The Church in Wales and Women Bishops

The 12^th of September 2013, was a momentous day for the Church in Wales, which, along with the Anglican Church in Scotland and Ireland, will now see women as bishops in the foreseeable future. There is great cause for celebration even though the appointment of a woman to the episcopate may not actually take place here for some time, given the scarcity of episcopal vacancies. So women and their supporters in the Church in Wales have time to prepare, as people who now know what winning feels like and who have also known what it is to lose.

There should be no losers or winners in the aftermath of this vote, any more than there were losers and winners at the foot of the Cross. We are all ‘losers’, in that context, and we are all winners when we hear our names called by the risen Christ outside the empty tomb. So this life changing vote must also be a vote which transforms the way we hear and understand calling. It must be the beginning of the transformation of our life together as it frees us all to be better priests and bishops, both for one another and for the people we are called to serve, the latter being the ones who matter most.

Paying attention to calling changes the way we celebrate this historic event because it obliges us to hear Christ calling the whole of his Church. Until now, it has been hard to hear this call to the whole community of God in the Church in Wales. It seems that it has only been possible to hear him call certain groups or individuals, depending on whose side one was on with regard to the consecration of women to the episcopacy and, before that, of their ordination to the priesthood. Now we must hear Christ in an entirely new way, a way which celebrates freedom. But there cannot be freedom while there is still fear, so there will only be real cause for celebration when the fear that is still hanging over many people in regard to women’s ministry is overcome by the slow process of building trust. Freedom is not really freedom while there are still people who cannot let go of the past and move on to what is still an uncertain future. We cannot realistically talk of love overcoming fear until trust has been established, and by trust I mean trusting the new situation and being realistic about it.

Some people will continue to feel the hurt of the past and may take a while to heal. Healing comes about when individuals take the trouble to form real friendships across the barriers which still divide them – as well as checking that the friendships they already have are in good heart, that there is no ‘unfinished business’. There needs to be truth telling and truth hearing for real healing to be effected, both across party divisions, and between women themselves. As women, we shall need to take time to reflect on our own individual callings and on what the priesthood in the Church in Wales should now mean for everyone. It will involve asking certain questions of ourselves: Is our love genuine? Do we live richly towards one another? How can we live richly towards those who still cannot accept our ministry? How can we live richly towards God in the new world that is opening up before the Church?

Living richly towards others can only happen when we are resourced by the grace which comes with a lived experience of God’s forgiveness and acceptance. It is only when a person has known God’s forgiveness in the fullest sense that he or she is really free. Experiencing forgiveness means being released from a ‘stress position’, as it is termed in certain notorious places of captivity. We have all been held in a ‘stress position’, by a status quo that has endured too long and has done much damage to our relationships and to the credibility of our Church and of the Gospel itself. So it is the whole Church which needs to experience this forgiveness and the healing and acceptance which comes with it. Now is the time to begin this work with reverence for one another and in the fear of God.