a process and such a forum is either adequate or appropriate for such a decision. It will be said that there is no other way. In the absence of prolonged and mature theological discussion, that is certainly the case.
* * *
A word of warning: This book is not an attempt to argue against the ordination of women to the priesthood or the episcopate, in the Church of England or in any other church. The Orders of the church are not at the disposal of Popes, Councils, synods or debating chambers of any kind. They are a gift from the Lord. We may seek to illustrate the nature and explain the purpose of that donné—we can seek “to justify the ways of God to man”—but we cannot properly argue for or against it, for the simple reason that it is not ours either to attack or to defend. Historically speaking, the three-fold orders of bishop, priest, and deacon emerged in their enduring form around the end of the fourth century, along with the catholic creeds and the canon of scripture. These are the three legs of the stool (not the trio of scripture, tradition, and reason, recently foisted on poor Hooker) on which the church sits. To alter any of them in any way is a serious and dangerous matter.
. . . untune that string / And Hark! What discord follows; each thing meets / in mere oppugnancy.18
All three are now under concerted attack, not from the critics of the church, but from its own leaders. The creeds have been rendered susceptible to meanings and interpretations very far from the conceivable intention of their original drafters. The very notion of canonicity, in scripture as in other areas, has been called into question, and documents of a very different character given equivalence with the received texts. These are serious matters to which the Church of England is ill equipped to give an ecclesial response. But changes to the Orders of the church are of another dimension. Such changes objectify opinion in ecclesial structures. That is why the arguments for, and the assumptions underlying, such an innovation demand the closest possible scrutiny.
1. Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity.
2. Church Information Office, Women in Holy Orders.
3. Advisory Council, Women in Ministry: A Study.
4. GS 104 [Howard], Ordination of Women to the Priesthood.
5. GS Misc 88 [Howard], Ordination of Women: Supplement.
6. GS Misc 198 [Howard], Ordination of Women: Further Report.
7. GS 764, Ordination of Women: First Report.
8. GS 829, Ordination of Women: Second Report.
9. GS 1557, Women Bishops in the Church of England?
10. Podmore, Aspects of Anglican Identity, 133.
11. Lewis, “Priestesses in the Church?” (Originally published as “Notes on the Way,” in Time and Tide 29.)
12. Henson, “Ordination of Women.”
13. Demant, Why the Christian Priesthood is Male.
14. Preface to Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 68.
15. Shortt, Rowan’s Rule: Biography of the Archbishop, 95.
16. Hauke, Women in the Priesthood? Systematic Analysis.
17. Preface to Crockford’s Clerical Directory, 68.
18. Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, act 1, scene 3.
1: Truth and Principle
If the first casualty of war is the unwelcome truth, the first weapon of the discontented is the welcome lie.
—Professor Michael Nolan
Christianity is an historical religion. By that is meant not simply that like all things else it has a history; but that it is peculiarly related to a particular historical moment. Christianity relates to Christ. By that is meant not merely a notional savior (a “Christ figure” as one might say), but Jesus of Nazareth. The post-Christian theologian Daphne Hampson, in her book Theology and Feminism, puts the matter very clearly:
Christians believe in particularity. That
