A Question for Anglicans…
…who are deeply opposed to women’s ordination.
Why are you still Anglican?
Seriously. The bishops of the Anglican church, including many global south bishops, have concluded that the ordination of women is a non-issue for the Anglican communion. Women are ordained in many Anglican provinces, and have been for years. The church of England is paving the way for women bishops (which makes sense considering they have had women priests since 1992). The Episcopal church has insisted that every diocese accept women’s ordination, whether they like it or not. I think that women’s ordination is a foregone conclusion in Anglicanism, accepted (or at least tolerated) by most Anglicans worldwide who are either progressive (in the West) or evangelical (in the developing world). Even many "conservative" Anglicans support women’s ordination and sometimes have harsh words for those other conservatives who oppose WO. Those in Anglicanism who oppose women’s ordination often come across as angry and bitter, and are becoming a smaller and smaller minority. So…why stick around? I ask this as someone who is generally curious.
Let me note that I have no official stats on the future of WO in Anglicanism. It is just that comments on blogs as of late (and the reasons I mentioned above) have convinced me that any future Anglicanism, conservative or liberal, is going to include women’s ordination. I just wonder where die-hard Anglo-Catholics fit in is all.
February 13th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
As you know, I’m not exactly your target audience–since my wife is a transitional deacon–but I’d venture to say that there’s more to being Anglican than simply being Western Liturgical Non-Romans.
I personally am convinced that the Anglican Communion will split in coming years and that it will be preceded by a split in American Anglicanism. However, the vision of two Anglican groups–one the “debased” “semi-pagan” liberalism of E”C”USA and other the strong vibrant orthodoxy of the Network–also seems to me not to be viable. Some will heed your call and follow your footsteps through the Tiber. But denominational calving is in the protestant blood. The opposition groups are just that–held together by their opposition. The Continuing Anglican Continuum will grow. Some of them will indeed be Anglican opptions that do not hold to WO; other will.
Where will the Anglo-Catholics go? I predict that they will collect in their own enclaves , do their own thing and maintain a dialogue with Roman, invested in the process of dialogue rather than its real results.
February 14th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
It’s a common Anglican trait to deal harshly with people that don’t agree with you. Predominately among the revisionists!
Derek asks where will Anglo-Catholics go? Well, if they start to actually think about there faith and care about being in the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, they will do as I did and go to Rome!
February 14th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
There are probably a number of answers to this very good question question. Here are just a few of the main ones:
Some of those opposed to the ordination of women still hold on based on a belief that (on paper) the ordination of women is still in a period of reception within the Anglican Communion. This means that the Communion is in a period of “testing” and that it (again, on paper)continues to recognise that those who are opposed to the innovation of women’s ordination hold a legitimate theological position within Anglicanism.
Of course, I am of the opinion that Newman was right about Anglcianism being a “paper church”. . .and the ordination of women is another example (in a long list of examples) where the stated position of Anglicanism is at serious (and irreconcilable) odds with how it functions in actuality.
Provinces of the Communion, like the USA, Canada, and New Zealand (to name but a few), would laugh out loud to hear that the ordination of women is not an absolute. For them there is no question that it is right, permanent, and indisputible. There is no going back.
I would venture to say that the Archbishop of Canterbury, and most other Anglican bishops, are intelligent enough to know that this is the case: There is no going back, and the Communion WILL accept women bishops. However, modern Anglicanism is so meshed in nuance that it can never face such facts head on. Better to plod along, hoping to carry as many positions along for as long as possible, while being careful not to state a clear objective position (which would alienate) until such time as the gloriously trumpeted “consensus” is reached. Sadly, this process of reception means that the Commmunion reaches “consensus” by gradually losing (forcing out) those who disagree with the decisions that have already been taken (oh, not on paper at first, and not officially. . .but nonetheless in practice and IN FACT).
This is the same thing that is happening with regard to same sex partnerships in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and with the ordination of gay bishops (yes, more are coming) in the US. It is a terribly dishonest and misguided way of doing things, though I am sure that most Anglican bishops see it this way: “We aren’t throwing anyone out. . .God forbid that we should actually suggest that any one position has any more validity than another within Anglicanism. We are not going to challenge or penalize those who violate our ‘paper’ aggrements. We want to maintian some sort of balance. We want to be tolerant. We want to ‘live in the tension’. We want to ‘agree to disagree’ and still be ONE CHURCH in FULL communion with one another and united in COMMON MISSION.”
Illogical? Yes. Impossible? Perhaps. Just plain silly? No comment.
Certainly, one advantage of this approach is that when some poor non-unitarian soul decides to leave the Anglican muddle, the bishops can comfort one another by discussing how insecure, or intolerant or fundamentalist or simplistic or, in the case of the ordination of women, how patriarchial he was. And their aforementioned “legitimate theological position” is shown to be some sort of sad archaic anomoly that was allowed until nobody cared, because eventually nobody will be left who holds that theological position.
So back to the question “why are those opposed to the ordination of women still Anglican?”
A few are still Anglican because they are not only opposed to the ordination of women, they are opposed to women in general. This is true for a number of the “camp” Anglo-catholic set in some of the, uh, “lavender” enclaves in the Diocese of London and at places like St Stephen’s House, Oxford.
But that’s a real minority, we hope.
A few more are still Anglican because they believe that, while the present state of the Communion is a disaster, there is still a (distant) future for true theological catholic revival in Anglicanism. I have heard one such Anglican tell me that this group are like “faintly glowing embers within Anglicanism, keeping catholic faith barely alive until some future day - probably long after they are dead - when the Holy Spirit will blow the embers they maintained (and passed on) into full flame again.” I appreciate their commitment to remain in the ruins and to hope for a future that I believe will never be. It is certainly to “hope for things not seen.”
Still more remain because they imagine they have no place else to go (this, I think, is the majority). For various reasons (I venture, few of them theological) they do not feel able and willing to become Roman Catholic or Orthodox.
Granted, there are those who do have genuine theological reservations about areas of Catholic and Orthodox teaching which they feel they are unable to accept. One such Anglican told me that while there is much in Catholicism he affirms, he just couldn’t buy everything Rome teaches. I suggested that struggling to understand and accept an objective teaching of the Catholic Church might be preferrable to living within Anglicanism where just about everything is subjective opinion. The conversation didn’t go much further. . .
Anyway, my sense of things is that most of the THEOLOGICAL Anglo-Catholics have already left Anglicanism (and this is particularly true in the US). I say that because I used to be an Anglican, and an Anglo-Catholic, and an Anglican priest. I believe that I am one of the last of my breed to walk out of the Anglican Communion and into the Catholic Church. Not a fact I am particularly proud of, as I fear I waited far too long to come home.
Why other orthodox theological Anglo-Catholics remain is becoming an increasing mystery to me. The longer I am out of the ruins of Anglcianism the harder it is for me to understand why folks stay.
But I do know this: Unless they are prepared to go underground, and live out their lives as part a church that does not value their position, that will dismiss and even persecute them, and that will become increasingly innovative (and even downright bizarre), they won’t be able to stay much longer.
They need, and deserve, our prayers.
February 15th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Fear.