Specks and Planks: Gay People as the Scapegoats of our Generation

I've been a very busy bee over the last little while, however I wanted to draw you attention to this video from Diverse Church.

As I mentioned with regards my departure from Fulcrum, I'm an advocate of finding, making, being in a space where there is room for conversation, especially on the issue of sexuality.  Sadly we haven't been very good at making those spaces (understatement of the year). But the new kid on the block, Diverse Church, has managed to do something that other groups haven't. In short they've stated in all that they are and do that it's just not about YOU.

For Diverse Church they are entirely there for those young gay Christians who have found the courage to be who they are: lovers of Jesus and gay, finding these things not incompatible. But they don't have to *prove* that to you, or me, or any other person. They are about being disciples of Christ and encouraging others to do the same: encouraging others that it is possible. That God knows being gay is part of their story with God.

It's refreshing to watch the videos that Diverse Church have uploaded so far, you can see some of them here.

This new video comes with the tagline 'a simple man changed by an almighty God' and it is a creative joy, but also a lesson in planks and specks. So often gay people have to absorb the anxiety and self hatred that others bear towards themselves. They are the scapegoats of our generation. This new video places the source of the anxiety right back where it belongs.

It is an example of a new way of being part of the landscape in the conversation on sexuality and Christianity.  The rest of the conversation has been positional for so long.  Arguing for this or that position.  There is a place for that.  But for a good number of people, this is simply not the point.  It's about a Person, not a Position.

The sheer awful-ness of what the church has done to so many gay people has overwhelmed what is feeling like a rather ridiculous argument over genitalia.  It feels like we are having a completely different conversation.  There are numbers of paradigms in play and thus entirely congruent for some to gasp 'what planet are you on?' when faced with a convoluted doctrinal argument which zooms past the puddle of a person in front of them.

What DC reminds us by simply telling the faith story of a real live person, is that if you have a problem with gay Christians, it is your problem, not theirs.

I think I probably have to say that again.  If you have a problem with gay Christians.  It is YOUR problem.

Deal with your own thing.

Focus on your own story, stop trying to write another's.

Attend to your plank.

Well done DC, you've nailed it.

It's Not Me, It's You

Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ²They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ ⁴Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. ⁵He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

 I recently found myself engaging with the above text in relation to my experience of Evangelicalism as a tribe, with tribal influence.  When it comes to assumptions made about the experiences, hopes, insights, dreams and beliefs of those of us who self-define as evangelical, I have found this to be a significant problem.

There are particular markers that are assumed non-negotiables of the tribe. That which is considered the culture, ‘the way we do things here’, or ‘what we think’.  The challenging of these markers is deemed to be beyond the pale and creates high risk of ensuring our ejection from this tribe.

Well, I never really got on with the idea that I would sacrifice thinking, questioning, challenging, truth-telling and wrestling with God, in order to be part of a club.

Actually, that’s a teensy weensy lie.

I’m a conformist at heart. Honest.

I was a good girl at school (except when I petitioned the headteacher because they stopped someone taking their exams and I thought it was just to do with league tables), I was excellent when I was a police cadet (although I had to report a police officer for misconduct), I was great at church (until, they started preaching that God hated some)

The thing is – I want to conform.  I really do, it honestly causes me a stupid amount of stress sometimes to do what a number of people seem to assume comes naturally to me. Stick my head above the parapet.  Point out that the emperor doesn’t seem to be wearing any clothes. Rock the boat.

But all through my life, that is what I have seemed incapable of not doing.

Why…why…I ask myself, am I HERE….again.

Why cannot someone else be sticking their head in this particular guillotine shaped hole?

I will be perfectly content to cheerlead from the sidelines.  I love pompoms.

And in actual fact, I like the club!  I don’t want to leave it.  It’s my home and it’s where I have been formed and being chucked out is not to be worn with a shrug of the shoulders and an ‘ah well, I’ll find a new place – here this bus shelter will do…..’

But I don’t half get frustrated with my evangelical siblings.  The strict control of what makes for acceptable discussion, surely makes for a kind of pseudo-community.  Where people tentatively, flicking their eyes at one another, suggest possible questions, but are quickly given the sign that some things are just not up for grabs.  This doesn’t of course mean that those things are not thought about.  It just means that there are a lot of people thinking things on their own in their head and choosing belonging instead.  I cannot think that this is a healthy state of affairs.  But it is understandable – belonging is a serious part of human functioning.  It is not just a nice fluffy feeling that we get with our friends.  It is how our identity is made up – because it is a measure of which relationships form us.  Belonging is high on the agenda of human need and flourishing.

So I do find myself torn sometimes.  I have a strong ‘cause’ streak that runs through me.  I am incapable it seems of choosing to avoid the conflict, if it seems to be that an issue of justice is at stake.  Or simply that ‘It’s Not Fair.’  I believe this is shown up by various ‘Personality’ type tools that I have done. But I could have told you it without them.  I could never cheat at board games as a child.

However, it does often cause me angst to stand where I stand.  And deep frustration.  How can we ever hope to have genuine relationship and understanding of what we think, when it’s at the risk of being sent out to the wilderness?

But the temptation of belonging does pull on me, and sometimes I find myself silent.

And this is where the Jesus encounter above sits in my heart.

If I am ever tempted by belonging over justice, over compassion, over love, then this is the text that jumps into my brain.

‘he was grieved at their hardness of heart’

Sometimes I find myself fearful of not having any tribal home in the CofE – I’m an evangelical, but often that seems under threat.  But I can tell you that the fear of having Jesus look at me and be grieved at my hard heart is whole magnitudes larger than that.

I am more than unwilling to ever stand before Jesus and have him look at me and be angry that I chose to harden my heart rather than risk being wrong for the sake of love.  When I say ‘more than unwilling’, I mean, I would rather risk everything and have a fleshy vulnerable mistaken heart.

A Metaphorical Cup of Tea: Interview with Maggi Dawn

Some of you will know that I was very privileged to become friends with Maggi whilst I trained for ordination in Cambridge.  She was, in fact, someone who had endless energy and insight for me, even when she was making big life decisions for herself.  A true priest...and friend.

Maggi and I left Cambridge at the same time (coincidental I assure you), me for the exotic climes of Harrow and she for the slightly sunnier shores of Yale University, where she is Professor and Priest.  So when someone at the WATCH committee asked if anyone would contact Maggi to interview her about her new book, Like the Wideness of the Sea, I jumped at the chance to get in touch.

An edited version of the interview is found in OUTLOOK, the annual magazine of WATCH, which will be published this week.  However, the full interview was so good that I asked if I could publish it in full on my blog here.

So, I publish it in full below, and I ask you to take a look at the work of WATCH, which works for the full equality of women and men in the church, and perhaps join us in this Kingdom work.

__________________________________________

1.      You recently published ‘Like the Wideness of the Sea’, a book on the Church of England’s wrangling over the place of women as Bishops: why write this now?

Quite simply - I was asked to! The Editorial Director of Darton, Longman & Todd, whom I’ve known for many years, called me the day after the November 2012 Synod saying that the feeling of shock and despair was palpable in England, not only in the Church but in the public sphere, and he wanted to publish a response within two months. The reason he asked me was that I knew the situation from inside, but now have some distance from it, so he was interested to know how it looked to me a year after I moved to the States. My intent in writing was to try to avoid simply rehearsing the same arguments again, and to look sideways at the problem, in the hopes of offering a fresh perspective, and some ideas to find a way out of the deadlock.

2.      The discussion on women in leadership is centuries old, are we fighting a losing battle?

The discussion is old, but the context is always new – from one century to the next, nothing stands still.  And in order to see the gospel lived out in every generation we have to allow ourselves to see the difference between the gospel itself and the cultural accretions that are added to it over time, so that we can rediscover God’s freedom and salvation in every generation. That’s not to say we change the truth to suit ourselves, but we have to be discerning enough to understand that the gospel has been interpreted with significant social differences at different times and places. Most Christians, for instance, no longer regard it acceptable that the scriptures were used to justify polygamy, or the crusades, or slavery. It is not only legitimate, but incumbent upon us to ask whether the long history of the Church in denying women an equal place has actually been a misinterpretation, rather than faithfulness to scripture and tradition.

This particular discussion is certainly causing conflict within the church (and not only in the Church of England), but despite that I’m reluctant to use “battle” imagery to describe it – because those who are entrenched in their views that women may not be priests or bishops are, nevertheless, our brothers and sisters in Christ. I would rather use language of hope and reconciliation.

Recently Alan Boesak visited Yale Divinity School, and talked about his involvement in combatting racism in South Africa. He preached a brilliant sermon, based on Genesis 25:8-9: “Abraham died… an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah.” Boesak pointed out that Ishmael was expelled from the family home half a lifetime before this event, and had not been heard of since. For all the inspirational things Abraham had done, this one event was far from a moment of glory, and had wreaked havoc on many lives.  For Ishmael and Isaac to be reunited to bury their father, Isaac first had to have the grace and humility to find and invite his brother, and Ishmael had to summon up enough grace and forgiveness to accept the invitation. If they were ever to recover from that one, dreadful episode in their lives, and find reconciliation, they had to bury their father together. One side cannot resolve a conflict alone, and one side “winning” doesn’t lead to reconciliation. The past has to be buried by both sides being prepared to face their own demons, and to work together towards reconciliation for the sake of a better future.

It’s a story that Alan Boesak retells out of his experience in South Africa’s journey out of apartheid, but as I listened to him I saw resonances for other kinds of human division, including that of the Church of England’s current conflict. If two sides of an argument are entrenched in their views, then resolution can only come if both sides are more intent on finding a way to live together than on insisting on their side “winning”. It’s vital that those on either side of the argument are honest about what will or will not constitute a just peace. But they also have to let go of any intent to “win” against the other.

3.      Would you be a priest in the Church of England if you knew then, what you know now?

In many ways, I think everything would have gone better for me if I had not been ordained in the Church of England. But vocational decisions are never simply a matter of choosing what’s “best for me” – if ministry does not involve a certain degree of self-sacrifice, it isn’t worth much.

The fact is that there are very few places in the world where women are received on an equal footing with men, so to some extent answering a call anywhere is going to present challenges for women. I had already been living out a calling for a long time before the priesthood opened to women at all, and women before me spent entire lifetimes doing the same. Currently I work in an ecumenical context, directing a ministry that encompasses people from more than 25 different denominations, as well as people with no denominational affiliation, and the complexities of disagreement are as much present here as anywhere. So in some ways living within the Church of England’s impasse has equipped me to direct this ministry with courage and creativity. Consequently, even though I felt I had to leave the Church of England for the time being, I remain tied to it by many threads of friendship, and with genuine gratitude for all that I learned through serving as a priest. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those who taught me, and those who trained and worked alongside me – even those who presented challenges to me in the process.

I also hope that in some small way I may have contributed to the Church’s discovery that ordaining women is just as important as ordaining men.

4.      Do you think our training processes for priesthood are ‘women-friendly’?

To some extent, but not enough. Although I think the wider point is that training processes need re-imagining for all kinds of people. Residential training is still largely based on the model created for training post-graduate single men before they got married – in essence, a monastic pattern that assumes the participants have no responsibilities outside the walls of the college. I dare say that worked well for 22-year old single men in the 19^th century, but present day Ordinands are at all stages of life, single, married, with children or ageing parents to care for, and a one-size-fits-all pattern of training puts excessive stress on all kinds of people.

The modular system at Yale Divinity School is quite effective. Some students live on site and some a hundred miles away, and single or married, with or without family, they are integrated into college life and able to co-ordinate a full working week with their personal lives. Each student can choose five working days with different start-times to suit their family needs or commuting pattern. Some opt to work three or four extended days on site instead of five. Every day classes stop for an hour mid-morning for the main Chapel service so no-one has to miss Chapel. It isn’t perfect, of course, but it does allow people to establish a full and thorough training pattern that is compatible with their personal circumstances.

5.      What advice would you give young women in particular who wonder if they should be part of the Church of England?

I tend not to “give advice” on issues like that; I listen to what an individual is thinking and feeling, encourage them to keep their eyes wide open to the whole picture, and wherever possible not make big decisions in a hurry, or in a state of distress. If people are considering changing Church allegiance it’s important to remember there is no perfect church; it might be right to stay, it might be better to leave. But while we can stand beside people while they make those decisions in the end the decision has to be made by the person themselves, not merely on the advice of someone else.

6.      Would you do anything differently in your own journey?

There are plenty of things I think I could have done better! But I always remember these words of wisdom - from a philosopher, and a singer: Kierkegaard once wrote that you can only live life forwards, and Piaf sang, Je ne regrette rien! None of us has the benefit of foresight, and we would probably all do some things differently if we knew back then what we know now. But it never ceases to amaze me that as we make peace with our own lives, the future opens up in new and surprising ways. I guess that’s in part what grace is all about.

7.      What is your first love?

I can’t help but think of that Sunday School joke where a class is asked a question, “What’s small and grey, has a long furry tail, and eats nuts?” – to which a child answers, “I know the answer ought to be Jesus, but it sounds like a squirrel to me.”

The answer to this question has to be God, right? But if you mean on a personal, inspirational level, then leaving aside God and my family and friends, who are always the foundation of everything for me, the answer is music. I could sing before I could walk, and began playing when I was five. Music feels like my natural language.

8.      Who has been your biggest inspiration?

Musically, I go back and back to Daniel Lanois, Richard Thompson, Paul Simon, Neil Finn, Joni Mitchell – all really groundbreaking writers. For in-depth reading, Coleridge and others who write about him remain my big inspiration, and I’m returning to write about him later this year. Most of all, though, it’s personal relationship that inspires me – those people who have walked with me for many years through life and work and music, and still have the capacity to generate hope, laughter and new ideas.

9.      What has been your deepest joy in ministry?

I think daily joy comes from building great relationship with the people I work with, and I have been outstandingly lucky in encountering many, many people who have filled my working life with friendship and laughter. But that “deep” thing? Whether it’s while I’ve been sitting with someone on their deathbed, or creating liturgy, or playing music, or academic teaching, the joyful moment always comes when I see some connection happen that is beyond me: some sense of peace, a light going on in someone’s eyes, or the moment when something “clicks”. It seems to me that we can create context for others, and faithfully walk beside them, but when the true moment of inspiration comes it’s not something we can make happen – it’s the work of God. Sometimes, of course, we work for years with people and never see things come together for them, but now and then there we’re lucky enough to witness those brilliant moments.

10.  Have you enjoyed moving across the Pond?  Do you miss the CofE?  England?

I am genuinely glad I made this move, although it hasn’t been easy at all. Before I left England someone said to me, “it will take two whole years to feel at home, so be prepared to do a lot of hanging in there”. Sure enough, moving abroad was exhausting, lonely and expensive, but we are nearly two years in now and my son and I are both beginning to flourish in our new context. We have really loved cultivating a sense of adventure about this enormous country, being able to climb hills and walk within a few feet of wild deer or birds we’ve never seen before. There’s a lot to love about America!

The hardest thing about the move has been missing friends and family in the UK. Thank goodness for internet technology which does keep us connected, but a Skype conversation isn’t the same as a leisurely supper. Something I had forgotten from last time I lived abroad is that you miss the easy familiarity of knowing how everything works, and of being established in a community. I miss walking down any street in Cambridge and seeing 10 people I know, and being 45 minutes from London and 4 hours from Paris. It’s hard work starting all over again, but my son and I have determinedly kept our sense of humour, and we are gradually finding a new home here, and some new friends too.

11.  In your book you speak of being amazed by the productivity that comes from not having to question yourself constantly: what does that ‘look’ like?

I couldn’t have imagined how different this would be. It wasn’t until I went to work every day and did NOT find an underlying suspicion about whether I was competent, just because I am a woman. This is not a denominational issue; it comes from working in a University that has done a huge amount of work for 20 years and more to ensure that women are treated on the same footing as men in the professional space.

What it looks like is hard to describe, but I find that in many of the small details of my working day – such as writing an email, preparing a paper for a committee, speaking up in a Deans’ meeting, or giving directions to my team – I work faster on these background tasks because I don’t have to second-guess underlying sexist responses or misunderstandings. And I can delegate easily; people don’t assume I should be doing certain tasks just because I’m a woman. Consequently I have more energy and time for the work I am here to do – academic teaching, writing, creating liturgy, and working on the formation of student ministers in the liturgical sphere. At the end of a normal working day I am not drained and exhausted, and still have the energy to write or play music or paint. 

12.  Is the CofE going to run itself aground?  Is the deadlock fatal or is there really hope?

One of the difficulties the CofE faces with an issue like this is that institutional processes take months and years, so promises seem to be being shelved or broken, and meantime people are losing faith in the Church. I’ve worked in large and small institutions before, and I understand that processes run far slower when the bureaucracy is large and complex. All the same, there is a case, when an institution’s processes are threatening to strangle it, to find a way to cut through the red tape. Maybe this is one of those times. Institutions may be complicated but they are not powerless.

I do feel concerned when people say that we should just wrap up this issue and get on with “what the gospel is really about”. In fact, I think this is mistaken thinking. At the heart of this issue there is at least some degree of institutional sexism, which, along with all the other –isms and –phobias, is a matter of justice and freedom for real people. That is – in part, at least – what the gospel is about. The church’s institutional sexism urgently needs to be addressed, and it’s worth every ounce of effort to do so.

13.  How do you keep going in ministry when it’s tough?

First, I stop and breathe. Thomas Merton once said that working without stopping is a form of violence, and working without stopping is the biggest temptation for many clergy. One of my favourite gospel moments is Matthew 13:1 – mostly in the gospels we read that Jesus went of by himself “to pray” – but here he simply “went out and sat by the sea.” Sometimes even before you can pray coherently, I think you need to stop, and breathe, and listen (and, as I said in the book, by the sea is my favourite place to do that!).

Secondly, I fill parts of my life with things I love that are not directly part of ministry. One of the reasons ministers run dry is when we “run on empty” – and it’s so easy to fall into a pattern where we work all the time. The truth, though, is that we are stronger, more creative, and less likely to be overwhelmed by difficulties if to we are rested, inspired, and regularly filled with whatever makes us tick. For me, that is a long walk with my son, playing music, reading literature, or viewing art or theatre.

14.  Does our understanding of priesthood need to change?

I’m not sure it needs to change exactly, but it does need to be clarified, because without a clear sense of why the Church ordains anyone, it’s easy for false ideas to grow up around the priesthood.

When I was in my early 20s I joined a group of people in my parish who used to go and read to Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, whose eyesight was beginning to fail. He always argued that the simplest interpretation of the ordinal was the best one: that we are ordained to word and sacrament, nothing more, nothing less. We certainly are not ordained to be managers or CEOs or community leaders (even if we additionally bring some of those gifts to the church).  In particular he used this as an argument against lay presidency at the Eucharist, maintaining that the only legitimate reason to ordain anyone is so that they preside over the sacraments. We don’t need to ordain people in order to make them leaders or managers, nor even preachers and pastors – anything that lay people can legitimately do is not a reason to ordain, Newbigin argued, or it implies that ordination makes them more important than lay people who can carry out the same tasks. A proper understanding of ordination maintains respect for the sacraments rather than the priests, and places priesthood in its proper relationship to the “priesthood of all believers”, in the sense that the work of the gospel is undertaken by the whole church, not just the clergy.

15.  What is your message to our (male) bishops?

The book is the message, really. I pray for our Bishops, and keep in touch with a number of them whom I know personally, and I don’t underestimate the complexity of what they have to do. But I want to see them make good on their promise to include women in their HoB meetings, and have the courage to do what they are almost all agreed on – that we must, as soon as possible, resolve this issue.

16.  Will you return to us in the UK?

Yes! I long to come home. (Get the kettle on, Jody!) But for now I have a deep sense of calling in this new setting, and so I think I will be working here for a while yet.

Doing it in Public

I was so excited to write for Threads, which has the Christian New Media Award for Best Christian Blog.

You can read my first contribution commenting on the #viralvicar and Christianity in the public square, here: http://www.threadsuk.com/doing-it-in-public/

Remember the Phoenix

[Note: having received all kinds of responses about this post, negative, positive and everything in between, I need to clarify a couple of things. Firstly, what I have written is a reflection on the *responses* to this event. Those who have pointed out that we don't know what has happened, are correct, we don't.  Secondly, the point of what I write is that our responses happen regardless, which is evident.  I say below that whatever ordained women 'do', they do as women, even if something is not explicitly about gender because that is the primary way we are interpreted.  We are perceived as *women* priests and it is nonsense to pretend otherwise.  Our responses are based on this perception.  Lastly, the 'She' I write about below is the symbolic ordained woman.]


Most of you will have seen the news that Janet Henderson has resigned her post as the Dean of Llandaff Cathedral due to, as a source has said a 'difficult time since her appointment, with some clergy resenting the appointment of a woman.'

What a gut-punch.

I've heard all kinds of responses on Twitter and Facebook.

Most have been sad and outraged.

Some have likened it to Philip North resigning as Bishop of Whitby.  Now, lots of people won't like what I'm about to type.  Personally, I thought Philip North was courageous for withdrawing from this post, and I admit that I felt rather sad about it all - what have we got ourselves into, I thought.  I don't know how the circle will be squared on this one, and in many senses it would be much easier if I could generate hate and spite for the lot of them - but I can't and I won't.

To fall into cliche...some of my good friends are Forward in Faith (Anglo Catholics who don't think we should ordain women).  In fact one man in particular *always* comes into my mind when I begin to think of people leaving the CofE...because of me.  He's kind and gentle and encouraging, he affirms me and yes, my priesthood, and he loves loves loves Jesus (and Mary ;) ).  I honestly don't know how he does it and stays integrated with his own beliefs about women in the priesthood - I'm not sure that he does, I think it's painful.

So, don't ever tell me that I just want 'them' to leave.

But to compare Philip North's story to that of Janet Henderson is simply offensive.  And here's the bit that people won't like...it is one thing to be the object of hate, spite and derision (we can only imagine the experiences that caused a capable, experienced priest to have to leave), and it is quite another to be told, as Philip North was, that the people who are your objects of exclusion, are not considered such by others - and to hold those people as objects of exclusion is not considered acceptable any more.

It is very different for a woman to say 'I can't stay because I'm a woman', and a man to say 'I can't stay because you're a woman'.  The object remains as the woman - she bears her shame and she bears his distaste. She bears it.

Just to be clear, this is what ordained women in the CofE, and clearly in the CinW, have to live with.  It is in their psyche, their DNA as ordained people.  When we are in a deanery chapter, a synod, a diocese, a meeting - these are the dynamics at play, whether they are overt or not.  This is not to bleat on about it - I know that it's uncomfortable and people want to dismiss it or pretend it's not that bad or say they don't feel it's like that for them.  Yes, I know.  I'm in one of the best Areas of London Diocese, London being not considered 'women friendly'.  My Bishop is out and proud about his affirmation of the ordination and consecration of women, I don't experience overt sexism on a daily basis.  I'm very grateful and love my job.  So I know that some of you hate it when I bring up the fact that we can't really escape the effects of choosing to be in an institution that is ambivalent about us.  An institution where we are the objects of our own and others opinions of us.  I know you don't like me to say that there is only so much of that which can remain external.  Because we're meant to be strong and let it wash off us, right?  But this is the pool that we swim in, and we can't help but drink the water.

So, no, it's not the same thing as Philip North.

Some have said 'she should have stuck it out'.

Ah, now, this is tricky isn't it?  Part of my response to this story was entirely selfish, I don't mind admitting.  Every time a woman soars in the church, becomes who she is meant to be, which includes leading in senior positions - where her capability, her priesthood, her experience, her wisdom is honoured and nourished...every time I see that happen, I can breathe again. Phew...it's possible.  If it's possible for them, then it's possible for me.  I spend a lot of my time in various spaces choosing to be more than I can imagine I can be - I suggest you all do the same - but sometimes I hit a wall.  I run out of imagination.  I know that I need to step into God's imagination, God's understanding of what my potential really is, but sometimes I can't.

And then a story like this hits the headlines, or I hear about another woman who can't find a job, or I get rebuffed from speaking at places where my face doesn't fit, or I see conference after conference where the overwhelming majority of speakers are blokes, or I see women defending their territory because it's so small and that's what they've had to do...for years.  God have mercy.

And it's like a perfect storm.

Sometimes I crash.

So, even though I disagree (who can make that choice for someone else?) I understand the sentiment - 'she should have stuck it out'

She should have stuck it out - so that we can hope.

She should have stuck it out - so that the bullies don't win

She should have stuck it out - so that she can be our symbol

She should have stuck it out - so that the path is forged

And once again *she* is the object.  She bears it.  Our hopes, our desires.  She bears it.

Phoenix

Women in the church at the moment will carry all of this.  We do not simply do the job, we do the job as a woman (I know you don't want it to be so, but it is so).  In front of eyes that hope for us, because we carry their dreams, or in front of eyes that wait for us to fall, because we bear their fears.  It is inevitable at this moment in time.

And sometimes the story is not all 'triumph in the face of adversity', sometimes people die.

But.

Deep breath.

Remember the Phoenix.

A symbol of resurrection, beautiful and bright, burned and born out of the ashes of her demise.

In mythology, the Phoenix has tears which heal and the strength to bear loads way beyond her size.

So remember the Phoenix.  She bears it.

Evangelicalism and Me up a Tree...

Recently I've had some engagements on Twitter with people who are determined that I am not an evangelical Christian.  I suspect that what they really mean is that they are not sure I'm actually a 'proper' Christian at all.

Yawn.

There is really no point in arguing with people like this and I do not intend to, however I do want to tell you that, having gone through some wrestling with my evangelical heritage, I am proud to be an evangelical, I think evangelicalism is a good part of the Christian traditions and I may have a 'Jody-shaped' evangelicalism, but it is evangelicalism none-the-less.  I know this because I'm lucky enough to work with and be friends with people from other traditions - and I know I am not that.  I also know that no matter how irksome some evangelical behaviours/jargon/assumptions are to me, I can no more be 'not evangelical' than I can be 'not Scottish'.

cartoonchurch

So, because people seem to be Very Keen on statements of faith, I thought I would make up my own definition of 'Jody-shaped' evangelical faith and here it is:

1. God exists

2. God thinks I'm fab

3. God came to the Earth as a human being, Jesus

4. God is present in the world by the Holy Spirit

5. God saves me, I'm not sure exactly how

6. Incarnation is important

7. The Cross is important

8. The Resurrection is most important

9. Holy Saturday is quite significant too come to that

10. The Bible is awesome

11. Other people are made in God's Image

12. God is beyond my imagination

13. God is good.

14. I should do something about these things, otherwise my head will explode

there are of course other things such as 'We should pray', 'I don't care if this is called being an evangelical or not' and 'tribes and exclusion are marks of sin and nothing to be proud of' - but I thought these were outworking of points 14 and 11.

Anyway, let me know what your shaped evangelicalism looks like or write your own blogpost and send me a link.  We could start a trend 'stop evangelical facism now!' or something.  Anyway, be free, be creative, own your own identity and let me know how you understand your own faith.

England's Women

I wrote last month on a small part of the whole host of biblical background which undergirds the necessity of women bishops.  We are now another month on and I wondered about writing again on women bishops, surely we are all getting bored with people banging on and on about it.

And that's the trouble.  We are now just over three months on from the vote on 20th November that saw over a decade (and more, depending on where you begin your count) of work, reports, meetings, discussions and legislative consideration go down the drain.  It was crushing for those who had been part of those talks for a very long time, who had felt that the Measure that sank was the best that had come out of all the possible permutations that were available.  I have seen men and women with heavy hearts over the last few months.  Really.  This is not a joke. It can be soul-destroying. I have wondered myself, how these people will continue their work on this having received this door being slammed in their faces, a door that has been slammed before and which will, in all reality, be slammed again, a number of times, before women bishops become a reality.

The sheer drudge and monotony of keeping going is the reality of the life of the activist.

The sheen of fame, fortune and glamour that surrounded the issue last November has dulled.  The outrage has distilled. There are those who got a smack in the face and who wanted to sit up and do something, but three months on, stuff takes over, there are other things to do.  And that is right...there are other things to do.

But not for me.

And maybe not for you.

If that is so, then keep reading, for this post is for you.

Your heart is stirred, you feel that you have been caught up in a story so much bigger than yourself and you do not care that you may be a small part of that story, swallowed up in the bigger tale that will be told when, some day, in the future, a woman will don her mitre in this land as a sign and a symbol that the Kingdom of God is recovering its Image.

That a mitre on the head of a woman in the Church of England will be a mark of the restoration of all things, where women and men begin again to stand alongside each other as equal partners in God's mission.  That this future sight will mean that we no longer collude in the belief, worldwide, that women are a radically different type of human being to men, so much so that she can be privatised, beaten, sold, starved, deprived of education and medicine in order that the true human, men, can survive.

We live with the knowledge that this will be our shame throughout future generations, that we colluded for so long, too long, in the disfiguring of the Image of God: that women have been tortured and killed and men have been dehumanised in the process.

We work so that the time of our shame will be finite.  The calling is high, but it is a long, arduous and sometimes downright boring road.  It is a road filled with meetings and writing, reading and talking, synods and lectures.  Occasionally we will be part of historic moments, such as 20th November 2012, we may even find ourselves being interviewed or staging a protest...occasionally.  Mostly however it's plod, but it is plod with that image in your mind, ever before you: the mitre, as if tongues of flame, descending on a woman's head, in the CofE, this romantic heartland of Anglicanism, and the explosion as our shame is ended.

But mostly it is emailing and stuffing envelopes and intentionally behaving as if women should and must be bishops.  Boring perhaps, but if this is your calling, I can tell you now that you will not escape it, it has caught you up.

How do we keep going in this sometimes arid land?  When people think we are a little mad and we wonder it ourselves every so often?  I think of Wilberforce - yes I own our struggle in the same vein as that great activist, hubris perhaps, but I don't think that Wilberforce ever thought of himself as anything less or more than I have described above.  We are caught up in a part of the Christian story that is both ancient and new - the foundation story of our faith is that of the liberation from slavery, liberation to freedom.  We own the Exodus story, as groups and peoples have before us.  It is beyond and before Wilberforce's cause, and it will transcend ours, because it is God's.  We share the DNA of Wilberforce because it is about liberation and re-humanising ourselves in the truth of the equality of every human being before God.  Wilberforce worked for decades because of this truth that he held in his imagination.  But he was firstly a politician, and he was firstly a politician because he believed he could make things better.  It is a small suggestion perhaps.  Initially it wasn't to do with God, he was embarrassed by his fervent evangelical relations.  But soon the belief in his own ability to make things better, to know better how a country might be run, became infused with the desire to change the world, fuelled by exactly that embarrassing fervent evangelicalism.  Well thank God for embarrassing passions!

Wilberforce was fed by God's own imagination, if we rely on our own then we are doomed.  Our imaginations do not carry us far enough, they are not big enough, fast enough, broad enough and they do not let us be embarrassed enough.  God's imagination is playful, but it is also bright and hard as diamonds, it exposes the flaw and breaks the heart.  Once you have been infected by God, there is no going back, you cannot simply choose to imagine something different.  God's reality is burned into your mind's eye with a ferocity that can never be 'fixed'.  And are we not glad!

If this is you, then you will be drinking this up as if I have given you a long awaited glass of water.  Or perhaps a top up along an already well trodden path for you.  I think I may have lost some of you along the way, don't worry, we'll see each other again soon.

For those who are still with me - let's keep going, keep walking together, one day the tongues of fire will descend and we will laugh and embarrass our grand-children, who will not understand the story into which they are born.  We will send them off into a new story, ancient and new of course, where they will find their own God-given cause and perhaps recover our story in order to live theirs.

And if their story continues to be women bishops?  So be it.  One day there will be tongues of fire that descend on the beating heart of England's women.

An Ordinary Radical Event

As we head into the New Year, it is very easy to forget the controversy and explosive events of last year with regards to the Synod debacle over women bishops - and some other controversies have, of course, overtaken our thinking in recent days, which I will look to write on soon.

But I encourage you to read the following, which is an extended version of my article published today in the Church Times.  It unpacks some of what I believe to be at the heart of the matter.
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Women Bishops: An Ordinary Radical Event

I believe that the case for women and men working alongside each other in the Episcopate is an issue of justice and equality that is found firmly in the Biblical narrative.  My primary case for ‘women Bishops’ would be what I understand to be the overall story of gender found in the Bible and from which we understand something of the very nature of God.

Bruno Pasqualini

As in all good stories, we must start at the very beginning.  Our case begins in Genesis 1.26, where we first find Humankind (traditionally rendered ‘Man’ – the capital ‘M’ denoting the inclusive representation of men and women within a ‘type’).  This type of Humankind is then differentiated, male and female, and both are said to be made in the image of God.  In Genesis 2 we find this interplay becomes further explored as the first human (hb. adam or Dustling) is made from the ground (hb. adamah or Dust) .   We then learn that ‘it is not good for adam to be alone’ and so the adam is made to sleep and from the adam two different beings emerge, the Man (hb. iysh) and the Woman (hb. ishshah).  It is clear from the narrative that the adam who fell asleep, is not the quite the same as the iysh who wakes up!  In other words there was no Man without Woman and no Woman without Man.  We define each other.   In one fell swoop a number of ‘arguments’ suggesting a divinely established hierarchy between the Man and the Woman are demolished.  Adam was not ‘made first’, Eve was not made from an offcut.

Man and Woman, uniquely and equally made in the image of God.

So far, so good.  And then it all goes wrong.  In Genesis 3, the relationships disintegrate.  Not just between God and humankind, but between humankind and the Creation, and between the two humans.  Man and Woman find themselves in an unequal relationship of domination and oppression.  This is a direct result of the brokenness that they find themselves in because they chose to step out of the patterns of relationship which would cause them to flourish – the story traditionally called ‘The Fall’.  To be explicit, the inequality found in the relationship between men and women is as a result of Sin rather than divine order.  The Man and the Woman find themselves in patterns of relationship that are destructive.  From here – and very quickly – we move from the happy equal partnership of male and female found in Genesis 1 and 2, to a situation where women are interchangeable when it comes to sex, marriage and motherhood.  Indeed in a few short years we find Solomon not with one wife, but with 700!  And that is not to mention the concubines:  a far cry from the initial intention.

The Biblical narrative however, does not leave us without clues as to what God’s intention is regarding this situation.  As with all things broken, by intention or failure, God’s desire is for redemption and restoration.  We find many stories throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament which indicate that God is working to restore the relationship between men and women to the equality of shared humanity found in Genesis 1 and 2.  The first obvious example is with Abram and Sarai.  Abram does not understand that Sarai is as much part of the promise of blessing given in Genesis 12, he has absorbed the mindset that she is simply an interchangeable object.  What is more, she is not going to be very useful for his job of ‘being the Father of many nations’ because she is ‘barren’.  And so when he goes to Egypt, he sells her to Pharoah to save his skin and get rid of his ‘barren’ wife.  But this is not the way that God sees it.  Sarai is to be the Mother of many nations, the promise is for her too, directly and equally alongside Abram, in the story of God.  God thus rescues Sarai from Egypt.

Cody Miller

Remaining in Genesis, we begin to see the effect of this distorted relationship on women themselves.  Sarai and Abram leave Egypt with some slaves.  One of those slaves, we can assume, is Hagar, who receives very rough treatment from Sarai.  Sarai has learned that women can be bought and sold, and in her treatment of Hagar – the gentile, woman, slave – shows that she has begun to collude in the story she has inherited.  For Sarai, Hagar has a role to conform to and if she will not, she will have to go!  But here again we see God’s intention.  As Hagar disappears off into the desert, she meets God.  In fact she is the first person in the Biblical narrative to experience the theophany of ‘The Angel of the Lord’.  She is the first person to ‘see’ the Lord, and she is the first person to ‘name’ God in Scripture.  She is given her own promise of blessing, to be a Mother of a Great Nation.  And who is she?  She is a Gentile, Woman, Slave.  This story is the opposite bookend to Galatians 3.28: a mark of God’s intention to have full equality throughout all humankind.

And there are many other stories throughout Scripture which indicate God’s desire for full inclusion and equality between men and women: From the Old Testament; Deborah, Ruth, Esther: From the New Testament; Mary, Phoebe, Priscilla, Lydia, who were all shown to have specific qualities of leadership, whether as the archetype of a disciple, as in the case of Mary, as those in church leadership as in Phoebe and Priscilla, or business, as in Lydia.  But my particular favourite women from the New Testament are those who remain unnamed in the text where they are found: the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery and the woman who poured oil on Jesus’ feet.  These women represent the restoration of women to their full humanity, quite literally, by God.  Jesus takes their shame, whatever it is deemed to be, and restores them and returns them to their community.  Their namelessness indicates the relative invisibility of women in Scripture, and thus the place of women at that time, and yet their stories are stories that Jesus makes sure are heard.  He does this by subverting the assumptions, not only of the time, but our assumptions too.  If we briefly unpack one of these ‘nameless women’ stories - that of the woman caught in adultery - we can see this double subversion.  These women have many labels attached to them, and not just those that we expect to see.  And Jesus undoes them.  The woman caught in adultery has many labels that were given to her in the story – whore, slut, adulteress – we are well used to, but there are others too.  Labels that have built up through many years of reading these stories through the lenses that we have been given to read them – not always ‘women friendly’ lenses.

Firstly, and fairly easily for those brought up on these stories, we sense the misogyny of only the female half of the adulterous couple being brought before the accusers, furthermore the hypocrisy of  the accusers to believe that they can stand in judgement over this woman, when their own sin condemns them.  But at this first level, the woman still has her labels – she is still a whore in the eyes of those reading at this level only.  She may be a forgiven whore, but that is still a defining label for her.  However there is another level at which we might read this story and see the true liberation and restoration which Jesus’ brings to this woman.  Women and sex has always been an issue for those reading and interpreting the stories of women in Scripture – it is an issue for all these nameless women.   When women and sex come together in Scripture it often exposes the ugly truth of how women are viewed and valued.  It is easy for us to read this story and see the redeemed whore, but better for us to look at this story and see a fully human woman.  This is in fact what Jesus does for this woman.  Of course he does expose the misogyny and hypocrisy of the situation; those are indeed part of the restoration.  He sees that this woman is being used as a pawn in their game to test him.  She is not really a person to them.  But she is a person to Jesus and he refuses to let her be peripheral, as the accusers want.  She becomes the point of the story.  He reminds the accusers that they are, in the depths of their humanity, the same as her (‘Let those who have no sin…’).  And it is not simply a ‘sin thing’ it is a ‘human thing’, they are all human beings experiencing the same human condition.  Finally, right at the end of the story he says to the woman ‘go and sin no more’.  And rather than seeing these words as a confirming her status as a redeemed whore, we should understand them better in the light of Jesus desire to restore her humanity.  The reality is that her power to choose her sexual relationships was significantly diminished as a woman living in 1^st Century Palestine.  In telling her to ‘go and sin no more’, he is liberating her to make different choices in a world where her choices feel limited.  Jesus has exposed the misogyny and hypocrisy of the men involved in her shame; he has revealed that they are all deeply humanly the same; and he empowers her to be liberated to make her choices, to be fully human as a woman.

David Hayward

 But actually it is how we interpret Genesis that forms how we understand these further stories and the rest of Scripture when it comes to men and women.  If the nature of both male and female can be found equally in God, as indicated in Genesis 1, then God’s nature provides us with the model for relationship between men and women.  There is no hierarchy in God and there is no hierarchy indicated in Genesis between the man and the woman.  Jesus constantly attempts to restore this non-hierarchical relationship between the sexes in his encounters with women.

I believe that working for the inclusion of women in the Episcopate is the continuing story of God, found in Scripture, working to restore men and women to their right relationship.

But let us take a moment of pause.  Those who disagree with my position on this would have a very different interpretation, not just of Genesis, but of a number of other key texts in Scripture.  I am not going to deal with all the key texts in the New Testament which seem to prohibit women teaching or becoming leaders/priests in church setting in depth, those will be dealt with by another contributor, however I do wish to say a little about them and also about how we approach Scripture.

It is not enough to say that all Scripture unequivocally affirms women in Church leadership, we all know that there are tricky texts, we hear them often.  However the most quoted texts, 1Tim2 and 1Cor14 have all been gone over with a fine tooth comb when it comes to how we interpret them in when it comes to women in leadership, in this I am not saying anything new.  The text in 1Cor14v34, which states that women are not permitted to speak in church is clear to those who endorse a ‘plain meaning’ approach to Scripture because it simply ‘says what it says’.  How can women lead in churches when these words exist in Scripture?  However, even within the same letter of Paul (1Cor11v5), it seems clear that women do, in fact, speak in church – to pray and prophesy.  If we take the 1Cor14 verse at ‘plain meaning’ then we do so in contradiction to the whole narrative of Scripture and even to the rest of Paul’s teaching within the same letter.  It does us well to remember that we are listening to one half of a conversation, when we read the letters in Scripture, sometimes we do not have the knowledge to understand exactly what the other half of the conversation was.  To interpret this one verse in such a way that it seems to undermine the story of God’s restoration of the relationship between male and female, does violence to God’s Word written.  1Cor14v34 can indeed seem so dissonant to its immediate and wider context that it led Gordon Fee, that eminent evangelical NT scholar to suggest that Gordon Fee says: "Although these two verses are found in all known manuscripts, either here or at the end of the chapter, the two text-critical criteria of transcriptional and intrinsic probability combine to cast considerable doubt on their authenticity." (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Gordon D. Fee, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987, 699.).  This of course seems an extreme approach, particularly to sister evangelicals, and I would prefer to suggest that there is a conversation occurring in the context to which we are, perhaps, unaware and which would be the interpretative key to this ‘odd’ verse.  Nevertheless, we need to take seriously the scholarship which honours the text and yet finds this particular verse untenable if we are to take the whole Bible seriously.  Similarly with the contentious 1Tim2v12, one of the most difficult to interpret in Scripture, and which, Tom Wright suggests, should in fact be interpreted in the opposite way to that in which it has traditionally been understood.  Rather than saying that women should not teach, Wright says, Paul is writing to endorse women teaching.  Verse 12 rather than saying that women should not have authority over a man, is rather saying ‘I don’t mean to imply that I’m now setting up women as the new authority over men, in the same way as previously men held authority over women’ (Paul for Everyone: Pastoral Letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, Great Britain: Westminster Knox Press, 2003, 25).  As Wright goes on to say, the signs are there that Ephesus, the context into which Paul is writing to Timothy, is rife with the cult of Artemis and the worship of the goddess Diana.  In this situation Paul is keen to say that women are not now ‘in charge’ in the way that men had been assumed to be prior to Christ’s reversal of that assumed order.  However, the dynamite in 1Tim is that Paul is saying that women must be allowed to be educated, learners and teachers under submission to God, just as men have been and should continue to be.

posted by tribalicious

Having said all this, I would want to say that these interpretations are nothing new. Any basic foray into theological study or investigation of a commentary will give us the tools to understand the meaning of these verses.  And there are different ways to interpret these texts.  We have to admit to there being an element of choice in the conclusions that we come to about their true meaning.  The reality for me is that the overall narrative of the Biblical story leaves us with no other trajectory than to establish women and men alongside each other leading the Church.  It is not a case of dismissing those other texts, but of understanding them within the whole story.  I do not dismiss 1Tim2, but I do read it in the context of the whole narrative of Scripture.  In doing this I understand Wright’s translation of 1Tim2v12 to be more consistent with that narrative. Indeed I believe this approach to be a more deeply biblical approach than the so-called ‘plain meaning’ approach.  Undeniably ‘plain meaning’ is itself influenced by context and formation so as to be disingenuous to be called ‘plain meaning’ at all.  There is no such thing.

Indeed, I delight in the God who comes to dwell with humanity and who has worked with humanity in the particularity of their historical context.  But this means that it is not neat and tidy.  The ‘right’ options are not always open to God.  When I read the book of Joshua, for example, I find myself uncertain, confused and disturbed by the divinely ordered genocide I find there.  I would argue that is exactly the right way to read it.  It is confusing and deeply disturbing!  I do not think it sanctions those actions, instead I choose to understand it within the context of God working within humanity as it is.  Sometimes this means that there are practices which were culturally appropriate at a particular point in human history, which are simply not appropriate or even morally right, at this point in human history.  We would not advocate the Joshua approach to geographical relocation now and we rightly question whether it was the right thing then!  We do not consider women as chattel to be bought and sold, we happily take out mortgages, borrow money at interest, wear hats and polyester/cotton mix clothes and live in a world where slavery is understood to be ‘a bad thing’.  All of these biblical practices we have understood within their particular cultural and historical context and have reversed the practice seen in the pages of Scripture.  When we read Scripture we must read it with those lenses, rejoicing that God enters human history and that that includes whatever ‘mess’ is there.  But we must also open our eyes to scan the whole story: a story which affirms the place of women and men together, equally, for the glory of God.

Barbara Perrin Chu
Deborah is God's answer to Israel's cries

The relationship between men and women has been distorted from almost the beginning of human history.  The Biblical writers saw this as the reality in which we are living and have sought to address it at the different points of history in which they are writing.  We see this story from Genesis, through the Pentateuch and the Torah to the New Testament in which Jesus continues to restore this relationship to the intended equality and Paul writes gender equality dynamite both to Ephesus and Galatia (Gal3v28).  The choices that we make in what to believe about the role and place of women in the human endeavour will themselves be formed by our own context and formation.  We need to own this if we are to get anywhere in recognising where we are now in the discussions regarding women in the Episcopate.  The weight of Scripture points towards a new reality in which men and women work together in equality, this begins in Genesis and continues throughout the Biblical narrative.  However, as with other ethical questions throughout history, our cultural context impinges on our ability to break with the status quo and imagine a new way of being.  In a world where the vast majority of women experience explicit oppression daily and others bear the implicit inequality so commonplace that we forget to expose it, it is unsurprising that there are those who work for this to remain our paradigm.  It is truly world-shattering to make a change.  But there are clues as to how to do this, both within Scripture and in our own history.  God answers Israel’s cries for help with Deborah, Jesus exposes hypocrisy and misogyny by liberating a woman about to be stoned and Wilberforce spent his life repeating the same arguments over and over again until the world changed.

As Christmas and Epiphany begin to fade from our memories and our world gets busy again with day to day life, we can forget the radical nature of our own faith.  The nature of the world was changed by the ordinary event of birth.  We are now in the pregnant pause before women Bishops are given life, but when they appear, it will be world changing, but will also seem a very ordinary radical event.