No to Women Bishops: A Denial of the Core Values of the Gospel?

UPDATE: The Church of Wales voted today and the vote to ordain women as bishops failed to get the 2/3 majority. Read it at FiF news. Today is the day that the Church of Wales votes whether or not to ordain women as bishops. What is so sad about this debate and particularly this article is the lack of exgetical and contextual apologetics for these views. I would love for this to be an intelligent discussion here so if you would like to cast an opinion on the article and arguments put forth, please do so. Let others know that a free and open discussion is welcome here. The Guardian In an age when women have broken through the glass ceiling in most professions in Britain, it is strange that they still face discrimination in a church that believes there is "no male or female" in Christ. Women can become judges, surgeons, chief executives and heads of state, but in the Church in Wales - which waited until 1997 to ordain women as priests - they are as yet unable to become bishops. I do not see how, having agreed to ordaining women to both the diaconate and priesthood, the church can logically exclude women from the episcopate. That is why I and my fellow bishops will be asking members of the church's legislative body today to vote in favour of a bill to allow women clerics to become bishops. It's a move that Anglican churches have made in other countries - Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada and the US, though not yet England. I believe Wales is now willing to embrace this important change too. During the past 11 years, women clerics have enriched the priestly ministry of the whole church, bringing new and different gifts to it. My experience has been that, even in parishes that have been hesitant about the prospect of women clerics, the acceptance has been overwhelming. I am only astonished that when I trained for the ministry in the early 1970s, I did not even question why the ordained ministry was restricted to men. Those who are opposed to the ordination of women have mostly been gracious, courteous and kind to women priests in neighbouring parishes, deanery chapters and diocesan events. However, this has not always been the case. Discrimination may not be intentional, but it does happen. It has happened to me simply because of the views that I hold on women priests, and I know from the odd occasion that I have been snubbed or ignored how painful and undermining it can be. How much more so to women. At the heart of the Christian gospel are values of integrity, justice, wholeness and inclusion: "In Christ there is no bond or free, male or female, Jew or Greek" (St Paul). How, therefore, can a church, which claims to set people free and treat all as equal, refuse even the possibility of considering whether women can be called to the episcopate? All this is not irrelevant to the mission of the church, for when women are barred from even the possibility of being elected bishops, it makes the gospel inaudible in our world. As the late Robert Runcie said: "It cannot be irrelevant to evangelism that so many unbelievers think that the place we give to women is absurd." That is why I cannot support any of the proposed amendments to the bill, which call for the appointment of a male bishop with jurisdiction for those who oppose the authority of a woman bishop. To do so, moreover, would be to sanction schism, to threaten the unity of the church. If the Church in Wales refuses today to ordain women to the episcopate, it will be in danger of giving the impression that: the maleness of Jesus is more important than his humanity; only men can really represent God and his church to the world; men are the really important members of the human race; the church does not value the gifts and talents of women; and the church is not interested in testing the vocation of women, or even willing to consider their suitability as bishops, because their gender has automatically debarred them from such consideration. None of these things may be true, but try explaining that to a class of sixth-formers who are interested in what the gospel may be offering them, but for whom that gospel is proclaimed by a church that refuses even to consider the possibility of opening up the episcopate to women. · Dr Barry Morgan is Archbishop of Wales