Women’s Contribution to the Ordained Ministry (Church of England)

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Spelman]

I had the same idea, and I put it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but he made an important point, recalling especially his experience. When a diocese is left vacant for any long period of time, life gets quite difficult for everybody else in the diocese. He was speaking, of course, of his experience of moving swiftly to Durham and then almost as swiftly to the top post within the Church. We must recognise that although it is a good idea in principle, because it would be a way to create space for women to move into, in practical terms, we want well-functioning dioceses. However, when the event gets very close, there might be an opportunity to do what the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

To pursue that thought, it is a matter of chronology that bishops and archbishops must retire at a certain age, although we do not expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to retire for some time. We admire and welcome the continuing services of the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London, but we hope that there is no reason why the committees and councils that nominate people to those offices will not find the pent-up talent of women, which has not been able to be used, and allow one of them to be appointed and therefore come to the House of Lords straight away.

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about what I would describe as succession planning. Where we know there is likely to be a retirement, with the prospect that a woman might be consecrated as bishop, we should be thinking in terms of those retirement seats. It is known to be done in politics in a similar way. Succession planning ensures a smooth transition, which is always good for the functioning of any institution. If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will return later to the question of women bishops sitting in the Lords, which I personally hope will happen. There are some aspects that it is important to weave into this debate, and I will refer to it later.

For anyone who is following the debate, the workings of the Church of England can sometimes be a bit of a mystery, so I thought it would be worth while at the start to explain a little bit, in case a lay audience is watching. The ordained ministry consists of deacons, priests and bishops, in ascending order of seniority. Those accepted for ordination as priests are first ordained as deacons. Indeed, before women could be ordained as priests, that was the staging post where women’s progression stopped. The first women deacons were admitted in 1987 and the first women priests in 1994—a total of 1,500 women deacons were ordained as priests in that historic year.

According to statistics from the Church of England, women now make up nearly a quarter of the Church’s full-time paid clergy, at 1,870 out of 7,880. That is an increase of 14% since 2002, and the number and proportion of females is expected to rise further in the next three years. Clearly, the historic moment of ordaining women unleashed a great appetite for more women to enter the ministry. In 2010, for the first time, the number of women ordained was greater than the number of men, at 290 compared with 273.

I was given an excellent suggestion by the Opposition spokeswoman, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), that we as constituency MPs should take the opportunity of this debate to write to the women priests in our constituencies to give them a chance to raise any issues with us, reflect on their role as female priests and help us understand what it is like from their perspective. I thought that that was a really good suggestion, so I did it. As hon. Members will see shortly, I have woven into my speech some of the comments that those women gave me. I have decided not to attribute them—I think it is probably better to protect the identities of people in a public ministry—unless they expressly asked me to put a name to their quote. They made some interesting comments.

During almost 17 years as the MP for Meriden, I have had the privilege of seeing at first hand the vital contribution that many ordained women have made to the life of my constituency. One vicar described the role of women priests as “transformational”, both for the Church and for the work of churches in the local community. There are a number of benefits that come from having priests of both genders. Women bring a different approach to Church governance. Although it is perhaps a bit stereotypical to point this out, the consensual way in which women like and tend to work has resulted in the creation of many more connections at the constituency level between churches of different denominations. I have certainly seen that change led by the female clergy in my constituency. Women are also often able to approach governance issues from a different perspective, with a focus on discussion and practical solutions rather than on necessarily winning the argument hands down. That kind of collaborative approach brings benefits. I have seen increased co-operation not just between churches of different denominations but between churches and other agencies and charities in my constituency. The female priest is often at the heart of the networking process.

Women also bring a particular creativity to ministry. When women first came into ordained ministry 20 years ago, they had only male role models, which required a creative approach to being a woman and a priest. That has had many benefits for local communities. It takes anyone a while to work out how to be themselves in a job, but even more so when they have no similar role models to work from. In every sense, women priests have been trailblazers over the past 20 years.

It goes without saying that women are not the same as men. They often have more responsibility for families, looking after the home at the same time as carrying out a job. Many female vicars are also mothers or grandmothers, and I have seen the benefits that those other duties have had on their ministry. One female vicar in my constituency said:

“In Kingshurst, people call at the vicarage if they need help. I listen to a woman who works in a factory and needs help with improving her reading. I have been doing this for about three years.”

Some of the women in my constituency lack female role models within their own family—perhaps they are estranged from the grandparental generation. A female priest can provide real practical help, advice and support to young women making their first steps in motherhood without a family network around them.

There are other ways in which women priests can show their creativity in ministry. For example, in my constituency, a woman priest was involved in setting up the Seeds of Hope project in 1998. It is an independent charity that continues to flourish. It encourages a range of community activities in the north of the Solihull borough, an area that has three wards in the bottom 10% of socio-economic data. There is real deprivation in that part of my constituency. Seeds of Hope operates out of the church village hall, but remains independent, and its continued success is absolutely central to the ongoing needs of the community. One example of the kind of networking I described is that the charity plays host to a credit union, which operates at the same time as it runs lunches and support clubs for the surrounding community. The female priests have a pivotal role and bring real benefits to that community.

[Mrs Spelman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. The dire predictions about the ordination of women have been proved wrong. The sky has not fallen in. There has been an important cultural shift. For my late father, the idea that a woman would administer communion was strange to begin with, but he quickly came round to the idea that women are good at the job, not least because they listen well to their parishioners’ needs and carry out the office with great dignity. His concerns were blown away very quickly. Cultural acceptance of the ordination of women has been remarkably smooth in most cases.

On women bishops, if we bar women from reaching the top of Church governance, we might not always get the best person for the job, with the honourable exception of Archbishop Justin Welby, for whom I have the highest regard. It is right to place on the record that he has been skilful in weaving his way through this minefield with good grace. I sincerely hope that he will see reward with the achievement of women being consecrated as bishops.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am sorry to intervene for a second time, but I have to go to a charity meeting, so I will probably be unable to make a speech. I take this opportunity to say that the archbishop, the other bishops and the Synod realised that accepting the Women and the Church recommendation to take away the barrier and sort things out quietly was the right way. That was led by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who made it absolutely plain, in Parliament, in public and later to the Synod, that the House of Commons would not stand for continued discrimination on baseless grounds.

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend’s intervention was well worth making before he understandably slips away. I think all of us in this debate would wholeheartedly concur with what he says. Parliament will not stand in the way and we want the change that we support to take place.

The outcome of the General Synod vote last month is also to be celebrated because it has been a long process to get to that point. In July 2005, the General Synod approved a motion to begin the process of removing legal obstacles to women in the episcopate. It was only last month, however, that it voted to approve the process, and the final vote will be in July 2014. The Church of England has stated that it is “fully and unequivocally” committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all. That is the official position, but some will, of course, remain opposed. Those who minister within the Church of England must accept that the Church has made a clear decision that those ordained are the true and lawful holders of their office and deserve due respect.

I have a number of friends who are female priests and they initially felt a great sense of obstruction and rejection from the views of the Synod following the great setback in progress towards women’s consecration as bishops. It made life very difficult for some of them in their parishes, because those who perhaps did not fully accept the ordination of women in the first place received a certain succour from the reservations expressed through the Synod about women’s consecration. That was a great shame, and I am pleased that progress is being made. That surely must be an encouragement to the women who have been ordained to the ministry.

The Church of England will continue to share the historic episcopate with other Churches, including those who continue to ordain only men as priests or bishops. It must therefore accept that its own decision on gender in the ministry is set within a broader process of discernment within the Anglican communion and the whole Church of God. Those within the Church of England who oppose the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of the Anglican communion, and the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its structures.

I pay tribute to the work of WATCH, the campaigning organisation to which my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) just referred. It points out that there are still areas of concern about the point at which we have arrived. The first two of the five principles established by the package that the Synod recently agreed contain a clear, uncompromising statement—I have read it out—about women’s ordained ministry, but WATCH has concerns about the other three statements. It recognises that they represent where the Church of England is, both in voting by the General Synod and, to a much lesser extent, on the ground in the parishes. WATCH remains to be convinced that the mutual flourishing called for in the fifth principle is truly possible with that fundamental incompatibility.

WATCH remains concerned about the continuing role of flying bishops, because although the Act of Synod is to be rescinded, most of the arrangements it contained remain in place, including flying bishops. That might result in the continuing tendency for parishes under their care to separate themselves from the mainstream of the Church of England, with consequences for those parishioners who welcome the ordination of women. When the Second Church Estates Commissioner speaks, he might like to reflect on some of the remaining concerns of WATCH, because they are legitimate and important to place on the record, so that we as parliamentarians understand where there is still work to be done. I know that he will place the Government’s position on the record—as will the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant)—but our support for the next step could not be made plainer.

Although there is much good work on the transformations steering group of the Church of England, it still has some challenges to address. The group was set up after a conference held by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to raise awareness of the issues faced by women in the Church, and it continues to call for research into strategies to address obstacles that limit the flourishing of women in ordained ministry. We all need to work hard to ensure that the glass ceiling does not remain in place, even once the formal barriers to women becoming bishops are removed. That is important. Inevitably, entrenched attitudes against women might remain, and many women will still not be fully accepted within the Church.

Our next challenge will be getting women on to the Bishops’ Bench in the House of Lords. At present, many ordained women have reported feeling that they are still regarded as second best, which will persist unless we are successful in getting a mix of men and women bishops in the upper House. There are, however, some complexities. It would require a change in the law and an Act of Parliament, so I signal to Members present that an important job of work will be undertaken by Parliament in due course. It would be a shame if the manner in which Parliament was caught up in this led to some obstruction of the main objective of getting women consecrated as bishops. With the expertise and wisdom of the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Parliament can hopefully navigate its way through that aspect of the minefield and achieve what we want.

Other challenges for ordained women come in the language used when talking about ordained women. We cannot necessarily pass a law for this one, but it is indicative of the cultural challenges that persist. One senior female vicar that I know commented that we need to avoid talking of “fast forwarding women”, because the reality is that, had some of those women been men, they would have been in senior roles long ago. The Church of England needs to embrace the gifts that men and women bring. Perhaps there will come a time, as the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) suggested, when, in management terms, the space can be made for women who really deserve the opportunity to rise to the most senior ranks within the Church. There is always a tendency for gender to be blamed for unpopular decisions, and women will continue to face the challenge of being made a scapegoat for all the problems in the Church, but the problem is not unique to the ministry. Women experience it many parts of our society, including politics.

In conclusion, we can celebrate the positive contribution made by ordained women to the Church over the past 20 years. This anniversary year will also be marked with a national celebration at St Paul’s cathedral in May, and I hope that as many of us as possible will be able to assist on that occasion in a spiritual context. This is the first national celebration of ordained women—a first for the Church—and we need to celebrate the women priests who have made such a difference over the past 20 years, and look forward to the changes that are to come with the ordination of women bishops.

I want to finish by reading an extremely well-expressed reflection from a women priest:

“It has been transforming for the church and has started a process of holy orders being fully complete with both women and men, a process which will itself be fully complete when women as well as men are included in the episcopate. For both women and men are created in the image of God. In my experience it is only people inside the church who ever question this process at all. For those whom we minister among, it is normal and expected for women and men to be vicars as well as bishops, and our ministry is accepted and valued without question.”

I could not have put it better myself and it comes better from someone who is in the role, serving the people whom they have been ordained to serve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

As I have said already, I cannot stay until the end of the debate, and I am trespassing on the goodness of the Chamber in speaking now, so I will not speak for long.

When George Bernard Shaw talked about a “realised impossibility”, he was talking about a person: the man who in 1906 was turned down for ordination by the Bishop of Oxford. What was that man doing when he died in 1944? He was the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had found Archbishop Davidson, who trusted that his beliefs about a couple of parts of our creed would come into orthodoxy. The key point is that if someone can become Archbishop of Canterbury after being turned down for ordination, and can become a bishop at the age of 41, we can have no particular problem in filling any vacancies for bishops or archbishops.

Given the time that women have had to wait, were one to be nominated and introduced as Archbishop of York in succession to John Sentamu, whom we all admire and to whom we wish good health and happiness, that would not be looked on as an aberration. It would not be looked on as compensation, but as proper recognition that among the women who have been ordained in the Church of England there are those who can fulfil that role.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) about the breath of fresh air that has come with Pope Francis. Any of us who have known the Roman Catholic Church in central and south America over the years since the conservative priest Oscar Romero was made Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, also know that he certainly believed in standing up for the oppressed and the poor, although perhaps not in the theology of liberation. He said that unarmed people should not be shot by those who have power. I was out with some of his nuns and catechists, and they would have had no difficulty with the ordination of women. In fact, when Parliament eventually passed the Church of England Measure for the ordination of women, some of the most enthusiastic celebrators outside Church house were Roman Catholic nuns in this country. They said, “It is not a matter of whether we do the same; it is a matter of when.”

The issue of women bishops was described well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) in her introduction to the debate. I, too, pay tribute to the members of Women and the Church, and to people in the diocesan synods and the General Synod. Although the vote on the pretty compromised suggestion that we are replacing failed, we must remember that the proposal was passed by each House with a significant majority, and only failed in one House by not getting quite a big enough majority. We should not condemn the Synod, because what has followed is an example of something that makes a situation better, rather than worse. The delay is bad, but what the archbishops and facilitators have brought together, and its acceptance by the bishops—not all of whom voted for it, but they have all accepted that this will happen—is a tribute to the Church. When we first discussed this in the Chamber of the House of Commons, I think that I remember saying that we are a bishop-led Church, and we ought to trust the bishops. If we take away the barrier to women, we may then trust the bishops, whether male or female, individually or collectively, to make matters reasonable for the remaining objectors.

Every parish that thinks it is against recognising the ordination of women ought to re-examine whether they want to continue in that way. In my constituency, one parish had a sign outside the church saying, “Be assured that you will not be receiving communion from a woman in this church.” A decade later, that church was up for closure. One of the women who was campaigning to save it asked, “Why have we been picked out?” I said, “I don’t know; ask the bishops, but it is probably because you aren’t very active. By the way, the first time I came to your church, it had this sign.” She said, “I never knew that”, and I suggested that she ought to have a talk with the parish council to see whether that was still valid.

A lot of people simply go along with tradition. Today, I was walking past the Salvation Army headquarters on Queen Victoria street and, of the two churches I passed, one is open to all and the other has a sign stating that it only holds services from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps no one realised how controversial that book was when first introduced, but the notice struck me as rather dismissive of all the people who have worked on liturgical commissions over the past 20 years, led by David Stancliffe and Stephen Platten, both of whom have managed to bring to our services glory, and words that are in addition to, not substituting for, those in the Book of Common Prayer.

I look on having women as priests, bishops and archbishops as normal and natural. People might think that I would say that, because I am a member of the Denis Thatcher society of those of us who are married to women more important than we are. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden was among the first 10 women in the Conservative party in the House of Commons to be a Cabinet Minister. I look forward to the day, if I live long enough, when we can say that we have at least 10 women on the Bench of Bishops in the House of Lords, and I shall stand at the Bar and bow my head.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) for initiating the debate and providing the House with an opportunity to celebrate the contribution over the past 20 years of ordained women clergy to the Church of England. I also thank her for providing me with an opportunity to advise the House on where the Church of England now stands in respect of women bishops, which I shall do later. We are all grateful for the presence and support during the debate of the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant).

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

If you will allow me, Mrs Brooke, I wish to apologise to the House and to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald. I meant to rise to catch your eye after she had, and I apologise for jumping up when I did. If she had spoken, three men and three women would have spoken in the debate, which would have been the perfect balance.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That is a timely intervention. For anyone reading the debate in Hansard, I should explain that, although I am effectively responding to the debate, I am not a member of the Government. I am by statute appointed by the Crown as Second Church Estates Commissioner, so I am accountable neither to the Government nor to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, as the Bishop of London pointed out to me shortly after I was appointed, I am, like the Dean of Westminster, accountable only to God and the Queen—that is how he put it. This is not a ministerial response, then, but one I make in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden was absolutely right to say that the ordination of women has unleashed an appetite in other women to come forward for ordination. She was also right to set out some of the many qualitative contributions that women have made to ordained ministry and, indeed, the pivotal role of many women clergy. We were also fortunate this afternoon to have heard some excellent and helpful speeches from the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), all of whom are members of the Ecclesiastical Committee, the Committee of both Houses that considers Church of England Measures when they come to Parliament—as indeed is my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden.

The right hon. Member for Exeter was absolutely right in making clear the urgency and effectiveness with which the Archbishop of Canterbury grasped the issue of making progress towards sorting out the General Synod on the issue of women bishops after its very unhappy vote. The Archbishop clearly recognised that there was a need to get a grip on that issue and get a grip he did.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is going back to Exeter this weekend, and I hope he takes back the good news from yesterday’s Budget that, between all of us, we were able to secure from the Chancellor £20 million towards repair of cathedrals. If I may say so, that indicates that the Church of England is taken seriously by Government. There is a recognition that it is sometimes difficult to raise money to repair the electrics, or the roof or guttering. That fund is meant to be put towards such problems and will be welcome news, I hope, to cathedral cities such as Exeter.