I usually leave all the talking to more extrovert colleagues, but even I am champing at the bit after the latest rounds in the will they won’t they women bishops debate. Which means that all of those w.h .vanstone dreams have been consigned to the re-cycle bin and then deleted. So instead of staying zip vanstone style until two weeks before I retire I have bolted like a frightened and bewhildered rabbit onto the blogosphere! After all everyone seems to be doing it one way or another. Never has so much been written by so many……. or something like that! (If I actually persist with this blog and some poor soul actually reads it then they may discover what I should have written at this point….. however shyness got the better of me)

So let’s cut to the chase! It’s the Gospel! That’s why women should be made bishops right here and right now! It’s got nothing to do with mirroring what is happening in wider western culture although, in this instance, it is changes in western culture that have opened the eyes of many in the Church of England to the fact that women bishops is Gospel. Maybe if the Church of England had listened to the suffragettes and not opposed a woman’s right to vote we might be at a very differernt place now.

Unfortunately for supporters and opponents alike the Bible holds mixed views when read at face value. Deborah the old testament judge and Paul’s there is neither male or female, contrasts with calls for subjective wives in ephesians and dripping taps in the supposedly wise book of proverbs. But this is where that great anglican mainstay of reason should come in. But unfortunately reason has been very quiet of late! The C of E seems hooked on scripture and tradition even though both scripture and tradition contain fine examples of getting things wrong. Just becasue we have done it this way for a 1000 years does not make it right! An argument often used by many a hard pressed cleric trying to replace church pews with more comfortable seats!

Reason demands that we look at the whole picture and determine what the new creation will look like; a new creation for which Jesus laid the foundations through a life characterised by love, service and a bringing out of the shadows of those who were seen to be of no significance at all. (Jairus’ daughter being a striking example – “don’t bother the teacher” are words that would never have been uttered had she been 12 years old and male).

For me, wolves lying down with lambs, and lions eating straw like cattle suggest a God who wants to bring to an end the different “roles” of the sexes (so much championed by traditionalists) in the new creation that is to come. When taken together, scripture, tradition and reason point to women bishops as being a mark of the coming kingdom in an espiscopal church.

So any amendment which dilutes that, as the house of bishops amendent does, is not an amendment or a compromise worth having.