The Church of England: above the law or just confused?
On Wednesday of this week, Robert Key, the Conservative MP for Salisbury, succeeded in having an Adjournment Debate on “The Application of the Sex Discrimination Legislation to Religious Organisations”.Such debates are an opportunity for Members of Parliament to discuss subjects of concern that would not normally get an airing. They do not result in legislation, but they do allow MPs to express an opinion.
It immediately became obvious, however, that Mr Key had only one religious organization in view, namely the Church of England. This may be less surprising when one realizes that he is also a member of the General Synod and, more importantly, a clear supporter of the consecration of women bishops.
Mr Key’s concern was that despite last July’s vote, the revision committee of the Synod is likely to bring forward a proposal not merely for a code-of-practice for those who do not want a woman bishop but what he called “the imposition by statute of flying male bishops, who could land in a diocese with a woman bishop and deprive her—automatically—of her authority and religious functions.” It is thus clear, as they say, where Mr Key is coming from on this one.
In his introduction, Mr Key claimed that “most members of the Church of England who go to church want women to be ordained as bishops” (though he did not explain why, as he also observed, across the entire Anglican Communion, in the last twenty years, fewer than thirty women have actually been bishops).
In a brief theological excursus, he also observed that,
Most Christians believe that God is above gender. The disciples with whom Jesus surrounded himself were both women and men. It is not true that He thought that women were not up to it; on the contrary, it is striking that Jesus treated people the same, whether they were male or female.
The absence of reference to the all-male twelve, or to the words of the Apostle Paul are certainly discrete, even if some might feel somewhat disingenuous. Nevertheless, Mr Key did have a further point to make. The Sexual Discrimination Act 1975 allows religious organizations to discriminate on the grounds of gender where this is a matter of doctrine or of the views of significant numbers of the religion’s followers (that, at least, was the summary given in the debate by the Parliamentary Secretary and Government Equalities Office, Mr Michael Jabez Foster). Mr Key held, however, that the Church of England had systematically removed itself from qualifying for that exemption: in 1975, the General Synod declared that there were no fundamental objections to ordaining women as priests, in1992, the Synod voted in favour of women priests and in 2005 it decided that there was no fundamental objection to women bishops.
It would therefore, he argued, be illegal for the Church to continue to discriminate in this area as the revision committee might propose, and (since the Church of England is an established Church) it would similarly be illegal for Parliament to endorse the proposal when it was brought for approval as a Measure.
The response of MPs, however, was mixed. Some, like Mr David Taylor of North-West Leicestershire and Mrs Ann Cryer, for Keighley, agreed with Mr Key. Indeed, Mrs Crier, in a short contribution, felt it would set a good example to the Muslims in her constituency —something of which they might perhaps take note.
Others, however, took a less enthusiastic view, including, despite his avowedly non-religious views, Dr Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford, West and Abingdon. Like others who contributed, Dr Harris felt that although he himself would prefer there to be no discrimination at all anywhere, the Church of England ought to go on enjoying the same exemptions as applied to other religious organizations. For him, such exemptions were a matter of religious freedom, with which he was reluctant to interfere. Read more
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