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In Place of an Editorial

An e-mail conversation between guest editors, Judy Hirst and Margaret Masson

 

Dear Judy,

I have just sent the last article to Andrew Goddard. We're nearly done editing this Anvil together! I have really enjoyed working on this issue with you, celebrating and critiquing ten years of women in the ordained Anglican ministry. Other than the initial apparent impossibility of getting a man to write for us (thank goodness for Steve Croft's excellent article on the ministry of women in Romans 16), I have been really pleased to find a number of women from a range of perspectives with very interesting things to say who were happy to contribute. As a lay woman, I have learned a lot too - both from the articles and from our conversations. Overall, although some of these articles ask uncomfortable questions, I am left with a sense of hope, not least to hear some very thoughtful, able women so committed to furthering God's work through this perplexing institution that is the Anglican Church. What about you?

Love,

Margaret

 

Dear Margaret,

It has certainly challenged me personally forcing me to reflect on this initial ten years and I have not found this reflection to be very comfortable at times. How whole-heartedly have women priests been welcomed, I wonder? In the wider world I think there has been an enthusiastic welcome, from the woman at the checkout in Tesco to the taxi driver, the postman, and the GP. All seem to feel that something essentially right has been done, something that is life-giving and creative and important both for the world and the church. The welcome within those churches in which we have been able to work has, as far as I am aware, been very positive too. This is particularly celebrated in Emma Percy's article as she explores people's reactions to her ministry and that of women priests generally. She writes "Week by week at Holy Trinity, we are fortunate to hear the liturgy - embodied sometimes in a male voice, sometimes in a female voice. We are given God's blessing in the voice of a woman or a man, and receive the bread and wine from the hands of either." Her title sums up her feelings: "Women Priests-Towards a More Fully Human Church." However, despite this acceptance of the ordained ministry of women in many local churches, the welcome from the wider institution of the church has been half-hearted and ambivalent to say the least.

I remember being very frustrated before women could be ordained that although we had some important things to say about life and faith; they were not being listened to. We wanted to speak for ourselves and we were determined to do so but I am now left wondering if the priesting of women has really helped to give women a voice? This is a question raised by several of the contributors but particularly starkly by the sociologist, Ivy George. She argues that if the women's voice is an uncritical voice accommodated to the church, then it hardly seems worthy of the utterance! This was an uncomfortable thought for me and I was further challenged and unnerved by her observation that "Women entering the church should do so less with confidence and more with caution, recognising the complexity of human corruption (including their own) and the church's ancient proclivity to draw near to the powers and principalities of this world." The task is, as Ivy rightly observes, "that of redeeming the church from itself."

Of course the inclusion of women with men in an organisation does not in any way necessarily ensure that their participation will be welcomed or encouraged, rather perhaps that it will be tolerated.just! It does not necessarily imply willingness on the part of the men within the organisation to receive the contribution of their women colleagues and co-operate with them. Real inclusion, of course, implies participation and real participation inevitably leads to transformation and therein lies the problem. For the church to really listen to the women priests in its midst is to risk hearing things which will require a willingness to change. I think that at the heart of some men, perhaps especially those in leadership in the church who have for so long not had to work with women as equals, is a deep unwillingness to learn from the experience of women. For in many ways it is alien. So although the majority are happy to have women priests it has too often seemed to me to be on their own terms. The question then is, if they listened what would they hear?

Love,

Judy

 

Dear Judy,

What your observations and this edition of Anvil make clear is that there is still a real question about how welcome women truly are in the church - at least as leaders and ministers. As a marginal lay woman, I have been protected from realising much of this. But a number of our writers refer to this: Anne Dyer's article on being an evangelical woman is very gracious but also challenging to the evangelical wing particularly; it gave me some insight into the struggles that so many women priests have to embody. It must get very tiring. I found the interview with the three young women about to be ordained quite inspiring from this perspective. Again, one senses the gradual dawning on them that what seems like a done and dusted decision on the part of the church - to ordain women - is actually far more ambivalent and complicated when fleshed out in the context of lived reality. I am hugely encouraged that, despite this lack of hospitality for women's ministry in a number of ways, we still have such able and committed and feisty women responding to God's call.

It has been very important for my own sense of affirmation as a woman in the church to have visible women leaders - lay and ordained. I still remember the shock of attending my first enthronement of a bishop and the almost physical sense of exclusion I felt at seeing only men - fellow bishops - in the scrum to offer a blessing. It seemed like such a visible sign, something against which one could not argue, that this was, at bottom, a male institution. With this image in mind, Ann Loades' article makes a great deal of sense to me and asks some searching questions of the Anglican Church as it treads so cautiously around this next big decision about whether or not women should be candidates for episcopal office. What do you make of the ambivalence of this welcome for women, Judy? You talk of the need for a greater willingness to listen to women's experience and yet the fear of this. Why this reluctance? Why this fear? And what might the church learn if we were able together to truly make space for each other?

Love,

Margaret

 

Dear Margaret,

I think strangely enough that so much of this issue is really about men not women. Women have been forced by their exclusion from the ordained ministry to formulate what is significant about being women and to learn to articulate it. One of the costs of patriarchy is that taking male experience as normative tends to make men invisible to themselves. We are now in a situation in the church where it is vital that men start to really look at their role in relation to women, of course, and to one another, the rest of society and in the church. At Cranmer Hall every year, amongst otherwise good and harmonious relationships between the men and women who train here in equal numbers, there is a major disagreement. It always centres around the women finding their voice and the threatened and defensive response this seems to provoke in some of the men. The women here regularly meet with each other to explore who they are and their developing role in both church and society. The men don't see meeting to develop their own voice as a priority. This may seem a bizarre truth in a church which at one level is crammed full of men's voices: all the myriad volumes of theology and biblical exegesis, the sermons, the teaching, the strategies for this, that and the other.

Sometimes I feel that it is simply a cover up for men's unwillingness to communicate deeply, honestly and emotionally - in other words, an inability to make authentic expression, to take the risk of vulnerability, and to face up to the fear of failure. Men need to be able to meet and rejoice in the growing energy and self confidence which is flowering in women. I think male failure to engage at a deep level with these issues is going to become an even more pressing problem as the proportion of women in the ordained ministry increases. A truthful religion needs to concern itself with a new relationship between women and men. To find new and better ways of co- existing which are more honouring to the God we profess to serve.

The reality is, of course, that all this is struggling to flourish in stony ground. A church which behaves as if there are two "integrities" about whether we have women priests and which by so doing consistently puts unity way above truth, which continues to exclude women from its leadership, and to publish reports by bishops, exclusively male, even about human sexuality is not an institution which is exhibiting a great hold on the reality of the situation it faces. This is damaging to both women and men and certainly to their ability to work creatively together.

Love,

Judy

 

Dear Judy,

So, ten years on, do you, despite all these concerns and continuing challenges, still feel hopeful?

M

 

Dear Margaret,

So, am I still hopeful? Well, I am certainly a realist and much more so now than on that wonderful day in November 1992 when we waited so patiently on Church House steps for the result of the vote. I see much more clearly now that the gospel is aspirational and is always set within and against the reality and control of the prevailing culture and that the prevailing culture in the form of the institutional structures of the Church of England is slow to transform. Although I am fortunate enough to have had my personal ministry affirmed in many ways, and not least by the bishops with whom I have worked, there is nevertheless an insidious feeling of being undermined by the very institution which so overwhelmingly voted for women to be priests. For me the structural discrimination of both the Measure and the Act are what continue to hurt, to undermine and to humiliate. I struggle with the notion of unity at any price and believe that it is 'the truth which will set us free'. Having said that, there are thankfully many signs of hope not least that the ordination of women to the priesthood has been overwhelmingly affirmed and accepted by the church generally and the world at large. This has created, at best, a sympathetic climate for more change in a church which is struggling with a plethora of huge issues.

The responsibility for that change lies with us all. My hope is that the many gifts and insights in women priests will be unlocked and welcomed. Goodness knows, the church desperately needs the skills and insights they bring to ministry: their empowering approach, their commitment to working collaboratively; their experience in the emotional life; their profound understanding of the mutuality of friendship; the deep spiritual insights which are gained from the self denying lives which many are asked to live as mother, wife or carer. My main hope, however, is much bigger than any of this. I still yearn, against the odds maybe, for a redeeming of the relationship between men and women at the deepest levels. Hoping that men and women together can explore all that has been repressed and ignored in each so that a more whole humanity can emerge to honour the image of God that has been placed at its heart. This will be good news indeed both for the church, whose structures will be more able to reflect the values of justice, peace and reconciliation for which it stands and for those outside the church who may be more able to respond to the love of God reflected in a church which is at least facing the challenge of living out what it preaches.

Love,

Judy

 

The Revd Judy Hirst is Director of Ministerial Formation at Cranmer Hall, Durham where she also lectures in pastoral ministry. She was previously the Bishop's Advisor in Pastoral Care and Counselling for Durham diocese and Associate Vicar of St. Oswalds.

 

Dr Margaret Masson was formerly Senior Tutor of St John's College, Durham and teaches part time in the University's Department of English.