Church of England votes against woman bishops

[PDH]

Yeah, why are you skimping on the ancient matriarchal religions?

I give them their full historical due.

[crazy canuck]

This kind of thing is getting dumb. A lot of Christians want to emphasize 21st century values to make their religion more palatable. I'm an actual Christian, a Catholic matter-of-fact, and the simple truth is much of Christian doctrine does not jive with 21st century ideals of equality. Church doctrine and even Christian theology is not about or even promoting of gender equality in the Church hierarchy. (Doctrine also clearly states in Galatians that all are equal in salvation.) Genuine Christianity however cannot, if you read scripture at its face value, treat women and men as equal in business of the Church. You can gnash your teeth and be mad about it or not, but at the end of the day I wish these atheists-in-all-but-name that still go to churches and advocate basically unchristian things would stop calling themselves Christians, it deludes the brand.

Christianity was never intended to be easy, it wasn't supposed to be something you could sign up for casually as some sort of faddish thing. It's supposed to be hard. Fasting is supposed to be often, for example, and most have simply abandoned that. Even Orthodox Christians, who I greatly respect for their adherence to some traditions despite their unpopularity, have mostly gone soft on fasting.

If Christianity just changes with all the social changes, then you might as well stop calling it Christianity. I'd rather have a 95% atheist world with 5% true Christians than a bunch of CINOs running around with modern, incompatible views on the Church.

I love it.  A new round of the literalist orthodox against the rest.  Its so 400-500 AD

[CountDeMoney]

Do any of you snot-nosed, smug monkeys ever take theology, or are all your philosophy courses restricted to the post-industrial atheists?

No, don't read up on the history of western civilization without its most influential institution or anything, that would be wrong.  AUGUSTINE WAS A HIPPO

OK but if you are going to take that line, you can't pick and choose your theological history.

Don't gimme that shit, Rabbi.  We're talking about one of the fundamental premises here, not some obscure facet of the christological controversy.

The fact is that the role of women in the Christianity and very status of the Church itself was a live issue of debate and controversy from the very beginning.  It took several hundred years for the Catholic position on all those issues to become established doctrine, something that was accomplished not just by argument but also by brute force.

Brute force. :torquemadarolleyes:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[derspiess]

Hey Torquemada, whaddya say?

[dps]

By leadership, I mean that mothers were the primary drivers - from what I understand - of the religion in the homes. That has, often, proven to be what maintains a religion far more so than any particular priest/priestess.

I've always assumed that's why modern Jews trace their ancestory matrilinearly.

[Sheilbh]

And it is not purely a discrimination of employment for reasons I already stated - because these people hold legislative functions. If law stated that women cannot be elected to the parliament or be ministers then it would also be much more than a "discrimination in employment".

That's not really an accurate comparison though.  In terms of the legislators point, there are 92 hereditary peers who are drawn from a group subject to sexist inheritance rights.  In this country, at this point, the male succeeds to the throne even if a female's born first (Princess Anne v Prince Charles). 

And are you seriously asking why having one religion singled out by giving it a right to send its representatives to the legislature violates equality under law and freedom of religion? This is bleeding obvious.

Yes.  How does it?  Ideally with examples.

England has operated under the rule of law for many centuries, the fact that some of those laws were rather obnoxious is irrelevant, the point is that the place has not been run as a despotism or dictatorship. The whole point of the Civil War, for example, was that the King was not abiding by the rule of law and may have been attempting to set up an absolute monarchy, it was why he was deposed.

You can go more modern than that.  The classic example is apartheid South Africa which had the rule of law and a horrible, racist and anti-democratic system of government.  As an aside I really recommend (Lord) Tom Bingham's Rule of Law.  It's very good and I think you'd enjoy it.

The fact is that the role of women in the Christianity and very status of the Church itself was a live issue of debate and controversy from the very beginning.  It took several hundred years for the Catholic position on all those issues to become established doctrine, something that was accomplished not just by argument but also by brute force.

The big issue with bishops (which doesn't exist with the priesthood) is the theology of apostolic succession which the CofE believe in and believes itself to be part of.  Apparently a former Archbishop of York thought that the CofE should've allowed female bishops twenty years ago to deal with that problem, but only allowed female priests more recently