living in dignity

[helenic]

So the Anglican General Synod has ruled in favour of consecrating women bishops, which is good. I would say "and about time" except I know there are huge tangles of political and historical reasons for the Anglican church to move slowly and I respect that, having grown up with two liberal vicars who constantly had to negotiate where they had to compromise and where they could work towards reform. It's also good that they've rejected the "safeguards" suggested by traditionalists, i.e. inventing a new rank of Bishop that only men are allowed to be so they can still outrank women, or segregating liberals and traditionalists so the latter can all pretend there aren't any woman Bishops really. Good start.

They apparently are introducing some "safeguards" to appease the 1 300 elderly chauvinists who threatened to throw their rattles out of the pram if they didn't, but I'm not too worried about that, because the Synod's decisions seem sensible so far and hopefully most of those 1 300 will be dead in a generation or so anyway, so any 'safeguards' they do come up with will hopefully be dropped sooner or later.

What I'm currently furious about is a quote further down the article from the Bishop of Fulham, the Right Reverend John Broadhurst, saying that the decision will cause a schism in the church because "I think a lot of us have made it quite clear if there isn't proper provision for us to live in dignity, inevitably we're driven out. It's not a case of walking away."

So allowing women equality makes it impossible for men to "live in dignity"? This is the problem. This. Right here.

For shame, Right Reverend John Broadhurst, you possessive, petty, overprivileged misogynist waste of space. As I understand it, Christ taught that all you need to live in dignity is humility and love. People like you make me glad I left the Anglican communion. A decision, by the way, which I am happy to accept personal responsibility for, unlike your craven whinging about being "driven out" as if you had no will or voice of your own. You have more status and power than most people in this country. You have no damn idea what it's like to not be able to live in dignity. Being driven out, not living in dignity - that's what happens to refugees. What you're having is a tantrum, and I'm disappointed in the BBC for bothering to print it.

Comments

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

You've friendslocked this but I would really like to link to or quote it as it says pretty much everything I would want to say. What would you be happy with me doing?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Feel free to repost as much as you like :) I was tempted to post it publically, but my public rants tend to turn into shitstorms, so I didn't. I'll consider it if other people want to link it, though.

[roz-mcclure.livejournal.com]

♥

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

Done. Ta! :)

So far the only response has been: not disappointed with the BBC really... they're right to broadcast everyone's side of the story. It's just possible, of course, that the point of the article was either to engender debate or highlight the unreasonableness of the RR JB and friends.

I'm trying, actually, to work out exactly what it is that bruises their dignity and I'm finding it quite hard but I reckon it'll be a worthwhile exercise long-term. I want my mind to stay supple, I've realised recently, and that means trying the work out how to sympathise with people I don't actually agree with... even those whose opinions, if acted on, damage or limit me personally. It is really hard work...!

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Beautifully put.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I like the idea (not mine; put to me by LSM-Angela) that the queen should be the next pope, thus sorting out the women bishops thing and bringing the Anglican church back into communion with Rome.

[robert-jones.livejournal.com]

I think that was my idea.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a good idea. Thankyou.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

My God, that's so far away from what most people would classify as being denied dignity that it's not even funny.

Very well put.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

As I understood it St Paul said before Christ there would be no male and no female...

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Amen to all that. The whole 'pain' narrative in relation to this discussion is pathetic. "Feel our pain! Woe!" Get over yourselves. But a good move today.

*sigh* I guess we'll have to put up with another contigent of misogynist refugees heading Romewards. I mean, we're way worse of course, but I suspect that the majority of RCs, if the Pope were to say "OK, actually women can be priests" would, if not actually welcome it, say "Well OK, I guess that makes sense" or at worst shrug their shoulders and accept it - rather a minority that would go "Noooooooooo! Abandoning the True Faith! Doom!" But their numbers are swelled by the Anglican refuseniks.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

That's what bothers me about this too. I don't want a load of Anglican misogynists in my religion, thanks all the same.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

As this is a friends-locked post, I don't mind letting on that I understand John Broadhurst (aka 'Fatty Fulham') is a loathsome slug who will quite comfortably make sexist jibes about his own wife within her hearing, to relative strangers. I dearly hope he does feel driven out. Indeed, if he wants to feel driven out by the imminent arrival in the UK of the Most Revd Katharine Jefferts Schori, Primate of the USA, so much the better.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I suspect the BBC likes to provide fodder for Speak Your Branes sometimes...

Still - YAY!!!

[thene]

I quoteded. near the end of today's blog post, is kinda long.

[anarquistador.livejournal.com]

..."What you're having is a tantrum"...

That is the point at which, I imagine, a great many people would decide that they wish to subscribe to your newsletter. "The truth shall make you free", unless you are the Right-wing Reverend Broadhurst of course, in which case the truth shall expose you for to pathetic waste of oxygen that you are.

[whatifoundthere.livejournal.com]

Please, please, please send a form of this post as a letter to the BBC. It needs a wider audience.

♥

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Oh Helen, you rock so hard. I couldn't agree more with everything, everything you say. Though my parents are a more testy kind of liberal Anglican who tend to have no compunction about being very rude indeed about misogynist clergy. (Weirdly, the Church of Ireland in the Republic is a lot, lot more liberal than the Church of England - we had female clergy years before the CofE - tangent.) Your last paragraph is so true. And I left the church also in part because I couldn't be bothered following the misogynists and homophobes through their doctrinal hoops. I don't accept their theoretical framework, which makes them seem all the more nakedly anti-woman to me.

[ilkley.livejournal.com]

Yes I agree with much of what has been said. It is sad but true that after the '92 Act of Synod several hundred traditionalist and sometimes mysogynistic, but certainly very threatened, C of E clergy left for Rome. Many were 're-ordained', a weird concept. I know that they were (and presumably continue to be) resented, not least because suddenly there were married RC clergy with wives & families. Some RC clergy hoped this would at least have the effect of paving the way for RC married clergy. But alas it looks very unlikely. An RC Bp was reported to me to have responded that such clergy didn't present much of a real threat, as they would have all died out within one generation. Cheery thought indeed.
It all makes one temepted to despair of the organised, institutionalised denominations that often seem so far from the radical Jesus movement of the beginning. Yet I hang on in this confused, divided and oh-so-human Anglican communion because it seems to me to present at least some attempt to make sense of it all. Anglicanism has always been a broad church in every sense, balancing an acute sense of history and biblical theology with the evidence of reason and, more recently, experience. Maybe it lacks pzazz and tends to lead to stagnating ways of doing things, but I truly believe there is genuine faith, kindness (a much under-rated virtue) and even beauty in there sometimes, at its best. In the end we all have to do the best we can before God, interpreting the truth as we see it. And this vote by Synod gives me hope that even the C of E is not afraid of moving forward ...
Here endeth the rant! Thanks for listening :)

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the misogyny comes with being made to wear a dress by his mother... And then, of his own free will and accord, getting a job which involves wearing a dress and singing.

On a more serious note, this is indeed a tantrum: I suspect that the BBC gave it space and airtime as an act of deliberate hostility to the COE.

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

Very well said!

[spyinthehaus.livejournal.com]

I was impressed by some of the responses to this sort of nonsense at the synod. One obvious one is that when women were expressing their unhappiness at being denied first the priesthood and then the episcopate they were told that one could not be swayed by the emotional pain they were feeling, but had to follow _reason_. And yet the moment the worm turns out come the onions.

The Reverend Canon Marilyn McCord Adams, addressing the Synod, counterbalanced the threats of schism with the simple fact that she and others like her had long suffered having to examine their consciences to determine whether they could stay in a communion that treated women so unequally; that unhappiness with the state of the Anglican church is not the sole preserve of traditionalists. There was a lovely comment by a nun whose name I cannot recall, essentially saying that there were high Anglicans, liturgy, BVM and all, who were very eager to see this change and therefore that even if the threats to walk out were made good the Anglican communion would not lose these elements.

(Oh, and hello, by the way. Not sure if you remember me - we met in Bethnal Green...)

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

Bethnal Green....*blinks* I don't remember being in Bethnal Green, but I do remember you- you're D, right, who ate one of those amazing paper dhosas at slightlyfoxed's birthday? And ages ago the three of us had lunch and walked through Covent Garden? Or am I getting mixed up?

[parallelgirl.livejournal.com]

oops! Just looked back at the thread and realised you might well have been responding to the person above me! Ah well, hello anyway!