[Schismwatch] Women bishops, again

[mirrorshard]

From the BBC yet again - more moves towards schism in the Church of England.

One suggestion from the group working on a potential Covenant has been for churches departing from tradition to have "diminished status" within the Communion.

Oh, dear, they're at it again... normally, I'd immediately dismiss this as a Caesar's-truce, an apparent concession offered in order to provoke your enemy beyond endurance and get them to attack you or just to waste time.

However, this is the Church of England we're talking about. It's not at all outside the bounds of possibility that either

1. the traditionalists really believe that they're in the majority and have enough RIGHT on their side that they can get this accepted, or
   
2. the progressives are actually prepared to accept a stupid, insulting result like this in order to preserve their precious communion.
   

Said communion, of course, is growing more nominal and indeed risible by the day, and over what's effectively a non-issue that will probably end up resolved in the most traditional manner of all, by a handful of earth on a coffin lid.

The scriptural argument against women bishops rests on three legs. Take any one of them away, and the whole thing falls over.

• The letter of Scripture is correct and immutable. Well, there's not really much to say on this one, except that if you believe it then you are under an absolute obligation to make it completely clear which version and/or translation you consider Correct, and which bits overrule which other bits. For instance, it's commonly accepted that a vision Paul had in Ephesus overrules what the Boss said, The Law is the Law - which really would seem to affirm in itself that Leviticus holds true for Christians.
  
• Everything that is written in the Bible is the considered opinion of God, rather than an artifact of the time and culture in which it was written down and/or translated. So, yeah. Show me all the other first-century (CE or BCE, I don't mind which, and Jewish or any other religion or secular) texts that give equal positions to men and women, and which mention bisexuality or homosexuality without condemning them. If you can't produce credible evidence that these behaviours and mores were not pervasive, but instead were decreed by God, then it seems a reasonable assumption that Himself was content to let people get on with things their way till they decided otherwise.
  
• There is a fundamental and unchangeable difference between men and women - they are incapable of nurturing and guiding in the same way, and women cannot perform episcopal duties. The episcopal duties in question seem basically to come in two parts; managerial and pastoral care of the priests in her diocese, and the transmission and exercise of apostolic magic. The first, really, is a no-brainer. The second would depend, pretty much, on the nature of apostolic magic, which of course I'm not qualified to pronounce on. And which NOBODY CARES ABOUT except a few theology-wonks.
  

Speaking of theology-wonks, I propose a brief suggested guide to finding and avoiding them. If you meet people who habitually say "Jesus" rather than "God", you're probably in the company of people who care more about shibboleths, magic words, and their own tight-knit community than about doing good in the world and actually doing what Himself recommended. Counterexamples and questions are welcome.

Comments

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

You already know that I'm with you on most of this...

But wrt stool-leg three, is there an issue here about women and magic and attitudes towards them?

*needs libellum, because she actually knows about this stuff*

[megamole.livejournal.com]

Consider the name of the greatest church of Orthodoxy.

Hagia Sophia.

Holy Wisdom.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Hm, good idea.

That's a really interesting question - I don't think we can avoid that issue. My basic understanding of the women-and-magic question (which is, admittedly, basic indeed) is that there are three basic strands.

1. Don't be silly, everyone knows women aren't magic.
2. Women have their own kind of magic which is nothing like men's, and I'm sure they do all sorts of useful things with it, like, er, cooking and looking after babies and so on.
3. Women are wonderfully important to the living tradition of magic - they hold and transmit the sacred power, which men receive from them to wield.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

I also get the impression that there is:

4. Women and magic are SCARY! OMG, get the women AWAY FROM THE MAGIC! BURN THEM!!!!!


But this impression may well come entirely from hysterical Wiccans who wouldn't know rigorous historical process if it came up to them and bit them hard on the spinal column.

(As opposed to sensible eclectic pagans like me. ;-))


See, this is why I need libellum. As I say, she *knows* about this stuff...

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Women have their own kind of magic which is nothing like men's, and I'm sure they do all sorts of useful things with it, like, er, cooking and looking after babies and so on.

Personally I'm with you, and think it's very unlikely there are any fundamental differences between men and women, but I have heard this argument made respectfully and non-patronisingly, and I think it's a valid one. By caricaturing it the way you do, you're in danger of making it look as though you don't think that things women have traditionally done, including cooking and bringing up children, are less important than things men have traditionally done.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

[Yo]ou're in danger of making it look as though...

If I gave you the impression I took that argument I made seriously, I do apologise. I don't. If any other actual person, rather than a hypothetical construct, got that impression, I'll apologise to them too.

Thinking about it, yes, you're right, people (many of them female) have made that one seriously.

And for the avoidance of doubt, I'm well aware that the "traditional men's work" of going out, stabbing something, and dragging it home is less valuable than the "traditional women's work" (everything else, and historically not as gendered as it is today).

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I think the caricature is valid because that, explicitly or implicitly, is the form the argument usually takes in Anglicanism. In Roman Catholicism, where the status of Mary is so much higher, the argument is a bit more sincere. And in Wicca, even if the argument itself remains silly/wrong, it's meant in deadly earnest.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that it is silly/wrong in a Wiccan context - if you want to buy in to the whole mythology, and it explicitly is a buy-in situation, you're more or less accepting that within the magic circle things are like this.

In other contexts, of course, I'll happily point and laugh at the idea that gender is either a biological, social, or magical hard binary.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

*nods* I didn't express myself well. I intended to refer to the idea's transferability. Of course a gender-binary approach is normal and sensible in a Wiccan context - it goes with the turf.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

it goes with the turf.

... and is one reason why I'm more of an eclectic pagan than a Wiccan. ;-)

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Most of the Anglicans I know think Mary rocks, but I appreciate we might not be typical!

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

But wrt stool-leg three, is there an issue here about women and magic and attitudes towards them?

Yes, I certainly know people who disagree with women's ordination because they think that ordination is about giving a small number of men something like the powers that all women have automatically.