Canon to Enable Women to be Consecrated as Bishops (2013) Code of Practice

Evangelical Fellowship in the Church in Wales (EFCW) Response

EfCW and the need for provision

EFCW includes among its membership both those who welcome the ordination of women as priests and as bishops, and also members who conscientiously dissent from the first and will dissent from the second when the Canon becomes effective.

Whatever the views of individual members, the Fellowship as whole believes that the Bishops’ Code of Practice needs to include adequate provision for conscientious dissent. With the Bishops’ full support, the Governing Body has voted for a far-reaching change in the doctrine of the Church in Wales. The Bishops, therefore, have a serious responsibility to deal charitably and equitably with those who merely maintain the practice which underlies traditional understandings of orders in the Anglican Communion.

The nature of provision

As to the nature of such provision, EFCW proposes that it must be shaped by its acceptability to those who need it. It is not good enough to say that a majority is infavour of women bishops and that therefore the voice of the majority must prevail. The quality of the church’s discipleship and faithfulness is measured, not by the easy yardstick of how it treats its majority, but by the more demanding test of how it treats its minorities.

Those Evangelicals who conscientiously dissent from this innovation do so because they believe that the clear teaching of Scripture restricts authority in the church to men. Some Evangelicals accept that women can appropriately and rightly serve in the ministry of the presbyterate, but should not serve in the more authoritative role of Bishop. Others believe that all teaching and all exercise of ecclesiastical authority at whatever level should be reserved to men.

Such Evangelicals therefore arrive by a different route at the same point as many Anglo-Catholics. For such Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics it would be a surrender or betrayal of their core beliefs concerning authority in the church if they were to recognise a woman as truly a Bishop. It is important to realise that the proponent of women bishops in a church which does not have them is in an entirely different position from an opponent of women bishops in a church which does have them. The first is serving in a church which they regard as needing reform, but in which they can serve while working for that reform. The second is in the impossible situation of serving a church which has abandoned one of the marks of being a church at all.

Such Evangelicals and such Anglo-Catholics will need an alternative episcopal ministry ready and in place beforea woman is consecrated as a Bishop in the Church in Wales. The scope and nature of such ministry will have to include at least the ministration of Confirmation and Ordination.

Commitment to mutual flourishing

It is noticeable that the Church of England Bishops made this statement of principle in their Draft Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (GS 1924, Annex A):

  • Since those within the Church of England who, on grounds of theological conviction, are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion, the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its life and structures; and
  • Pastoral and sacramental provision for the minority within the Church of England will be made without specifying a limit of time and in a way that maintains the highest possible degree of communion and contributes to mutual flourishing across the whole Church of England.

We would welcome a similar declaration from our own Bishops in their Code of Practice. A church which is able to enable those with conscientious scruples on this matter ‘to flourish within its life and structures’ is one which maintains the breadth and diversity that has traditionally been one of Anglicanism’s strengths. If we could find the confidence to allow parishes and not merely individuals to make use of alternative oversight we would demonstrate that we can place charity over administrative tidiness.

EFCW would also welcome a firm commitment to the permanence of the Code of Practice.Some of the recent discussion of the consecration of women to the episcopate has given the unfortunate impression that the provisions made to conscientious dissenters at the time of women’s ordination to the presbyterate were really no more than temporary political expedients designed to win over moderates in order to get the legislation passed. That was not said at the time. And in the light of the views now being expressed (‘the time of reception is over’), some solid assurance about the permanence of the Code of Practice needs to be given.

Answering Objections

This proposal will, of course, be unpalatable to many. It will in particular suffer the objection that it enshrines discrimination against women into our church’s life. To this, three things might be said.

  1. One is the point already made, that the way we deal with a minority is a significant measure of the quality of our life together. Any organisation can steamroller minority opinions. But the Christian church is not just any organisation. For us, St Paul’s words in Romans 14 about the strong and the weak have a particular application. Making adequate provision for dissent will be awkward for all and disappointing for some. But far more important is the witness it gives of a church in which those who have achieved a change are willing to exercise a costly forbearance towards those with scruples about it. ‘Winner takes all’ is hardly a Christian principle.
  2. A second consideration is that the current proposals for our ecumenical partners to adopt episcopacy have already raised the possibility that we might modify the principle of one diocesan bishop in one geographical area. The Church in Wales has not blocked the proposals arising from The Gathering on the grounds that mutually-recognised overlapping episcopal jurisdictions are an impossibility. We clearly consider such arrangements are worth discussing. If the Church in Wales is willing to contemplate such parallel arrangements to assist our ecumenical partners, it would seem ungracious to refuse to contemplate them to assist fellow Anglicans.
  3. Thirdly it is incumbent on those who have successfully driven through a major innovation to deal equitably with those whose ministries and lives will be adversely affected by their actions.

We continue to pray for our Bishops in the very challenging task that Governing Body has given them.

Ven Dr William Strange

Chair, Evangelical Fellowship in the Church in Wales

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