Guardian editorial on the talent needed for the next Archbishop of Canterbury; Is the selection panel for the next Archbishop dominated by liberals?; A female archdeacon gives her analyses on women bishops
Guardian editorial on the talent needed for the next Archbishop of Canterbury
This contains a very astute analysis of the C of E and the society and Anglican Communion to which it has to relate. The new Archbishop should be chosen for his talents, and not necessarily his theological standpoint.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/church-of-england-archbishops-move
ABC selection panel: Dominated by liberals?
The Telegraph – gives space to those who feel that the panel charged with selecting the next Archbishop of Canterbury is dominated by liberals:
The committee is unfairly balanced in favour of liberals who support “revisionist” moves such as the appointment of homosexual bishops, traditionalists have warned.
Their intervention came as the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) met behind closed doors last week for the first in a series of meetings to decide the successor to Dr Rowan Williams.
Orthodox clergy fear that influential liberals on the panel will swing votes away from the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Coventry, prominent conservatives who have been widely tipped for the post.
Dr Richard Chartres, the traditionalist Bishop of London, is also back in the running, as he pulled out of elections to the CNC which would have excluded him from being considered.
Women bishops: some more analyses
Janet Henderson Archdeacon of Richmond has written A Nettle the Church of England Can’t Seem to Grasp.
…For 18 years the Church of England has been trying out an approach that says, in effect, ‘both groups are right’. A lot of us thought we were doing this in the patient expectation that one or other group would eventually become less sustainable. How else are decisions made and people able to move forward? You pray, you argue the rationale, you try things out, you put it to the vote. In the Church of England, we seem now to be saying that however small the number of people who want to be protected from women priests becomes, we will continue to order the life of the church for their benefit and at the expense of all who want to see women in leadership.
Well, I can see that to pass legislation that is completely unacceptable to those who do not want women priests and bishops is a very hard decision to take (and not, at this point, one that is open to Synod) but let’s look at the cost of continuing with this ‘two integrities’ approach
• It seriously endangers the coherence of episcopacy in the Church of England. The bishops will be trying to move in two directions at once over a good number of issues to do with gender and the ordering of the church.
• It will cause arguments in parishes where there is a divergence of view about women’s ministry, particularly as the ‘supply’ (to use the bishops’ word) of clergy gets smaller.
• It makes for a national church that treats women as second class, something parts of the church have to be protected from. How proud of that can we be?
• It means that language about ‘taint’ and ‘the unsuitability of women having authority’ will continue to be a norm of church life. (As Desmond Tutu so famously pointed out, what you say about people in fact shapes the possibilities of your behaviour towards them.)
• It endorses the notion of different churches within the Church of England needing different types of theological leadership – will other grounds for being able to petition for a different bishop begin to emerge? This leads to chaos!
• http://archdeaconinthedales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/nettle-church-of-england-cant-seem-to.html