The Archbishop of Canterbury last night signalled his whole-hearted backing for women bishops as the Church of England prepares to debate the issue at a key meeting in York next week.
Dr Rowan Williams made one of his most strongest interventions to date in support of women in the episcopate at a meeting of the Methodist church.
“My hope and prayer is that we shall see women ordained as bishops in the Church of England,” he told more than 300 ministers and laity at the Methodist Conference in Portsmouth.
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Women bishops is an issue which threatens to split the Church in England even more deeply than the vote to ordain women priests in 1992 and is regarded as more of a challenge in this country than the issue of gay clergy which has split the US Episcopal Church. If the General Synod fails to find a just solution for all sides of the Church at General Synod in York next week, dozens of Anglican clergy could defect to the new Anglican Ordinariate, a Catholic body instigated by the Pope for disaffected Anglicans to find an ecclesial home while retaining key aspects of their liturgies and traditions. The Ordinariate is in the process of being set up by the Catholic bishops of England and Wales.
Dr Williams said the discussions next week were “crucial” to the debate and pleaded for the Methodists to pray for his Church.
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Dr Williams said: “My hope and prayer is also that we do that in a way that does not so violently disrupt some of our common life and some important features of it that we actually lose one another in the process.
“How to do that has exercised the brains and hearts of Anglicans rather a lot. And that won’t stop soon. Yes we will have some mess afterwards but making that mess something other than rancorous and resentful - I think that is what I would like to see.” Referring to the Apostle Peter’s style of dealing with Church problems, which Dr Williams also described as “messy”, he said: “I am quite prepared to be Petrine for quite a long time on that one.”
He went on to praise the role of women in the early Church, in particular Mary Magdaelene. “The role of women in the Church from the very beginning has been a wonderfully destabilising element,” he said. “That has been part of the creative, Catholic mess of the Church.”
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He thought the Church would look very different in 20 years. “I hope our attitudes to ministry will be different.” He hoped the Church of the future would consist of more than just “the ordained and the rest.”
He did not refer directly to the issue of homosexuality.
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But asked whether the constant debates over particular issues actually put people off, the Archbishop defended the Church’s right to debate. Debate was built into the Church. “Yes it is embarrassing and sometimes we seem to be interested in things that Christ shows very little interest in,” he said. But the implications of the Christian faith meant that dissension was inevitable.
He spoke of the different styles of St Paul and St Peter in managing conflict in the early Church. “Confrontation is not the end of the story and compromise is not the end of the story. The apostolic witness embraces both.”
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One Methodist minister asked the Archbishop how to respond to a neighbouring Anglican vicar who tells him repeatedly that he does not recognise his orders. Dr Williams advised: “You pray for him just as you pray for all the people who make your life difficult. Once in a while you might like to remind him you are baptised together.”
Methodists are debating controversial issues such as Israel-Palestine and will vote today on a report that recommends a boycott of Israeli goods from the West Bank. Internal controversy centres around the distribution of Church funds. There is also conflict between traditional worship forms and new styles of mission such as a joint Methodist-Church of England initiative, Fresh Expressions. Dr Williams, referring to some of these issues, said that even if he were to recommend solutions to the Methodists, “You would probably pay as little attention as my own Church does.”
Dr Williams and the Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu have been criticised by some supporters of women’s ordination for their compromise deal to appease traditionalists in a bid to stop them leaving the Church of England for Rome. The Archbishops’ amendment puts forward the new concept of “coordinate bishops” designed to minister to traditionalists in dioceses with liberal or female diocesan bishops but without undermining episcopal authority or church unity. It will be debated with dozens of others at a four-day meeting of the General Synod which begins next Friday.
Later this week the Methodist Conference will debate a report that condemns the use of weapons of mass destruction as “immoral” and calls on nuclear states not to update their arsenals. Dr Williams said he was “baffled” that any Christian could support Trident and challenged the Government on its renewal and questioned why Britain needed “a more expensive way of unaccountable slaughter.”