A CAMPAIGN to end the provisions that accompanied the women-bishops legislation of 2014, put in place to provide for those unable to accept women’s ministry (News, 28 July 2014), was launched by Women and the Church (WATCH) on Saturday.
The campaign group hopes to see a motion brought to the General Synod, asking members to consider “whether it is right for the 2014 House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests to continue in perpetuity and, if not, to set a date for it to come to an end”. The plans were discussed at the “Not Yet Equal Conference” at St John’s, Waterloo, in London. WATCH aims to roll out roadshows across dioceses in the coming months, in the hope of getting the motion carred by diocesan synods. An alternative approach would be a private member’s motion.
WATCH is also encouraging women clergy to log experiences of “harassment”, with a view to bringing a case under the Equality Act (2010).
Among those who addressed the conference was the Area Bishop of Croydon, Dr Rosemarie Mallett, a member of the steering committee that drafted the 2014 legislation (News, 26 July 2013). She was “fully behind the amazing work that WATCH undertakes to hold the Church to account with regard to its iniquitous treatment of women”, she said. But she had hesitated before accepting the invitation to speak, because she was one of the five members of the committee that had put together what were now known as the Five Guiding Principles, “which makes me feel very much like an instigator, or at least one of the architects, of the problems that we are all still facing”.
The Principles were part of the package that accompanied the Measure that enabled the ordination of women to the episcopate. Embodied in a House of Bishops Declaration, they include a commitment to enabling to “flourish” those who, on grounds of theological conviction, are able to receive the ministry or women bishops or priests, and to pastoral and sacramental provision for this minority “without specifying a limit of time”.
The Principles “help to reinforce” the “unequal and iniquitous gendered culture of the current Church of England”, Dr Mallett said on Saturday. The foundations of this culture lay in the 1993 settlement, which established Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEV) and “allowed . . . churches to limit women’s roles on grounds of theological conviction”.
She went on: “With hindsight, we never really thought through how this agreement would build on those foundations, cementing in both official and unofficial practices in churches a perpetuation of women’s unequal treatment and the continued discrimination against women. From my perspective, we were working very hard to come up with a solution to put a square peg into a round hole, with a desire to put in place something that would get us over the line and that, with good will, would enable mutual flourishing.
“I think in honesty we also thought that as society changed and as views became more open-minded among growing numbers of younger men and women, the culture of the Church would change like the culture of the wider society. No one really saw that there was an underlying trend even then, growing within the society, that continues to harbour paternalistic and patriarchal perspectives of the ways societies, institutions, and gendered relationships should be ordered.”
She mentioned the social-media influencer Andrew Tate, the “manosphere”, and the recent Netflix series Adolescence (TV, 24 March). The real-life story of “toxic masculinity and male rage and anger at rejection” was the killing of Elianne Andam, murdered by 17-year-old Hassan Sentamu, who had recently split up with one of her friends, in 2017 in Croydon (News, 29 September 2023).
Within the Church there had been a “ossification, if not growth, of the viewpoints purported by those who feel unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests or those male bishops who have ordained them”.
Dr Mallett also referred to the pastoral assurances requested by opponents of the Prayers of Love and Faith and calls for a separate province. Some churches that had not previously requested a PEV were calling for alternative oversight, she said. “What muddies the water is that, in many, if not most of those churches, ordained women’s ministry has not been welcomed or accepted. They fly under the radar.”
She spoke of “gendered microaggressions” experienced by women. Last year, she had been invited to preside at the funeral of a friend’s wife. The church that the family had chosen would not allow her even to say prayers in the service. A young curate applying for a post had told her that while he admired her stance on social justice, he could never stand at the altar alongside her. “I had to have an open and frank conversation as to how he could model for young boys and young girls a welcome and the inclusive love of God.”
She warned: “The cumulative effect of these slights can be substantial, leading to isolation, frustration, and a diminished self-worth. . . For racialised groups and for women like me, the repeated experience of having to question our right to feel offended, and the constant reminder that we are not welcome, can lead to physical or mental-health concerns. . . We soldier on, and then we get noted for our resilience and our strength.”
The conference was a call to bring to an end “the discrimination, sexism, and exploitation of women in our Church”, the Vicar of St Michael’s, Chiswick, the Revd Martin Oborne, who chairs WATCH, said. In addition to work to bring to an end the 2014 provisions, she spoke of the potential to bring a legal challenge under the Equality Act (2010). While this meant that people within the Church “can discriminate on grounds of sex”, it contained protections against victimisation and harassment.
Harassment is defined in the Act as “unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic” with the purpose or effect of “violating [the person’s] dignity”, or “creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment” for them.
“Most of us will have experienced harassment, and it is illegal,” Mrs Oborne said. “You have to report it, there’s a statute of limitations within six months . . . To be taken seriously, you need to log your experience contemporaneously . . . If we can get enough evidence together we can make a case for this kind of activity which is illegal.”
Her understanding was that this was happening, but that women were being “bought off. Settlements are made, non-disclosure agreements are written and entered into. That’s got to stop.” She invited women to keep a log and to share it with WATCH.
She mentioned the survey of clergy carried out by The Times in 2023, which found that 62.9 per cent said that the 2014 arrangements should be “phased out”. One third said that they should “remain in place indefinitely”. The arrangements were “unjust”, “untrue to the gospel”, and “exploitative”.
They were also “unsafe”, she said: “There is a huge body of evidence that understandings of male privilege correlate to the abuse of women and girls, and the Church cannot hope to address the harms caused by sexism in our world when we have institutionalised discrimination against women ourselves. The requirement for all clergy to say that they accept the current discrimination effectively silences women, which is an act of violence, and it makes it hard to even disclose abuse or say that we are unhappy about the arrangements, because many of those who do speak out experience marginalisation and gaslighting.”
If referred to the General Synod, diocesan-synod motions remain on the agenda until they are either debated or withdrawn by the proposing diocese. Any Synod member can write an submit a PMM, but, to decide whether to place it on the agenda, the Business Committee requires a minimum of 100 expressions of interest.
“Don’t be afraid that the motion might not be passed,” Mrs Oborne said. “The important thing is that it’s debated.”
It is hoped that the diocese of Southwark may be the first to carry the WATCH motion. Besides hearing from Dr Mallett, the conference received messages from two of the diocese’s other three bishops. The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Christopher Chessun, wrote a letter recalling that, three years before the 2014 vote, the Revd Professor Sarah Coakley had called the settlement on the ordination of women a theological “wound”.
“Although many of our relationships across theological conviction may be said to be gracious at a local level, sadly this is not universally so; and I am not sure that this wound has been much healed,” he wrote. “I am mindful that the ‘Five Guiding Principles’, drafted with a nation watching intently, have placed an asymmetrical burden on women in Holy Orders. Nevertheless, there is merit in continuing to state that ‘anyone who ministers within the Church of England must be prepared to acknowledge that the Church of England has reached a clear decision on the matter’.
“Regrettably, there has been a certain hardening of our common life since 2014 that is unlikely to be softened by the ongoing debates about implementing the ‘Prayers of Love and Faith’. I am committed to respecting the spectrum of theological conviction while defending our essential Anglican identity and polity. As such, I am confident that the Church of England is, in humble faith and under God, part of a wider movement of the Holy Spirit that heralds and pioneers developments which advance the possibility of their reception by the wider Church.”
A message from the Area Bishop of Kingston, Dr Martin Gainsborough, said that the campaign to get a motion to the Synod “will be welcomed in some quarters and resisted in others but it is important that we have this conversation as a Church. The question we need to wrestle with is how do we ensure a future in which women and men can flourish equally in the Church. We have some way to go.”
