- Reverend Dr. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is Chaplain and Solway Fellow of University College, Durham. The opinions expressed are her own. -

A controversial decision by a committee drawing up legislation to allow women bishops has been met with criticism from women who are seeking equal representation at the highest levels in the Church of England.

Women have been ordained as priests in the Church of England since 1994, but cannot currently become bishops.

Since 2006, the Church of England has been preparing draft legislation to remove the legal obstacles to women bishops. In 2008, the General Synod voted to reject a range of options which set up separate structures within the church for those who could not accept women’s ordination, and instead asked the  Revision Committee to draw up simple legislation without discrimination, alongside a separate code of practice to “protect” those who objected to women’s ministry.

But last Thursday, the Revision Committee issued a statement saying that they had decided to reject this route. Instead, they propose to prepare legislation which would  enforce the transfer of powers from the diocesan bishop to a special anti-woman bishop, if the diocesan bishop were either a woman, or a man who agreed with the ordination of women.

I am deeply concerned about this decision. In the first place, the remit of the revision committee based on the synod debates last year was to prepare simple legislation with a code of practice, and I fail to see any justification for the revision committee taking it upon themselves to reject the will of synod in this way. I, along with many of my colleagues on Synod, feel betrayed by this disregard for the hard work and serious thought which was put in by us all in that debate.

Apart from the issue of process, there are very serious concerns about the substance of the proposed way forward. To set up legislation in which powers are transferred to bishops selected purely on the basis of their views on the ordination of women is invidious and unsustainable.

Were such legislation to be prepared, the Church of England would then be in the position of asking Parliament to pass primary legislation which was inherently discriminatory, which would be to put both them and us in an invidious position. And for members of Synod, the vast majority of members of the Church of England generally, and especially for ordained women, such legislation would be an affront, since it returns to the idea of having male and female bishops who are not bishops on equal terms.

At the base of the desire for such discrimination is the discredited and discreditable idea that women are inherently less in the image of God than men, and the Church of England must stand firm against any such suggestion.

The fact that some members of our church believe wholeheartedly that women cannot be ordained does not make them right in that belief. And it does not mean that as a church we should undermine the very thing we are legislating for by framing the legislation in such a way as to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new women bishops and to make the remit of their ministry less comprehensive than that of their male colleagues.

I have heard it said in recent days that this proposal for the new legislation is not discriminatory because men who agreed with women’s ordination would also be affected by the transfer of powers. This is such a disingenuous argument that I am astounded it can be made with a straight face.

It is of course discriminatory on grounds of gender to discriminate between individuals either on their own gender or on their views about gender. Furthermore, the precedent of allowing individuals or churches to pick and choose their bishop based on their theological opinions is an extremely dangerous one.

It goes against the fundamental principle, expressed in the 39 Articles, that the worthiness of the minister does not affect the validity of their ministry, and it opens the door wide to a complete fragmentation of the church, at a time when unity and division are real and urgent questions not just for us in the Church of England but for the whole Anglican communion.

In this context, this proposal is to make the question of gender the key defining question for the Church of England. Theological opinion on the gender of ordained ministers would be enshrined in our legislation as the one opinion the holding of which is legally sufficient to render a bishop unacceptable to certain parishes, and for which an alternative bishop would be officially provided. Is this really the intention of the revision committee?

- Reverend Dr. Miranda Threlfall-Holmes is Chaplain and Solway Fellow of University College, Durham. As a historian, she has published work on late medieval monastic history and the medieval economic history of the North East of England, notably “Monks and Markets” (Oxford University Press, 2005). Her current research interests are the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, and women’s issues in the contemporary church. She is a member of the General Synod of the Church of England, and a committee member for the group Women and the Church.

International Women’s Day on March 8, is an important opportunity for us to reflect on the fact that women are still taken less seriously than men all around the world. Even in supposedly equal cultures such as my own in the UK women continue, for example, to be paid less than men for the same work, and to suffer pregnancy-related discrimination in employment. Women are disproportionately under-represented in government and on the boards of large corporations. Women’s sport is generally less well funded and less popular than men’s, whilst women’s contribution to art and literature has a tendency to be marginalised - as “chick lit,” for example.

Of course, viewing women as of lesser value than men has a long history. We cannot expect such deeply held cultural stereotypes to be overturned instantly. But it does worry me that some people in our culture seem to believe that we have eradicated sexism from our society, and that further progress is therefore at best unnecessary, at worst signs of a suspicious “feminist agenda” aiming not for equality, but for superiority for women.

Just because we (thankfully) have laws in place for gender equality and against discrimination, does not mean that the fight for equality is over. Underlying attitudes and assumptions about men and women are much harder to change. The sexism that we are barely aware of, or accept as being “just the way things are”, is an extremely powerful disincentive to change.

It is a sad fact that for many people, the male is still seen as the norm for humanity, and the female as deviant from the norm. Even where this is not intended as a value judgement, it remains an insidious underlying assumption of a great deal of day to day activity and discourse. For example, medical trials are often based on men alone except for specific “female complaints.”

In the church, the debate over women’s ordination provides a good example of how the male is still seen as normative. In Christian theology, it is axiomatic that God is neither male nor female. Yet persistently over history God has been normalised as male, and men have therefore been seen as closer to God than women.

In arguments against women’s ordination as priests or bishops in the Church of England today, claims are still made that only men can represent Christ. Yet Christ in Christian theology is the ultimate representative human being, not the ultimate representative man.

Otherwise women would be excluded from the message of salvation, which is both absurd and offensive. Claims are also made that the weight of historical tradition means that women should not be ordained - an argument for never changing anything. Or that nothing should change until the worldwide Catholic and Orthodox churches all change together. But an international day like this shows us that the world never changes together or at once. Different cultures have very different starting points, and different issues of pressing concern.

But in all our cultures around the world, even the most apparently “developed,” things have not changed enough for women. For the benefit of women, men, girls and boys, we still need to strive towards full gender equality of opportunity, so that each individual may be free to reach their full potential and make their full contribution to society. What a waste - in Christian terms, what a sin - to settle for anything less.