Headless From The Start

The predominant opponents, such as there still are, of the ordination of women in the Church of England are not the lace queens beloved of Fleet Street, but the Conservative Evangelicals.

 

They are committed to, in the words of the Reform Covenant, "The unique value of women's ministry in the local congregation but also the divine order of male headship, which makes the headship of women as priests-in-charge, incumbents, dignitaries and bishops inappropriate." Like the Scarlet Woman of Rome, in fact.

 

But from its very foundation, in the establishment of the Royal Supremacy, the Church of England has been in formal breach of the New Testament doctrine of male headship in the Church.

 

It has been in material breach throughout the reigns of Elizabeth I, Queen Anne, Queen Victoria and the present Queen, all of whom are everything short of worshipped by the constituency that is now represented by Reform and the Church Society.

 

Many in that constituency also will not hear a word against Margaret Thatcher, whose ecclesiastical role during her Premiership added Scriptural disobedience to Scriptural disobedience.

 

A text from one of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion declaring black to be white does not make black white. Black is not white.

 

If a woman, as such, can be the de jure or de facto Supreme Governor of the Church of England, then a woman, as such, can be a priest-in-charge, or an incumbent, or a dignitary (an archdeacon, a dean, that kind of thing), or a bishop.

 

But if a woman, as such, cannot be a priest-in-charge, or an incumbent, or a dignitary, or a bishop, then a woman, as such, cannot be the de jure or de facto Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

 

It simply will not do to fall back on some languid, gentlemen's club way on the giggling insistence that it is un-English to take theology seriously. Catholics from the very start, and Puritans and their successors for almost as long, have made this point and more. They, we, are at least as much features of the English religious landscape.

I am a firm antidisestablishmentarian.

The sheer objectionable nature of a church whose doctrine was whatever the Crown, and so eventually the Crown in Parliament, said that it was at the given time, has been an enormous force for the creation in this country of a pluralistic society, and thus by necessity of a representative democratic political system.

Without it, there would have been neither the Nonconformist Conscience, because there would have been no Nonconformists, nor Catholic Emancipation, because Rome really was a long way away in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so that some accommodation really would have been reached by those who still felt themselves Catholics, as if feelings mattered here, and who would consequently have had no need of Emancipation in 1829.

The establishment of the Royal Supremacy set the pattern for many a subsequent nationalisation, merely taking over what was already there and leaving almost everything, including most of the management, in place.

To the consternation of radicals. But to the reassurance, not to say the gainful employment, of all but the most advanced conservatives.

In this case, the thing nationalised was the previous role of the Papacy. If it is the New Testament doctrine of male headship in the Church that you need, then there is one place where you will always, always, always be able to find it.