By Robin G. Jordan
Two developments in the Anglican Church in North America
which have not attracted much comment—at least to my knowledge--are the
election of a new bishop for the ACNA Diocese of Pittsburgh and the call of a
new rector for the ACNA largest parish, Christ Church Plano. Both men may be
described as favoring the ordination of women although neither has publicly
taken a position on the issue as far as I know. One is married to a woman
priest; the other had a woman associate rector. One has been elected bishop of
a diocese whose retiring bishop supported women’s ordination. The other has
become the rector of a flagship ACNA church known for its support of the
ordination of women to the diaconate and the presbyterate.
These developments are a reminder of a real division in the
Anglican Church in North America—the division over the ordination of women. The
ACNA College of Bishops has to date endorsed in the ACNA catechism and the
proposed ACNA prayer book a body of doctrine that is generally but not
exclusively associated with a position opposing the ordination of women. It is
a body of doctrine that historically been rejected by Anglican
Loyalists—orthodox Anglicans who stand in the tradition of the English
Reformation and the Elizabethan Settlement. It itself is a reminder that
women’s ordination is not the only issue over which clergy and congregations
forming the ACNA are divided. While they may not exercise much influence in the
College of Bishops, Anglican Loyalists comprise a recognizable wing of the
ACNA. Like the rest of the denomination, they are divided over the issue of
women’s ordination. They number both opponents and supporters in their ranks. While
Anglican Loyalists are not exclusively evangelical in their theological
outlook, evangelicals do form a sizeable contingent of Anglican Loyalists.
For many evangelicals a major sticking point in relation to
women in ordained ministry is Paul’s criticism of women discussing points of
doctrine with their husbands in public at church gatherings (so as to be heard
by other people) and openly voicing disagreement with them. To Paul their
conduct is unseemly for a wife who in his viewpoint is subordinate to her
husband and should maintain a respectful silence in public and to save her
questions about doctrine for when she and her husband are at home. The home is
the appropriate place for husbands to explain the fine points of doctrine to
their wives whom Paul assumes are mistaken in their understanding of such
points.
Paul does not entertain the possibility that the wife might
have a better grasp of a particular doctrine than the husband. In his letters one
encounters the inference that women are more prone to error than men. In 1
Timothy Paul warns Timothy against “godless myths and old wives' tales.” The
latter is an apparent reference to the body of superstitions and questionable
advice that older women were passing down to the younger generation and which
ran counter to the teaching of the Scriptures and his own teaching. The
inference is that women cannot be relied upon to transmit biblical truth and
principles to other people.
At the heart of Paul’s attitude toward women is the Genesis account
of Adam and Eve, their disobedience, and the consequences of that disobedience.
God warned both Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The
serpent tempted both of them to eat its fruit. Adam made no effort to stop Eve
from picking the fruit and ate it when Eve offered it to him. God expelled both
of them from the Garden of Eden, holding both of them responsible for
disobeying Him and not just Eve. In addition to their expulsion from the Garden
of Eden, God imposed a number of other consequences upon Adam and Eve for their
disobedience. They and their descendents would experience death. Adam would be
forced to till the earth for food. Eve would be forced to be subordinate to her
husband and to suffer the pain of child birth. Paul justifies the subordination
of wives to their husbands on this basis. It is noteworthy that Paul does not
prohibit them from making prophetic utterances, only contradicting their
husbands in public, in other words, acting in an insubordinate manner toward
their husbands.
Bear in mind that God did not create Eve to be subordinate
to Adam. He created her to be a companion and a helpmate. Genesis contains two
accounts of the creation of man and woman. In the first account God creates
Adam and Eve together. In the second account He forms Eve from one of Adam’s
ribs. While some interpreters of the Bible infer from the second account that women
were created to be subordinate to men, we do not encounter any reference to Eve’s
subordination to her husband Adam until after their expulsion from the Garden
of Eden and then as a consequence of her disobedience. The subordination of a
wife to a husband is a part of the humanity’s fallen state. It is not a
desirable state of affairs any more than the human proclivity to disobey God, which
is also a consequence of the Fall. This is one of a number of issues with which
evangelicals wrestle in regards to the ordination of women.
Among these issues is the issue of whether Paul’s
prescription of how married women should conduct themselves at church
gatherings is a blanket prohibition against women in positions of leadership in
the church. Evangelicals are divided over this issue. Some who are opposed to
women preaching at church gatherings for this particular reason are not opposed
to them teaching in Sunday School or leading small groups. When they are challenged
in regard to the incongruity of their position, they fall back on the argument
that Paul in describing the qualifications for elder-overseers and
deacon-ministers refers only to men. Yet it must be noted that while these
women Sunday School teachers and small group leaders are denied ordination,
they are functioning as elder-overseers and deacon-ministers. As others have
observed, if it was not for the women in these roles, a number of churches
would have no Sunday School teachers and small group leaders. Please note that
I am not arguing for or against women’s ordination but drawing attention to the
arguments made on both sides of the issue.
Anglo-Catholic objections to the ordination of women,
while no less complicated than that of evangelicals opposed to women’s
ordination, are different from their objections. They are tied to the Anglo-Catholic
understanding of the role of the priest in the church. This understanding is
informed largely by church tradition rather than Scripture.
One of the Anglo-Catholic arguments against the ordination
of women is that the priest is an icon of Jesus Christ, in other words, a stand
in for Christ himself, and a woman cannot fulfill that function because of her
gender. Christ was a man. This argument has no real basis in Scripture. The New
Testament recognizes only two priesthoods—the priesthood of Melchizedek, to
which Jesus Christ alone belongs, and the priesthood of all believers, to which
all believers, both men and women,
belong.
The New Testament is quite clear in stating that Christ’s
offering of himself on the cross was sufficient for the sins of the whole world
and that Christians do not need a priesthood, a segregated order of men to make
offerings for them to God and to act as mediators between them and God. Christ
himself is their all-sufficient mediator with God.
The idea that the spirit of Christ enters the priest at Mass
and offers himself to God in the form of bread and wine has no Scriptural
basis. It is based upon “the traditions of men” and bears a strong resemblance
to a number of pagan beliefs, including the possession of a priest by the god
whom he serves and the consumption of the god by his devotees under various
forms.
Another Anglo-Catholic argument against the ordination of
women is related to the Anglo-Catholic understanding of ordination itself. From
the Anglo-Catholic perspective a valid ordination requires the laying on hands
upon the candidate and in the case of a priest or bishop the anointing with oil
of the candidate by a bishop who himself was consecrated by at least one bishop
but preferably at least three bishops who stand in a line of bishops that
stretches all the way back to the apostles. With the imposition of hands and
the anointing with oil the bishop confers upon the candidate a special gift or
grace of the Holy Spirit, which only a bishop in such a succession of bishops
can do. This special gift or grace of the Holy Spirit originally came from
Christ through the apostles and has been passed down through the generations
from one bishop to the next in this succession of bishops. Only men may receive
this special gift or grace of the Holy Spirit, which in the case of priests
enables them to confer upon water the power to cleanse from sin and regenerate
those baptized in the water, to confect bread and wine into the Body and Blood
of Christ, and to remit sins, and in the case of bishops enables them to
consecrate bishops and to ordain priests.
This argument, like the previous argument, has no real basis
in Scripture. The New Testament does not limit the manifestations of the Holy
Spirit to the members of a particular gender. The New Testament also maintains
that the Holy Spirit, like the wind, blows where he wills. God is sovereign in matters
of upon whom he bestows the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He is not tied to any
actions on our part.
A third Anglo-Catholic argument against women’s ordination
is that the Church has no tradition of women priests. While some evidence does
exist for women priests in the early Church, it is confined to groups that if
they were not heretical in their beliefs were heterodox. This argument is the
strongest Anglo-Catholic argument against women’s ordination.
One explanation that is offered for the absence of women
elder-overseers in the early Church is the influence of the male-dominated
society of the ancient Mediterranean world upon early Christianity as well as
the influence of Judaism. But it must be noted that the ancient Mediterranean
world had its share of pagan religious cults in which priestesses and
prophetesses played an important role. The nature of these cults, often
associated with fertility, religious ecstasy, ritual madness, and other forms
of chaotic, dangerous, and unconventional behavior, however, may not have
commended women in a leadership role in the Church to the early Christians.
The early Christians did not use musical instruments at
their gatherings in part out of fear of discovery during times of persecution
but primarily due to their association with pagan religion and organized
prostitution. Flutes, hand drums, and stringed instruments were used to accompany
pagan sacrifices, chiefly to draw the attention of the particular god to the
sacrifice. The organ was used to entertain the patrons of Roman brothels while
they awaited the services of their favorite prostitute. The early Christians
would have been leery of women leaders for similar reasons.
The issue of women’s ordination is one of four issues that I see dividing the Anglican Church in North America. The second issue is the ACNA’s
official teaching and practices. In their present form they represent a major
departure from authentic historical Anglicanism and are antithetical to its
very spirit. The finalization of the proposed ACNA prayer book is likely to
prove the tipping point, especially if traditionalist Catholic Revivalist
clergy and congregations are denied the use of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
and the various Anglican Missals and Anglican Loyalist clergy and congregations
are denied the use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and more recent service
books that conform to the doctrinal and worship standards of the historic
Anglican formularies. This includes the option of developing their own forms of
service that respect these standards.
The third issue is related to church planting efforts of the
denomination, particularly to the scale of those efforts, the segments of the
unchurched population that will be targeted, and the kinds of churches that
will be planted. The church type that the proposed ACNA prayer book envisions
as forming the primary focus of ACNA church planting efforts is a conventional
parish church that is Catholic Revivalist in its doctrine and style of worship
and which has a relatively affluent congregation. It is organized around
the sacramental ministry of one or more priests. This church type requires a
high expenditure of human and financial resources to launch and maintain. As a
consequence the number of this type church will be limited as will their
location and the population segment that they serve. This type church also has
limited appeal in terms of the kinds of people it will attract. This appeal is
expected to diminish as the twenty-first century progresses.
The fourth issue involves the governance of the denomination
and the role of the laity in its governance. The present design of the ACNA’s
form of governance at the denominational level is a major departure from the reformed
model of ecclesiastical governance that has characterized the Anglican Church
since the English Reformation in the sixteenth century. In the reformed model
the laity in the form of the English Monarch and the English Parliament played
a significant role in the governance of the denomination. This included
determining the teaching and practices of the denomination as well as making
its canons and selecting its bishops. With the disestablishment of the Church of
Ireland and the formation of new Anglican provinces, a general synod of clergy
and lay representatives would take over the role of the English Monarch and the
English Parliament in a number of provinces.
In its present form the ecclesiastical polity of the ACNA
guarantees Catholic Revivalist control of a number of denominational
institutions, particularly the College of Bishops, while sidelining Anglican
Loyalists. It also excludes all but a select group of laity from participation
in decision-making that affects the denomination as a whole. Even if the
Anglican Loyalist wing grows in numbers through robust church planting efforts
and gains hegemony in a number of dioceses, this design gives the Catholic
Revivalist-dominated College of Bishops a veto over who may become the bishops
of these dioceses and does not prohibit the College from appointing as their
bishops Catholic Revivalist leaning clergy in place of the candidates elected
or nominated by the diocese.
Only clergy and laity
vetted and approved by the College of Bishops may serve on denominational
committees and task forces and only legislation reviewed and endorsed by the
College of Bishops may be considered by the Provincial Council. The last step
in the legislative process—the Provincial Assembly—cannot amend legislation submitted
to it for ratification. The Provincial Assembly may either ratify the
legislation, giving it the force of canon, or reject it, sending it back to the
Provincial Council. The denominational legislative process resembles that of
the Roman Catholic Church and of a number of communist and fascist regimes of
the twentieth century.
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