Tuesday 20 November 2012

General Synod vote on Women Bishops


Today in General Synod the vote to proceed to allow women to become bishops was lost. It is a devastating blow to the church. It is causing immense pain and frustration within the church and dramatically undermines the mission of the church in the world. I feel exhausted and very, very sad. But I want to share some thoughts.

The vote was lost because it needed a two-thirds majority in each of the houses of laity, clergy and bishops. We need to remember that there was a clear majority in each of the houses but the laity didn't achieve the two-thirds that was needed.


Whilst more than two thirds voted for the legislation in both the House of Bishops (44-03) and the House of Clergy (148-45), the vote in favour of the legislation in the House of Laity was less than two-thirds (132-74). The vote in the House of Laity fell short of approval by six votes.
In total 324 members of the General Synod voted to approve the legislation and 122 voted to reject it.
If 6 of the laity had voted for instead of against then it would have been passed. If the vote represented the general view in the church I would be disappointed but not as angry as I am. This vote is not representative of the views in the church generally. I can only really comment in detail on the situation in Manchester diocese where something like 10% of our parishes take a stance against the ministry of women. Our synod representatives have 1 out of 6 clergy who are against - over representation but good to have the minority view there but HALF of our lay reps are against, a large over representation. How does this happen? General Synod reps are elected by Deanery Synod reps who don't generally know who the candidates are. Many candidates keep quiet about their real views. Many Conservative parishes get themselves more voters by having inflated electoral rolls. I suspect that the people on their rolls are real people but many have very tenuous links to the church. So what do we need to do? 

The next General Synod needs to be more representative of the wider church with more progressive people in the house of laity. This means that we progressives need to be more organised, more political. We need to be better at getting people on to our electoral rolls (we renew these next year), we need to get good, wise people onto our Deanery Synods (next election in 2014) and we need to ensure that voters know the stance of all the candidates at the next General Synod elections (these will be in 2015). I feel sad that I have to be thinking like this but I am even sadder that the church is not able to allow women to take a full role yet. 

And of course, frustrated as I feel I need to remember that the vast majority of General Synod DID vote to allow women to be bishops!