The Ordination of Women as Priests - 25 Years On

This is one of a handful of photos that mean more to me than I can say.

It was taken at Coventry Cathedral on 11 May 1994. You will probably guess the occasion: the ordination of the first female priests in the Diocese of Coventry. And what a celebration it was! I've regularly attended glorious liturgy in no fewer than four cathedrals. But I knew on that day that this was a ceremony that would not just live on bathed in a kind of generalised afterglow. I knew that it would be unforgettable in its detail as well. Such as singing "Be still for the Spirit of the Lord is moving in this place" and, for once, truly recognising that she was.

When you are a cathedral precentor, as I was then, you train yourself to know the liturgy in all its particulars, to become familiar with the soul of it, inhabit it from the inside. Even when you have written the rite yourself, as you do on many a special occasion, you still have to learn the grain of it, intuit how it is going to "feel" in the particular liturgical space it's devised for, how the community that gathers together to celebrate is likely to respond to the words and actions, the silences and the music that you have so carefully devised for it.

We all knew that this ordination of women would be a once-for-all event, unrepeatable as a history-making act of worship. For many months I worked on the service with a small planning group of women who were due to be ordained, together with Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward and Director of Ordinands Canon, now Bishop, Mark Bryant. That preparation process was a remarkable experience in itself, both for the joy of looking forward to a great event in the life of the church and of the ordinands and their families, and for the deep sensitivity that was felt towards those who could not accept the validity of their ordination and for whom this ordination day would be one not of joy but of pain. 

I want to pay tribute to one of them in particular, Barbara Baisley who was then chaplain at Warwick University and the Dean of Women's Ministry in the Diocese. She and her husband George had both been students of mine at Salisbury (indeed, her brother Robin taught me English at school). I mention Barbara not only because of the skilled way she led those women through the delicate (and for some, highly controversial) process of becoming priests, but because she died a few years afterwards, long before her time. I also remember that a curate in the Diocese at that time by the name of Justin Welby joined the planning group in order to get a feel for how a major liturgical event is planned in a cathedral. I recall that he had his own gentle wisdom to contribute to the process.

All this was twenty-five years ago. It was in March 1994 that the first female priests were ordained in Bristol Cathedral. For those of us who had long wished and prayed for our church to take this step and had campaigned for it, the outcome of the vote in General Synod on 11 November 1992 was also a night to remember. That day, Armistice Day, is also the birthday of our youngest daughter who was nine that year. So we deferred the family fireworks that year by a few days, and as soon as Archbishop George Carey had announced the result of the vote, and we had taken it in (and shed a few tears of relief), we went out in the garden to light rockets and sparklers to celebrate what felt like a double birthday. 

As (now Archbishop) Justin Welby said this week, the contribution female priests have made to the life of the Church of England has been immeasurable. Women are now occupying every conceivable role in the church as priests: as chaplains and bishops, area deans and archdeacons, incumbents and cathedral deans. We had our ups and downs in the General Synod I was part of when it came to the question of female bishops. I won't say all that is forgotten - we mustn't airbrush out of history or our present experience the pain of those who dissent from these decisions, nor the fact that many of our sister churches have not taken these steps. My first cousin made the journey from Anglican to Roman Catholic priesthood because of the ordination of women as priests, and that made it a family as well as a church matter. Like #Brexit, you feel things in more pointed ways when they intrude upon your personal relationships. (But he and I have always remained good friends and colleagues in ministry, I'm glad to say.)

While I was taking part in that service 25 years ago, I thought back to my own memories of ordination in 1975 and 76. Ordination services have that effect on us who are deacons and priests, and it's a good thing that we're reminded of our ordination vows from time to time (even in retirement). But I had - I have - a very specific memory of the night before I was ordained deacon. Our Bishop (of Oxford - Kenneth Woollcombe) saw each of us for an hour that day. What he said to me would be imprinted on my memory for a lifetime.

The Bishop had led the campaign in General Synod that year in support of the resolution that "there are no theological objections to the ordination of women". He said to me: "Michael, you know what the Synod has resolved this year. From now on, everyone who is ordained as a deacon and thereby becomes an officer of the Church of England understands that this is the publicly stated position of our church. You must not say that the rules were changed during your public ministry. If you can't be content with that, now is the time to step back from receiving holy orders tomorrow." I imagine he said the same to all the ordinands. (But perhaps he thought I might have concerns about male "headship", trained as I was at a conservative evangelical theological college - whose last Principal, Emma Ineson, has just been ordained a bishop!). 

I've often thought back to that interview, and how influential it was, not in coming to a conclusion I'd already embraced, but in having the confidence to speak up for it publicly. It was my first experience of facing the reality of diversity in our church and learning to see it as a gift that enriches and ennobles us all. But I'm also trying to learn what Justin Welby has taught us to see as "good disagreement", how to listen carefully, practise generosity and charity alongside holding deeply to this and other matters of conviction (I'll not mention the B****t word a second time).

The Church of England still has a long way to go before it can claim to be a genuinely diverse institution. In particular, we are a long way from recognising and celebrating committed gay relationships as joyous, God-given and loving, let alone affirming and solemnising same-sex marriage - as we must, I believe, soon. Regular readers of this blog will know that I've tried to stand with my LGBT friends as they find a place of genuine, unreserved acceptance in our church. If I began to discern anywhere how we must all work tirelessly to become a more just, more equal, more caring church, it was at that marvellous ordination service in Coventry in 1994. 

Thank you to the women in the diaconate, priesthood and episcopate with whom it's been, and continues to be, such an inspiration to serve in the public ministry of the church of God. This silver anniversary brings fond memories of past ordained female friends and colleagues "who rejoice with us but on another shore and in a greater light", "those angel faces I have loved long since and lost awhile". And to those ordained women who read these words, congratulations to each one of you. This blog comes with gratitude, admiration, prayers and expectancy for all that is yet to be in the next quarter of a century.

AMDG

*** I want to add a postscript to this blog in the light of Twitter comments it’s received so far. 

One person reminded us that it is too easy to simply celebrate  without acknowledging the cost born mostly by women. An acknowledgment of the pain caused needs to go alongside a celebration of where we have got to. It is too easy to bypass the former. Another added: true, and it still goes on. Until the Institution recognises how the barriers it has imposed inhibit the full flourishing of women’s ordained ministry the cost will continue unjustly.

I responded: Yes. I can see that for all its good intentions, this [my blog] is a man’s perspective who perhaps wants too much for it all to be well. Or wants it prematurely, before real healing has had time to happen? Or doesn’t see the injustices that are still being perpetrated in our church? I wish I’d written more sensitively in the light of this. I’m aware how much this is also true for LGBT clergy in our church. We say we intend to listen and learn from people’s experience but in practice the Church goes on “othering” those who don’t fit its theological template. The recent disinvitation of bishops’ same-sex spouses to the Lambeth Conference was a case in point (the website has now removed that offending parenthesis). Nevertheless I still want the church to rejoice with and for its women who are deacons, priests and bishops, however long the road ahead that we must continue to travel.

How shall we mark Brexit in Church?

I posted a tweet today. It was a question, addressed to the two national churches of our island, the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. I also copied in Westminster Abbey because they know about these things too. My question is, will there be church services to mark Brexit Day? 

You may laugh. With the nation so hopelessly divided about Brexit, and the negotiations themselves mired in difficulties, how on earth can we contemplate marking the 29th March 2019 liturgically? Everyone agrees that it will be a momentous event in our history, but that’s about it. Remainers and Brexiters will want to tell entirely different stories about how we got to this threshold and what we believe, or hope, or fear, lies on the other side. One side will look for celebration, the other lament.

But let’s think a little more deeply. For one thing, it would seem very strange not to hold public services around Brexit Day when we are used to marking other big national events in this way. Liturgy is one of the ways we gather up and ritualise the events that are shaping our collective lives, whether it’s the centenary of the Great War, the end of the Falklands War, celebrating a royal jubilee or in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and natural disasters. By doing this in public, high-profile ways, we hold up a mirror to our common life and understand the place we occupy within the larger story of our peoples.

And of course, we offer our story to God. That’s primarily why people of faith have a strong instinct that we should gather together at times of transition. At every threshold, especially when we are at our most febrile, we need to pause to look back as well as look forward, try to discern where God is in the events we are passing through, ask ourselves what he is calling us to be and do in the future, and above all, offer our lives afresh to him in faith and hope. 

If ever we needed to do this, it is going to be next March as one chapter of our nation’s life comes to an end and a new one begins. Yes, this process has been and still is controversial, divisive and extraordinarily painful. But that’s precisely why we need to try to find words and ritual actions that will help carry us across this threshold as we pray for whatever awaits us beyond. 

And they need to be actions that we can perform, and words that we can say together. It will be far too soon in the spring to talk about the healing of memories. It could well be that things will become more bitter and fractious before they begin to mend. But if there is going to be healing, then the memory that we came together at a time of division and tried to reach out to one another could sow a seed of reconciliation that we can build on in the years ahead. And yes, a seed of forgiveness too, for many things have been said and done in this Brexit journey for which we shall need to say we’re sorry.

There could be two approaches to a Brexit liturgy. One would be to construe it as a vigil of prayer on the eve of crossing this threshold, offering what we are about to do - for better or worse - to God’s wise and loving providence. Many of us remember the vigils of prayer that were held across England before the General Synod vote in 1992 in relation to the ordination of women to the priesthood. People of utterly different convictions recognised in one another a common, God-given need to call upon God to help us at a time of deeply divided opinion. I could see us doing something like this as we contemplate a future none of us can yet foresee. Might a national day of prayer and fasting be appropriate?

The other approach would be to ritualise the transition we shall be negotiating. This would be harder to do in an inclusive way, but that shouldn’t stop the church from trying to interpret it in the light of what we as Christians believe about nationhood, about our place in the wider Europeans and worldwide family of peoples, about our commitment to the enduring values of peace, justice, inclusion, collaboration, honour, loyalty and truth. We need to articulate a vision of the kind of society we want to become, a vision for the kind of world we want to live in. It would include thankfulness for all that has been good in the past, penitence for what has fallen short, and the offering of our nation’s life in the future with as much confidence and hope that we can muster. The register will need to be humility not self-congratulation, reticence not assertiveness, acknowledging that there is so much that we cannot know about where this Brexit Road will lead us. But equally, in the spirit of St Paul in the midst of his ordeals, we must confidently affirm that we do not lose heart.

I’ve made no secret about how very disappointed I was that the Church of England ducked the challenge of holding a debate about Brexit before the Referendum, both in the General Synod and, I’m told, in the House of Bishops. The Synod debate, when it happened, took place after the Referendum - too little too late. It was such a lost opportunity: the national church in England ought to have contributed as an institution to a big conversation about what we believed at that time England’s place in Europe should be. It still should. But it seems afraid to. Sadly.

Now, once again, our national churches have the chance to help us as we reach a historical crossroads. Yes, of course the context will be continuing disagreement, opposing views that are passionately held. But this is precisely where our churches can make a real contribution - by naming our conflicts and divisions, the difficulty of the process we are in, and then by ritualising this painful collective journey in ways that signal what Justin Welby calls “good disagreement”. I’d say that it was not only desirable but necessary. And possible.

As readers of my blog know, I’m a heartfelt Remainer. I admit that I am deeply afraid of what is going to happen in six months’ time.  I am angry and frustrated about Brexit and I dread turning over the page in the 2019 calendar that will tell me that March 2019 has arrived when that fateful threshold must be crossed. I can’t see anything that may happen before then that will change my mind. For me this is not a good night and I don’t want to go gently into it. Raging? Well, yes.

But that’s precisely why I recognise that the church must try to speak into our confusions and help us see our hopes and fears in the larger context of God’s wisdom and care for humanity. Churches are at their best, not when they preach moral sermons but when they stand with our people so that they can weep or rejoice with them - or both. Especially is this true at the liminal places of life, when we are more than usually aware of our human fragility and our need of one another and of God. Churches are good at entering into the flow of public and personal history. It’s what’s needed now.

March 2019 will see us journeying towards Passiontide and Easter. The gospel of death and resurrection will furnish us with all the spiritual resources we need as we ask how best to mark our departure from the European Union. So I want to ask our church leaders: what will we do to help the people of our nation at this time of change? How could our cathedrals and greater churches play a role in regions and localities? How could local churches become places of prayer, resolve, hope, even healing? 

There’s an abundance of liturgical and spiritual imagination to draw on in every part of the church. Wouldn’t it be a terrible failure to be defeated by this challenge on the grounds that it’s just too difficult? I admit that it will be hard. But perhaps the nation is looking to us to respond, as it often does at times of uncertainty. I hope and believe that we will prove equal to the challenge. But we need to be thinking about it now. What are we doing to prepare? That’s my question.