Britain erupts at the C of E’s failure to approve female ordination

Mark Richardson sums up the outraged response of the entire British establishment to the Church of England’s rejection of the ordination of female bishops. (The bishops and the clergy supported it, but the laity fell just short of the two-thirds majority required to pass it.) Most revealing is the remark of the outgoing archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

“We have – to put it very bluntly – a lot of explaining to do…. [I]t seems as if we are wilfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of [the] wider society.”

Richardson comments:

Would a serious Christian really adopt such a stance? Would such a person make “the priorities of secular society” the basis for deciding important issues within the church?

The affair is also a reminder of just how committed the UK establishment is to liberalism - liberalism is clearly being treated here as the higher authority or the superior principle to which Christian institutions must be subordinated and brought into line….

But if liberalism is the ruling principle … then wouldn’t a serious-minded person commit [himself] to following the superior principle (liberalism) rather than the lesser one (Christianity)?

But, I ask, why is there any controversy? Under Britain’s totalitarian Equality Law (the repeal of which not a single prominent “conservative” in Britain advocates), no discrimination by race, sex, or sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services in Great Britain is permitted, period. Remember that in 2007 the government refused to grant an exemption to Catholic adoption agencies, thus forcing them to adopt to same-sex couples, and as a result the adoption agencies closed their doors. But evidently there has been, up to this point, an exemption granted to the Church of England regarding the ordination of female bishops, and now, as a result of the C of E’s shocking vote, the powers that be are threatening to remove that exemption.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 24, 2012 12:18 PM | Send