Women bishops v. flying bishops

George Pitcher in the London Telegraph   |  07 Oct 2008     TEXT

Last Friday I was locked in St Paul's Cathedral with a couple of hundred of my fellow clergy from the Diocese of London for what was styled a 'Sacred Synod'. We sat under Sir Christopher Wren's giddying dome to hear the Rt Rev Dr Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, invite carefully selected colleagues to reflect on something called The London Plan and how it could be re-invigorated to take account of the prospect of women bishops.

This much we know: There will be women bishops in the Church of England as soon as legislatively possible. But the fight is not yet over from those within the church who oppose them. There is clearly an Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical rearguard action, against the will of the church's executive, to enshrine men-only Episcopal oversight in law for dissenters – and a good deal of positioning, some posturing and not a little psychological denial among those who wish to secure such provision.

Why do we know this? Partly because the Sunday Telegraph yesterday reported that church authorities are planning 'flying bishops' – or 'flying bigots' as one liberal voice called them privately on Friday – to serve those who in conscience cannot accept women bishops. And partly because the atmosphere in St Paul's on Friday suggested that supporters of women's episcopacy had won a battle at General Synod in July but had not yet won the war.

The Sacred Synod had originally been booked for All Souls, Langham Place, but that has recently been used as a base for hardline conservatives who resist homosexual bishops, so the event was quietly transferred to St Paul's.

The changed venue still carried dangerously potent associations. St Paul's exudes the patriarchy of empire; we looked up into a dome painted with muscular and male apostles. And we sang hymns that started with lines like 'Father, hear the prayer we offer' and said prayers that opened 'God our Father'.

Some priestly women activists had urged a boycott of the event, fearing a mugging from the Anglo-Catholics. In the event, they had nothing to fear. The oppressive St Paul's felt like that foreign land where women did things differently, but it was unmistakably of the past.

Dr Chartres, too, was playing an open hand. He acknowledged that, for some, the gender issue is one of justice, over which there can be no compromise.

The London Plan, first devised by Dr David Hope as Bishop of London, offers an Episcopal oversight, in the shape of the Bishop of Fulham, for those who cannot accept women as bishops. The question is whether it can be a paradigm for the wider Church.

My guess is that the women's faction will accept such provision for male traditionalists if it's from an area bishop, like Fulham, within the diocese (whose diocesan bishop may well be a woman) and within a simple code of practice, but not flying bishops effectively from a 'third province' founded in law. As Dr Chartres affirms, there can be no 'episcopacy-lite' for women.

But that takes no account of the real-politick in evidence in St Paul's on Friday. Some of the men-only camp are set on legal protection by the back door, after Synod voted clearly for a code of practice. One or two of them were indulging on Friday in what Canon Winkett called 'competitive vulnerability', invoking a term coined by novelist Sara Maitland for those who believe their pain must be bigger than that of others.

The women, meanwhile, don't look set to give ground. They feel they will have conceded enough if they accept the Fulham model of the London Plan.

At the first sight of a legal flying bishop, expect them to withdraw from the process and point to the will of Synod.

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