Church of England (Women Bishops)

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for leading the debate so well and to the Backbench Business Committee for choosing it.

I will declare my interests. I was baptised into the Church of England and confirmed into the Church in Wales—the latter makes me much more comfortable, because I support disestablishment. I am chair of a Church primary school, nominated by my diocese, Southwark, a trustee of a Church secondary school in my constituency and a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee in Parliament.

Like everybody who spoke immediately after the Synod’s decision, I despaired at the folly of the Church of England in making a huge public mistake. After so long, everybody was clear about the view of the Church as a whole. We have heard that 42 of the 44 dioceses are in favour of women bishops, and we have heard the view of the leadership, including Archbishop Rowan Williams, who did everything he could to ensure that the change was delivered during his time as Archbishop, for which we thank him.

I come from the evangelical tradition, and many evangelicals support the ordination of women as both priests and bishops. The situation is not one category in favour and another against. In the church to which I belong, St James in Bermondsey, which would be classed as an evangelical church, I do not think there is a single person who does not support the ordination of women as bishops.

Evangelicals look back to the scriptures, as does everybody else who gets involved in this argument. Although I understand why people have come to the view that they cannot accept that there can be women priests or bishops, that has very little biblical foundation. Nothing in my New Testament says that Christ set up a structure by saying, “You will have churches, and you will have deacons, priests and bishops, and they will all be men.” I may have missed something, but I have read the whole New Testament at one stage or another and there is nothing that says that. Although a tradition of having men has built up, some of the early leaders of the Church right from the beginning, when Christ was executed and rose again, were women. Indeed, in the early days some Churches had women bishops, for heaven’s sake. I do not understand why we are having to revisit this issue after so long.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman. It has always surprised me that women seemed to have a good, established position in the early Church, right up until it was legalised and then became the state religion of Rome. That leads me to feel that we should overturn the centuries of discrimination against women in the Church, possibly by disestablishing it. Maybe, once it is disestablished, it will be able to see a proper route to incorporating women as a proper and fundamental part of the Christian family.

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Lady and I are on the same wavelength on that. I understand the arguments for establishment, but I believe that a radical Church should not be part of the establishment. We should be outside the establishment campaigning for Christian values, but we have ended up being in the establishment by accident. That is a debate for another time, and we will not resolve it today.

One paradox is that the established Church of England has decided not to have women bishops when the head of the Church of England, the supreme governor, is a woman. The whole thing is inconsistent. There is another anomaly in the argument that, because of the relatively recent history of the Church, only men can be priests, and that people want to be under the pastoral responsibility of a male bishop. The Church has provided that option in relation to priests, and it works. Now it has come up with a similar proposal for those who want a male bishop. It seems to me that if the first worked, the second is likely to work. I ask people to be generous and less suspicious and untrusting. It is understood that some people have a different view, and everybody has tried hugely hard to accommodate it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Cox]

I will come to my hon. Friend’s question. He cannot complain, and he certainly, in a genial and bluff manner, should not, as the Second Church Estates Commissioner, kick the Church into adopting a view that he represents when, in fact, the constitutional majority was not reached. That is the rule by which the Church agreed that the decision should be made. To begin to bully the Church into taking action to follow his convictions is wrong and unrepresentative of the Church as a whole.

To come to my hon. Friend’s question, first, the code that is supposed to exist was never written. How on earth can we vote something through, expecting protective measures to be written in future? Why did the Church not create the code, in draft at least, so that members such as me would be able to read it? It was not written. Secondly, there is an existing protection for Church councils to be consulted, including councils that have taken the view that they ought to be excluded from the jurisdiction in which women priests celebrate the Eucharist. The priest must consult the Church council before an invitation is extended to a woman to celebrate the Eucharist. That protection is to be removed under the current provision. How can we expect those on the other side, already feeling bruised as a minority and feeling that the Church does not necessarily want them—that may be the case, but it is certainly not the publicly professed view of the Church—to have confidence in Measures that are not written and which remove existing protections?

My hon. Friend asked for another example. As I understand it, if a Church council writes a letter of request asking to be excluded from the dominion of a particular bishop, a priest is able to veto that request. That does not give confidence to those parishes where a majority feel that they do not wish to be ministered to by a woman bishop. It cannot give confidence that they will be able to live according to their consciences.

I have given my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury three examples, and I hope that he will deal with them. First, the code was never written, so one is asked to accept a series of protective measures that have not even been given proper detail. Secondly, an existing protection is removed—these are only examples—and thirdly, the priest in charge can veto the Church council’s view on the dominion of the female bishop.

I say again that I have no wish to engage in expressing divisive or entrenched views. I accept that women bishops will come. As for my doubts on this score, perhaps I will find that I am wrong when I see the good that they do and the astonishing devotion of some that I know. I hope that I am wrong. I am willing to be wrong, and willing to accept that I am. I profoundly hope that others of my persuasion will come round to the idea, and that the Church’s unity can be maintained. I simply ask my hon. Friend for some patience. I know that he and others have been patient for a long time.

[Lyn Brown]

For 1,700 years.

[Mr Cox]

Yes, I know, but we are talking about a minority. The change will come; I ask only for a little further patience, so that we can get the settlement right, and so that those thousands of people who are, as I am, in a state of uncertainty and doubt, can be brought along.

I ask hon. Members to contemplate what it must mean for a member of the Church, who is brought up to it, celebrates it daily, and loves it as so many thousands of us do, to feel that the Church is leaving us behind, and moving away from us. I know that there are hon. Members who disagree and do not feel like that, but others do. Imagine how it must feel. We are wrestling to come to the conviction that other Members have reached. [Interruption.] I can only say to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is commenting from a sedentary position, that I feel that I have already exposed far too much of my personal convictions, and have probably trespassed on her patience, but I did so because I believed, having listened to the debate, that this particular voice and body of opinion has not been represented in the House. I realised when I stood that what I said would not be popular, and would attract mirth, perhaps mockery; that some might be impatient with it; and that those on the other side of the debate have waited a long time.

I only ask that Members see the other point of view, and that the Church be allowed to reach this decision in its own time. I agree with the right hon. Member for Exeter that sincerity is necessary on both sides, and that the majority have come a long way in order to satisfy the concerns of the minority, but I ask for an extra effort. I ask for compassion. I ask for Christian patience.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on securing the agreement of the Backbench Business Committee to holding this exceptionally important debate.

I thought it would be appropriate to wear purple in this debate. I joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women 30 years ago and I found November’s Synod decision worse than disappointing. It is totally disgraceful that the whole of my adult life has seen this endless struggle over the position of women in the Church of England. I feel deeply sorry for women clergy up and down the country. In my own constituency I think of Jane Grieve, Brenda Jones, Linda Gough—fabulous women doing fabulous work. Even if they are not called to be bishops, the decision is demeaning and demoralising. Furthermore, as other hon. Members have said, women play a huge role in most parishes among the laity. I am sure women are the majority of the laity in the Church of England.

However, my greatest concern is for the mission of the Church. This country faces many challenges where the Church’s unique voice needs to be heard—how to bind fractured communities, how to address alienation and the inexorable rise of consumerism, and how to protect the natural environment. Who will listen to a Church when it behaves as Synod behaved last month? How much more time and energy must we spend on this question?

We have all heard from many members of the public and members of the Church in recent weeks. Some of those who are opposed seem to believe that Members of Parliament are, by and large, in favour of consecrating women bishops because they see it as a justice issue, rather than a theological issue. Of course, some of the people who are opposed to women bishops think this will give the Church a new lease of life, and that is the last thing they want, but that is not, by and large, the view that we have heard.

On the concerns about theological issues, the views were very well represented by the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox). In the light of what he said, it is clear that we need to go right back to the beginning of the argument. Genesis 1 verse 27 says:

“So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them”,

and the passage goes on to say:

“Be fruitful and multiply”.

The notes in my Bible, which is the New Revised Standard Version—an ecumenical Bible recognised for use by the Protestants, the Catholics and the eastern Orthodox—say:

“Together men and women share the task of being God’s stewards on earth.”

I would like to remind the hon. and learned Gentleman how the passage ends:

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

Now let me whizz forward 3,000 years to the New Testament. I take my understanding from the much maligned and misunderstood St Paul, who wrote in one of his letters to the Corinthians that in Christ there is neither male nor female but all are one in the spirit.

Since when, I ask those who are opposed to the consecration of women as bishops, has justice not been a theological issue? The justice tradition is the glory of the Old Testament, and in the New Testament we see it radically re-envisioned. Let us take, for example, the beatitudes, the roles given to the three Marys, the Magnificat—

“he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden . . . scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts . . . exalted the humble and meek.”

[Lyn Brown]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend is going to get to John, chapter 4, in which Jesus reveals himself for the first time to the Samaritan woman. It is not to a man, or to one of the 12 nominated disciples, but to someone who was possibly the lowest of the low, a Samaritan and a woman to boot. For me, that speaks volumes about the equality of the New Testament message.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend gives another excellent example from the New Testament.

The legislation in Synod foundered on the adequacy or otherwise of the guarantees offered to those opposed to change. I cannot accept their self-description as a vulnerable and oppressed minority. In modern Britain, people have a choice about whether to stay or go. They do not face being burnt at the stake. If they are excluded, it is self-exclusion. There has been so much fence-sitting in the Church to keep a minority on board that the fence is now collapsing under the weight.

I also know that many people believe that it is extremely important to maintain the historic coalition of the Elizabethan settlement. I remind the House what Richard Hooker, one of the great theologians of that era, did and said. His argument was essentially that it was not about keeping everyone happy in the short term, but about having a coherent polity and coherent Church governance. That seems to me to be absolutely relevant to the position we find ourselves in today. All these exceptions, constraints, conditions and flying bishops are making the situation excessively complex. It would be impossible to know where authority lies in the Church or to give a clear picture of our theological view of the role of men and the role of women.

Hooker also said—I think it is relevant—that because things were ordained by God does not necessarily mean that they were ordained for all time. He felt that we should use our God-given reason to tell which points of scripture had what kind of authority. When the old way, which might have been right in its own time, might be wrong now, he said there was “some new-grown occasion”. I believe that we are now in a new-grown occasion. Of course growth can be painful—we all know that from personal experience—but it is also essential.

By far the best outcome would be for the Church itself to resolve the issue quickly. I know that Bishop Justin wants to address it straightaway, and I endorse everything my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) said about his capacities. It is right that the Church should resolve the issue itself, but if it cannot, that will inevitably raise profound questions about the established Church’s relationship with the state. I will put it simply. What do we want? Women bishops. When do we want them? Now.