A CAMPAIGN to finish the provisions that accompanied the women-bishops laws of 2014, put in place to supply for those unable to simply accept women’s ministry (News, 28 July 2014), was launched by Women and the Church (WATCH) on Saturday.
The campaign group hopes to see a motion delivered to the General Synod, asking members to think about “whether it is correct for the 2014 House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests to proceed in perpetuity and, if not, to set a date for it to come back to an end”. The plans were discussed on the “Not Yet Equal Conference” at St John’s, Waterloo, in London. WATCH goals to roll out roadshows across dioceses in the approaching months, within the hope of getting the motion carred by diocesan synods. An alternative approach could be a personal member’s motion.
WATCH can be encouraging women clergy to log experiences of “harassment”, with a view to bringing a case under the Equality Act (2010).
Among those that addressed the conference was the Area Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, a member of the steering committee that drafted the 2014 laws (News, 26 July 2013). She was “fully behind the amazing work that WATCH undertakes to carry the Church to account with regard to its iniquitous treatment of girls”, she said. But she had hesitated before accepting the invitation to talk, because she was one in every of the five members of the committee that had put together what were now often called the Five Guiding Principles, “which makes me feel very very similar to an instigator, or at the least one in every of the architects, of the issues that we’re all still facing”.
The Principles were a part of the package that accompanied the Measure that enabled the ordination of girls to the episcopate. Embodied in a House of Bishops Declaration, they include a commitment to enabling to “flourish” those that, on grounds of theological conviction, are capable of receive the ministry or women bishops or priests, and to pastoral and sacramental provision for this minority “without specifying a limit of time”.
The Principles “help to bolster” the “unequal and iniquitous gendered culture of the present Church of England”, Dr Mallett said on Saturday. The foundations of this culture lay within the 1993 settlement, which established Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEV) and “allowed . . . churches to limit women’s roles on grounds of theological conviction”.
She went on: “With hindsight, we never really thought through how this agreement would construct on those foundations, cementing in each official and unofficial practices in churches a perpetuation of girls’s unequal treatment and the continued discrimination against women. From my perspective, we were working very hard to give you an answer to place a square peg right into a round hole, with a desire to place in place something that will get us over the road and that, with good will, would enable mutual flourishing.
“I believe in honesty we also thought that as society modified and as views became more open-minded amongst growing numbers of younger men and ladies, the culture of the Church would change just like the culture of the broader society. No one really saw that there was an underlying trend even then, growing throughout the society, that continues to harbour paternalistic and patriarchal perspectives of the ways societies, institutions, and gendered relationships must be ordered.”
She mentioned the social-media influencer Andrew Tate, the “manosphere”, and the recent Netflix series Adolescence (TV, 24 March). The real-life story of “toxic masculinity and male rage and anger at rejection” was the killing of Elianne Andam, murdered by 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu, who had recently split up with one in every of her friends, in 2017 in Croydon (News, 29 September 2023).
Within the Church there had been a “ossification, if not growth, of the viewpoints purported by those that feel unable to receive the ministry of girls bishops or priests or those male bishops who’ve ordained them”.
Dr Mallett also referred to the pastoral assurances requested by opponents of the Prayers of Love and Faith and calls for a separate province. Some churches that had not previously requested a PEV were calling for alternative oversight, she said. “What muddies the water is that, in lots of, if not most of those churches, ordained women’s ministry has not been welcomed or accepted. They fly under the radar.”
She spoke of “gendered microaggressions” experienced by women. Last 12 months, she had been invited to preside on the funeral of a friend’s wife. The church that the family had chosen wouldn’t allow her even to say prayers within the service. A young curate applying for a post had told her that while he admired her stance on social justice, he could never stand on the altar alongside her. “I needed to have an open and frank conversation as to how he could model for young boys and young girls a welcome and the inclusive love of God.”
She warned: “The cumulative effect of those slights will be substantial, resulting in isolation, frustration, and a diminished self-worth. . . For racialised groups and for ladies like me, the repeated experience of getting to query our right to feel offended, and the constant reminder that we aren’t welcome, can result in physical or mental-health concerns. . . We soldier on, after which we get noted for our resilience and our strength.”
The conference was a call to bring to an end “the discrimination, sexism, and exploitation of girls in our Church”, the Vicar of St Michael’s, Chiswick, the Revd Martine Oborne, who chairs WATCH, said. In addition to work to bring to an end the 2014 provisions, she spoke of the potential to bring a legal challenge under the Equality Act (2010). While this meant that individuals throughout the Church “can discriminate on grounds of sex”, it contained protections against victimisation and harassment.
Harassment is defined within the Act as “unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic” with the aim or effect of “violating [the person’s] dignity”, or “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” for them.
“Most of us can have experienced harassment, and it is illegitimate,” Mrs Oborne said. “You should report it, there’s a statute of limitations inside six months . . . To be taken seriously, you might want to log your experience contemporaneously . . . If we will get enough evidence together we will make a case for this sort of activity which is illegitimate.”
Her understanding was that this was happening, but that girls were being “bought off. Settlements are made, non-disclosure agreements are written and entered into. That’s got to stop.” She invited women to maintain a log and to share it with WATCH.
She mentioned the survey of clergy carried out by The Times in 2023, which found that 62.9 per cent said that the 2014 arrangements must be “phased out”. One third said that they need to “remain in place indefinitely”. The arrangements were “unjust”, “unfaithful to the gospel”, and “exploitative”.
They were also “unsafe”, she said: “There is a big body of evidence that understandings of male privilege correlate to the abuse of girls and girls, and the Church cannot hope to handle the harms brought on by sexism in our world when we have now institutionalised discrimination against women ourselves. The requirement for all clergy to say that they accept the present discrimination effectively silences women, which is an act of violence, and it makes it hard to even disclose abuse or say that we’re unhappy concerning the arrangements, because a lot of those that do speak out experience marginalisation and gaslighting.”
If referred to the General Synod, diocesan-synod motions remain on the agenda until they’re either debated or withdrawn by the proposing diocese. Any Synod member can write an submit a PMM, but, to determine whether to put it on the agenda, the Business Committee requires a minimum of 100 expressions of interest.
“Don’t be afraid that the motion won’t be passed,” Mrs Oborne said. “The vital thing is that it’s debated.”
It is hoped that the diocese of Southwark stands out as the first to hold the WATCH motion. Besides hearing from Dr Mallett, the conference received messages from two of the diocese’s other three bishops. The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Christopher Chessun, wrote a letter recalling that, three years before the 2014 vote, the Revd Professor Sarah Coakley had called the settlement on the ordination of girls a theological “wound”.
“Although a lot of our relationships across theological conviction could also be said to be gracious at a neighborhood level, sadly this shouldn’t be universally so; and I’m unsure that this wound has been much healed,” he wrote. “I’m mindful that the ‘Five Guiding Principles’, drafted with a nation watching intently, have placed an asymmetrical burden on women in Holy Orders. Nevertheless, there may be merit in continuing to state that ‘anyone who ministers throughout the Church of England should be prepared to acknowledge that the Church of England has reached a transparent decision on the matter’.
“Regrettably, there was a certain hardening of our common life since 2014 that’s unlikely to be softened by the continuing debates about implementing the ‘Prayers of Love and Faith’. I’m committed to respecting the spectrum of theological conviction while defending our essential Anglican identity and polity. As such, I’m confident that the Church of England is, in humble faith and under God, a part of a wider movement of the Holy Spirit that heralds and pioneers developments which advance the potential of their reception by the broader Church.”
A message from the Area Bishop of Kingston, Dr Martin Gainsborough, said that the campaign to get a motion to the Synod “will likely be welcomed in some quarters and resisted in others but it is vital that we have now this conversation as a Church. The query we’d like to wrestle with is how will we ensure a future wherein ladies and men can flourish equally within the Church. We have some method to go.”
