The Anglican Approach

Clergy Questions - Advent 2003

Is the Bible right when it says "As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church." (1 Cor 14:33bff)? If so, is it wrong for women and girls to sing in the choir and say Amen when taking communion?
- Heather Jones

Now then, gentlemen, what would you have me say to this? This is a superb question, and our approach to it gets to the very heart of how we are to discern God's will for our age.

In fact, this question has given me the idea for another course of study groups, based on the recent publication of the Doctrine Commission called Being Human. It is subtitled, A Christian understanding of personhood illustrated with reference to power, money, sex, and time. I wonder which session will be the most popular?! This report is very good in beginning by considering how we are to do theology, to gain wisdom, to discern God's will. You see, how we address Heather's question relates very much to how we address questions such as the one raging about homosexuality; questions that have the capacity from time to time to tear the church apart. We saw this a few years ago in relation to women's status with the specific question of women's ordination.

We can take pride in the Anglican way of addressing such questions, and I truly believe that we have something distinctive and of inestimable value to offer the rest of the Church, and indeed the rest of humanity. True, this doesn't always make life easy for us, but that doesn't mean to say that it lacks integrity. The pain of argument and the threat of schism is made worse, though, when we have dogmatic extremes within our fold who claim to know more about the will of God than others. We can always be sure of one thing, when people tell us that they are absolutely sure about the will of God, then they are absolutely misguided. And so there is need for humility and patience on every side.

How are we to do our theology? How are we to address Heather's question? Be quite clear of this, and be proud of it, the Anglican way is to rest on what we call the three pillars of Anglicanism: Scripture, Tradition and Reason. We look to see what wisdom and revelation can be discerned in scripture. We then look to how this has been interpreted and used within the history of the Church. Finally, being informed by all of that, we use our own God-given reason to work out what it all means in practice for our 21st century English society. And all of this is done within the context of a community of believers who are committed to regular worship, prayer and bible study together. Unless the church worships and learns together, it cannot do its theology.

When it comes to scripture, then, we have to accept that for what it is, and not for what it is not. Scripture bears witness to how some people have perceived the reality of the living God in their lives, to how they have made sense of their lives in relation to God. It cannot be taken literally in every part, there is not one consistent theology throughout it, and some aspects of it tell us more about the society of the time than they do about the will of God for us now. What St. Paul says about women should, I believe, be regarded in this way. And I assume that every woman without a hat this morning agrees with me. In fact, critical study of this letter indicates the verses in question to be a later comment in the margin, probably not by Paul. But don't misunderstand my main point here, such a reality check regarding Scripture is not inconsistent with the belief that the Bible is true and that it contains divine revelation: it is and it does.

Leaving tradition, for the moment, when it comes to our use of reason, this necessitates taking into account a whole host of facts which cannot be ignored. Remaining with the example of women, in St. Paul's day, they were merely the relatively uneducated means by which men produced babies. Reason tells us that this must have influenced how their status was perceived. Now, of course, we have experienced the II War, when women did many jobs once done by men. We live with the benefits of contraception. Female monarchs and prime ministers are not foreign to us. Women are demonstrably as intelligent and wise as men are - so my wife says! Reason dictates, then, that before God we cannot ignore these developments or regard them as counter to God's will.

When it comes to tradition, we believe God revealed himself in Christ. St. Luke particularly bears witness to Jesus' respect and regard for women. We stand within a tradition that believes that Christ revealed God to be a God who loves all people equally. The use of a version of the Bible such as ours, with its inclusive language, helps to emphasise that Christ's saving work was for all people without any distinction.

The Anglican approach of Scripture, tradition and reason, then, really does compel us to acknowledge the status of women within the church and society as equal to that of men (not that we would dare to do any other!). So I'm sorry, ladies, you can't leave the choir. Like us men, you are to stand before God, regarding yourselves as neither inferior nor superior to anyone else, and as having equal right to dare to whisper in God's presence.

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