Episcopal Press and News
Proposed Ordination of Women in Church of England Stirring Heated Controversy
Episcopal News Service. September 17, 1991 [91178]
When the General Synod of the Church of England took the first step toward the ordination of women to the priesthood in November of 1989, it ignited a fierce controversy that is threatening the unity of the church.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie said after the vote that he was prepared to "trust in the resilience of the Church of England in parishes and dioceses, and the unity of bishops to handle the debate." As the results of early voting in the dioceses are announced, that resilience is being tested, and it is far from clear whether or not the church will maintain its unity.
The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) said in a September 5 news release that it is "extremely encouraged by the voting so far in diocesan and deanery synods."
MOW pointed out that 16 of the 18 synods voting so far have voted in favor. (The church has 44 dioceses.) Expressed as percentages, MOW said that 84 percent of the bishops, 68 percent of the clergy, and 71 percent of the laity have voted in favor so far.
In addition, MOW announced that 340 deaneries had voted in favor and 110 against. (The church has 657 deaneries.)
"Every indication points to the fact that the average person in the pew is very much in favor of the ordination of women," MOW said. Since a 1988 poll showed that 57 percent favored ordination, "the numbers have been steadily increasing, especially since women became deacons," the MOW release said. MOW now estimates that 70 percent of the church's membership is in favor of the ordination of women.
"It is therefore surprising that those presently opposed to the ordination of women, who are a small minority in the church, are unable to accept the reality of concrete facts and to see that it really is the will of the Church of England to go ahead and ordain women to the priesthood," said MOW press officer Jenny Standage.
Dioceses will report to the General Synod early next year. If approved there, the measure authorizing the ordination of women to the priesthood would go to Parliament and the queen for final approval.
Controversy over the ordination of women is exposing some deep rifts between liberals and conservatives in the Church of England and is leading some traditionalist church leaders to predict a split.
One leading Anglo-Catholic opponent of women's ordination recently delivered a blistering attack on the church's liberals and called for a formal division of the church into liberal and conservative wings to save it from imminent collapse.
"A powerful but influential minority is in the process of hijacking the doctrine, ethical teaching and worship of the church," the Ven. George Austin, archdeacon of York, said in a sermon at York Minster. Addressing his challenge to the church's liberals, he added, "If you wish to be allowed to perform single-sex marriages, reinterpret parts of the Creed, omit passages of Scripture which are unacceptable to you or introduce feminist liturgies, then we shall not stand in your way -- though we cannot worship with you."
The deacon was publicly rebuked by his archbishop, the Most Rev. John Habgood, generally regarded as one of the church's leading liberals. He said that Austin was "overreacting to a few anecdotes he has heard. The Church of England he is describing bears very little relation to the church I know from the House of Bishops."
Austin said that the differences go beyond the current debate over ordination of women, that future debate in the General Synod on moral and political issues would create "a period of discord far more bitter and divisive than that experienced with the debate on women priests," and that the divisions are so deep and fundamental that "there is no hope of compromise."
The only solution, according to the archdeacon, is to recognize formally that division and separate liberals and traditionalists, allowing each group to practice its faith without discrimination. "There are those in positions of power and influence, not least in the General Synod, who wish to impose on us a substitute faith and morality which in the end can never satisfy," Austin said.
Austin told a press group that the Episcopal Church in the United States is "beset by the same problems and worse" but added that the formation by traditionalists of the Episcopal Synod of America may be "the beginning of a worldwide alliance of traditional Anglicans." He stated that he believes that Church of England traditionalists should "follow that example."