Women in the Church

BBC Radio 2 is holding its annual Faith in the World week. And this year it is focusing on the role (or lack of?) of women in religion. As part of this, this week the Pause for thought on the Chris Evans show is given by a woman.

On Monday 24th Rev Canon Ann Easter was the speaker. She's a regular and is good value. But I have to admit to getting a bit annoyed at what she was saying yesterday. She was talking about the church not having been accepting of women for many hundreds of years. And I was with her there.

But as the talk progressed she seemed to substitute talking about the church (meaning the body of Christ, the church universal) for the Church of England.

Now the Church of England's atitude to women in ministry is still very poor in my opinion. Why 20 years after the ordination of women as priests they are still faffing around about women bishops is beyond me. Especially when in other parts of the Anglican communion there are women bishops.

But Canon Ann, the Church of England is not representative of the whole church. I know Anglicans tend to have that imperialist view but you know there are other denominations. And there are other denominations with a far better track record in terms of women in ministry - at least over the last 40 or so years. Denominations such as the United Reformed Church and the Methodist Church for example.

So Canon Ann I'm with you entirely about the way the Church of England treats women ministers. And the lack of progress towards women bishops. But please remember that the Church of England is not the church. It is part of Christ's body.