Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Anybody looking in on this debate from outside would be rather surprised at how low key and sober it has been, given the momentousness of what we are debating and hopefully approving. I suspect that it is because most people will be rather surprised that this was not done some time ago. They probably thought it had been. Still, that should not detract from the importance and the historic nature of this evening’s debate, or of the approval for this Measure.

I hope that the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who speaks on behalf of the Church of England, will answer the technical questions raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), and by Lady Howe in the other place. However, I do not want to spend my few minutes focusing on technicalities. There have been few moments in the House of Commons that have given me this much pleasure. I joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women as a teenager; some may think that rather sad. Apologies to my Labour colleagues, but I joined the movement several years before I joined the Labour party.

We should pay tribute to all the campaigners over the years who spent a lot of their time getting us to where we are, and who took a lot of stick. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Banbury, because—without sparing his blushes—he has been the most fantastic Second Church Estates Commissioner. He has shown leadership on the issue; after the previous Synod debate, which took us all by surprise and shocked the nation as well as the Church of England, he went back to the Synod, the bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury and made it absolutely clear to them that Parliament would not put up with the situation.

We sometimes underestimate the role that we can play in this place, but the fact that we spoke with one voice, and such a strong voice, in response to that terrible vote two years ago in Synod really made a difference. I was involved in some of the meetings and discussions with the bishops and the archbishop. They were sobered by the vote, and were certainly unnerved by some of the discussions that we had in this place, saying, “If you can’t sort this out yourselves, we will sort it out for you through legislation. You had better watch the Church of England’s established status if you carry on like this.” That did concentrate minds, and it was largely to do with the right hon. Gentleman’s tireless work. I shall miss him in this place, not just because of the role he plays in the Church, but as one of the few sane Tory voices on Europe. I am sorry to lose that from the House as well.

I also pay tribute to the Archbishop of Canterbury. I always said that I thought that it would take somebody coming from his tradition within the Church of England to drag it into the modern age, and I am in danger of being proved right. He has shown real leadership and determination as well as organisational skills, and political skills with a small p, which are essential in that job to get anything done. The majority that was achieved in the Synod last time took my breath away given what had happened the time before.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who is no longer in his place expressed some concern that what we are doing here tonight might damage our relationships with the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. There are many in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches who wish they were in the same position that we are now moving to in the Church of England. Pope Francis, bless him, had his own difficulties this week in Rome with his own bishops in his attempts to drag the Roman Catholic Church a little further into our century. I urge him to take comfort from the experience of the Church of England during the last two or three years: if at first you do not succeed, just try again. I am sure he will have more success next year in his final Synod. Perhaps they could look at our experience and take some comfort from it.

I also want to thank all colleagues on both sides of the House who have worked very hard on the issue and have made sure that Parliament’s voice has been heard. In particular, I refer to those tireless campaigners, such as Margaret Webster, the widow of the former Dean of Norwich, who, when I was a teenager and she was one of the founding members of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, nobbled me to join that organisation. It was really my first experience of political activism. I do not know how many other Members’ first experience of political activism was on such an issue, but it taught me about the importance of perseverance, of campaigning, of not giving up, and of making and winning the arguments. Heavens, it has taken us a long time, but it gives me fantastic delight and pleasure that we are getting here tonight. There will be a lot of people out there in the country, not just women themselves, but millions of ordinary Anglicans, who will be celebrating this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bradshaw]

They were in the closet.

[Chris Bryant]

Those gay men were all in the closet. The situation caused those women pain and many of them cried themselves to sleep on many nights during their ordination period. They believed that some people believed that they had no vocation and those people were prepared to use every means in the book to ram that home.

It is particularly ironic that, as one gay man walked in to be ordained bishop, he wore a mitre with the first word of the first Latin hymn on it—“Gloria”—because that had been his nickname at theological college, but he was not prepared to support the ordination of women priests or women bishops. That really rankled with me, because the battle for decency and the rights of all within the Church is a seamless garment—it does not distinguish between the rights of gay men and those of women in the Church.

So much time in so many ministries has been wasted when we could have had wonderful women ministers working in our churches. Did Teresa of Avila have no spiritual insight? Did Josephine Butler have no leadership or political acumen in the 19th century? Did Julian of Norwich have no felicity with language or theology? Of course these women had something phenomenal to offer, and it is extraordinary that people might think that those three aspects—spiritual insight, political leadership and theological insight, which are the foundation of the episcopacy—should not be recognised in women.

How bizarre it is that that should not be recognised in England. England had mitred abbesses sitting in Parliament in the 13th century. It of course had a succession of women monarchs, who were heads of the Church and who appointed bishops. For that matter, it has had a woman Prime Minister who also appointed bishops. It is a country in which women could be elected as a sexton or a church warden long before they could be elected to Parliament, yet we still thought that women could not be bishops. That flies in face of Galatians 3:28:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

I resigned my orders in 1996 to be able to stand for Parliament. For that matter, I resigned as a Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Falconer—Charlie Falconer—because I wanted to advance the cause of women bishops, but was told that that was part of his area of responsibility and that I therefore could not introduce such a Measure in the House. I pay tribute to all Members of the House who have taken part in the debate. It is almost inevitable that my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) should do so; they have a semi-episcopal role, given there are Prince Bishops of Durham.

Anyone who ever doubts the Church’s ability to change should remember Cardinal Martini, a very senior Roman Catholic cardinal, who when asked in 1999 whether his Church would ever have women priests, said, “Not this millennium.” I am certain that it will happen in the Roman Catholic Church, just as it has happened in the Anglican Church. I want to end—