Why men should head the church

Although I have enjoyed a quiet faith since my early teens I never intended to get ordained into the Church of England: as a secondary school teacher in Cambridge I felt that my gifts were best suited to teaching algebra and quadratic equations.

But when the Bible Club that I ran during lunch break, was closed down by my Teachers’ Union because of industrial action in the late 1980s, I realised that I far preferred teaching the Bible to mathematics. So I tentatively pushed the door of theological training in the Church of England and was somewhat surprised to be accepted for training at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford.

When I started the three-year course in 1990, the only opportunity open to women at that time was to be ordained as a deacon. Two years later, on November 11 1992, that all changed when General Synod accepted the measure to ordain women as priests. I remember the day very clearly: a good friend said to me: ‘Carrie, I’ll be a bishop within 20 years.’ She, like the majority of women in my year, saw the ordination of women priests as a stepping-stone to something far greater. A few found it problematic — they wavered about the rights and wrongs of being ordained to the priesthood when that wasn’t what they had set out to do. For me, the decision was very simple as I was as much opposed to the ordination of women priests then, as I am opposed to the possibility of women bishops now.

Strangely, back then my peers were very tolerant of my views. Although I was in the minority at college, I recall one friend who very much supported the ordination of women to the priesthood saying to me: ‘Don’t let this push you out of the Church of England.’ But 13 years on, I find people are less tolerant. They think I should have ‘seen the light’ and ‘joined their side’ by now. Instead, I stand resolutely where I have always stood.

Paul’s teaching

Old fashioned as it may sound, it is my theological conviction that the ordination of women to the priesthood is wrong. There are various biblical passages that lead me to this belief, the most significant of them being St. Paul’s teaching in 1 Timothy where he does not allow women to teach or to have authority over men, this being within the context of church meetings and church structures. My critics would say that St. Paul’s words must be reinterpreted according to our culture — for example, women in his day were not educated as they are today — but I am as unconvinced by their argument as they are by mine. St. Paul’s teachings are not based on the prevailing culture of his time but on the pattern of created order. Adam was formed first and then Eve. This ordering of relationships should be echoed in the nuclear family as well as in God’s family, the church.

Both needed

In a perfect world, both a father figure and a mother figure should nurture a child. In the same way the people of God should be nurtured by both men and women, with men providing the overall leadership — not because they are superior to women but because that is how God has ordered things. Men are needed to provide good role models for men and boys, and women are needed to provide good role models for women and girls. The Bible argues that there are particular roles designated for men within marriage and the church and there are certain roles that should be played by women. They are complementary roles, as both need each to adequately nurture those in their care. By ordaining women to the priesthood we have encouraged them to take on leadership roles in the church that should be reserved for men and, as such, are denying God’s children of the clear and concise roles that the two sexes play in the nurturing process.

Equal but different

By adhering to gender roles within the Church I am not promoting inequality. Society seems determined to define equality by eradicating gender differences; the challenge for the Church is to model equality and diversity at the same time. It is perfectly possible to be equal but have different functions. You would not say of a father, for example, that because he didn’t bear his children that he is not equal to their mother. I have worked alongside men for over 11 years and I do not see myself as ‘below’ them or inferior to them — we both serve God in different ways. Nor do I apply these beliefs to the world of work as a whole — I am in full support of women taking on leadership roles outside the Church context.

My objections go further than the family. If the years since the ordination of women to the priesthood have shown us anything, it should be that if women are given too prominent a role then the church in time will become emasculated. Men will be driven out of the church if women are too prominent within it and won’t be drawn into it if men are too scarce. If a parish church in the middle of leafy Devon wants to reach men, it will not do so through a woman priest. If you want to reach men, you need men to reach them.

Women bishops

When and if the vote goes through to permit women Bishops, I will be more disappointed than I was in 1992. Theo-logically, my reasons for disappointment remain the same — I will see it as a sign that the Church of England is once again moving away from what I understand to be the clear teaching of the Bible. But pragmatically, the issue raises a new and bigger problem in that I would in-evitably have to answer to a woman bishop myself. I was involved briefly in the Rochester Commission (the report written by the Bishop of Rochester and others on the issue of women Bishops which is currently being discussed by General Synod) and I made it clear that the church must make provision for people like me. At the very least, alternative Episcopal oversight — the system of ‘flying’ bishops where clergy can answer to a bishop other than the one in charge of their diocese — must be extended to those who cannot, in all conscience, accept women bishops.

The Rev. Carrie Sandom,
formerly a deacon at St. Andrew the Great, Cambridge, and currently working in the parishes of Henham, Elsenham and Ugley, near Bishop’s Stortford, Herts.