Church Of England May Start Allowing Female Bishops
UPDATED. After a years-long struggle, the church’s governing body is finally voting — and female bishops could be ordained as early as 2014.
1. The Church of England’s governing body is holding a three-day summit to vote on whether women can become bishops.
The governing body comprises 470 members and is known as the “General Synod,” which is a truly A+ name. It will reach a decision Tuesday.
2. There have been female priests in England since 1992, and they currently make up a third of all British clergy.
3. However, that debate alone took 25 years to settle.
Above, a woman advocating for ordaining female clergy back in 1978. (Also, in case you’re not totally up-to-date on your knowledge of Anglican church structure, the difference between priests and bishops is that the former are local, looking after single parishes or communities, while the latter oversee a whole group of these parishes in what’s known as a “diocese.” Basically, it comes down to power.)
5. If the legislation doesn’t pass, then the whole process needs to start over and couldn’t be completed until 2019.
Reverend Rosie Harper (left) told the BBC, “If the proposed legislation fails, the consequences I believe are far more severe…a church with lower moral standards than the rest of society risks its right to comment on other issues.” She went on to say that failure to pass the measure “will inevitably be seen as the act of a dying church more wedded to the past than committed to hope for the future.”
6. And if it does, then England could see its first ordained female bishop as early as 2014.
7. UPDATE: On Tuesday, the measure was put to a vote and failed to pass.
It would have required a two-thirds majority, and the final vote was 132 in favor and 74 against.
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- gillianp2 Church Of England May Start Allowing...
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Frank1964 6 months agoFolks complaining with the usual cliches: read the details. The vote failed because a minority of laypeople voted against it. If it was up to existing priests and bishops, including the Abp of Canterbury, it would have passed. So it’s not “theocracy”. And this is about women being bishops, not priests (which they already can do). Not justifying the results, which are stupid, just saying — it’s more complicated than a few Buzzfeed photos can show.
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- kerrit2 Church Of England May Start Allowing...
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- hermitina thinks Church Of England May Start Allowing... is OMG
- heathere7 Church Of England May Start Allowing... and thinks it’s Win
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primavolta 6 months agoMaybe they should vote about whether or not women are human beings or not. Fuck this. The other day i read an article about a woman who was lodging a human rights complaints against a Muslim owned barber shop for not giving her a haircut because its against their beliefs to touch not relatex womens hair, and plenty of people were up in arms about how un-Canadian those beliefs are. On the other hand, we supposedly enlighted folks aren’t that enraged about refusing women clergy in some of the most popular Christian religioms. Hypocrites.
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- kimberlyp3 thinks Church Of England May Start Allowing... is Win
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