Silent Witness

The Church of England’s ordination of more women than men to its presbyterate last year, and doubtless in every subsequent year, bodes most ill for witness within our national life to the classical Christianity that is, as much as anything else, the basis of all three political traditions. Independent research has found very large proportions of the women among the Church of England’s clergy to be doubters of or disbelievers in absolutely key points of doctrine, with two thirds denying “that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin”, and, astonishingly, fully one quarter denying the existence “of God the Father Who created the world”.

The radical feminist Establishment not only wants women to become bishops, but also wants to require that the episcopal “team” in each diocese include both sexes. So, of those with privileged access to the media and other organs of national life as the voice of the Christianity professed by seventy-two per cent of Britons at the last census, at least one eighth will be agnostics or atheists.

Furthermore, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords is specifically cited as a reason why women must become bishops, as they doubtless will. It is difficult to imagine a better case for abolishing that House, precisely in order to preserve and restore witness within our national life to the classical, historic, mainstream Christianity both underpinning that life and professed by the overwhelming majority of the population.