Run ‘Em Out on a Rail

When the General Synod of the Church of England decided to authorize the elevation of women to the episcopacy earlier this week, there was lots of apprehension around the Anglican Communion that this would result in schism in the CofE. The worry was that traditionalists who don’t buy the case for women’s ordination would go to Rome, or would otherwise withdraw from a church that is no longer willing to accommodate dissent on a matter of Catholic order. Of course, not everyone is wringing their hands over the Anglo-Catholics. Indeed, the former suffragan bishop of Washington, DC, Jane Holmes Dixon (best known for her destructive vendetta against Anglo-Catholic traditionalist the Rev. Sam Edwards and St. John’s Church in Accokeek, Maryland) is positively giddy, as she writes in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” column:

To say I am elated with the Church of England’s decision this week to allow the consecration of female bishops is not nearly enough. This is a further mandate by the Church to embody the biblical witness that all persons, both men and women, are created in the image of God. Elation cannot express the affirmation and joy I experience.

When I was elected and consecrated as Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Washington in 1992, I became only the third woman in the history of the global Anglican Communion to attain that office. Since that time, the Communion has come a long way towards ending the straight-white-male-hegemony within its leadership.

At the last Lambeth Conference in 1998, there were 11 female bishops in attendance. This year the number stands at 24. More and more women are becoming priests, rectors of large congregations, deans of cathedrals and professors at Episcopal seminaries. And of course, our magnificent Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is the first ever national leader of one of the 38 Anglican provinces.

While the Episcopal Church has been ordaining female priests for 34 years, the Church of England did not ordain female priests until 1994. Now those women are well placed to take an even greater leadership role within the church. An encouraging part of this decision was the rejection of a compromise proposal which would allow dissident parishes to be governed by alternative, male bishops.

Regardless of how you feel about women’s ordination, this is clearly a case of Nuehaus’s Law (“Wherever orthodoxy is optional, it sooner or later will be proscribed.”) in operation. It is no longer enough to be willing to tolerate the presence of women priests, even if one believes that women’s ordination is contrary to Scripture and the tradition of the church. It is now necessary to bow down before the regnant orthodoxy, and the refusal to do so means that one will either suffer the consequences or get out. I’m not sure how prevalent such a mindset is in the Church of England, even this week, but there’s no doubt that the tolerant, inclusive liberals who now run the Episcopal Church are growing weary of putting up with dissent from the New Religion.

The Word From on High

The PCUSA Office of the General Assembly, Constitutional Services Department, has issued an advisory regarding the recent GA actions on homosexuality. In addition to pointing out that the repeal of G-6.0106b still has to go through the presbyteries, and that all previous Authoritative Interpretations that prohibited the ordination of sexually active gays had been repealed, there was this:

The 218th General Assembly also adopted (Item 05-12) a new Authoritative Interpretation of G-6.0108:

…the requirements of G-6.0108 … apply equally to all ordination standards of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).  Section G-6.0108 requires examining bodies to give prayerful and careful consideration, on an individual, case-by-case basis, to any departure from an ordination standard in matters of belief or practice that a candidate may declare during examination.  However, the examining body is not required to accept a departure from standards and cannot excuse a candidate’s inability to perform the constitutional functions unique to his or her office (such as administration of the sacraments).

We believe this modifies the 2008 GAPJC decision of Bush v. Presbytery of Pittsburgh, in that the scrupling of either belief or practice is now allowed. The effect of this action is to remind ordaining bodies that they bear the responsibility for determining whether any particular standard (including those described in G-6.0106b) will be a bar to that particular candidate’s ordination/installation. This Authoritative Interpretation preserves the historic right of sessions and presbyteries to determine their membership; all these decisions, however, continue to be subject to review by a higher governing body.

The 218th General Assembly left in place the prohibition in Bush, which told ordaining bodies: “Restatements of the Book of Order, in whatever form they are adopted, are themselves an obstruction to the same standard of constitutional governance no less than attempts to depart from mandatory provisions.”

Contrary to recent claims by Dr. Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Seminary and Ed Koster, stated clerk of Detroit Presbyteruy, this affirms that the ban on ordaining sexually active gays is no longer in force. “Scrupling,” which in this case means, “I don’t buy that, it would get in the way of my sex life,” is now the standard for anyone who wants to be ordained while continuing to behave in ways that Scripture forbids to God’s people. Those opposed to this policy can try to make the case that nothing has changed, but in the long run I don’t think there’s any chance of them succeeding. PCUSA has jumped off the cliff, and at this point I think the only thing to be done is to provide those who don’t want to go SPLAT! a parachute.

(Hat tip: Steve Bryant.)