One summer Sunday afternoon in 1988, I was in the provost’s vestry of Bradford Cathedral, assisting the Bishop of Bradford to robe. I often did this, since as the junior member of clergy I was the bishop’s chaplain when he visited the cathedral. What was out of the ordinary that day was the group of people gathered there. Along with the bishop, Roy Williamson, and the Provost, Brandon Jackson, were David Penman, Archbishop of Melbourne (Australia); and Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town (South Africa). The latter two were in England for the Lambeth Conference. Archbishop Tutu was scheduled to preach at the cathedral evensong before we all went on to a mass rally at Valley Parade football ground, where Archbishop Tutu would be speaking again.
This group of powerful men began discussing the vexed question of women’s ordination. South Africa and Australia had ordained their first women deacons in 1985; England in 1987. None yet ordained women as priests. The great men were discussing if and when women should be admitted to the priesthood. I listened meekly until Desmond Tutu concluded, ‘There’s no hurry.’ I spoke on impulse: ’Time passes slowly when you’re being oppressed, doesn’t it, Archbishop?’ There was a short silence. Without replying, the men turned to other topics.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa eventually ordained women as priests in 1992, as did the Anglican Church of Australia. The Church of England followed in 1994.
I have recounted that incident in the provost’s vestry to very few people. To tell the truth, I was embarrassed at the part I had played in it; I felt that I had been impertinent to speak out as I did. After all I was a very junior member of clergy and these men were all very senior.
A few months ago, however, I did relate it to Christina Rees CBE, a founding member of the Archbishops’ Council and formerly Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church) and a member of the General Synod for 25 years. Christina had a very different take on it. It was extraordinary, she pointed out, that a group of men should discuss women’s ordination while totally ignoring the ordained (and robed) woman who was with them. Even Desmond Tutu, a noted civil rights activist, had not thought to recognise my presence or ask for my views. I was not acknowledged even when I spoke.
The idea of deference to rank was so deeply ingrained in the Church that even a good man Like Tutu could discuss women’s ordination in front of an ordained woman while completely ignoring her. They certainly did not think they had anything to gain by hearing my perspective on the matter. The arrogance of this ought to be breathtaking, yet it betrays something of the culture of the Church.
In my first year of training at Wycliffe there were only 5 of us women, and 95 men. My fellow trainee Lynda Rose recounted an incident which occurred during a mission she was on in the spring of 1985. One of the local people enquired of the tutor leading the group whether the Wycliffe women then training to be deacons had aspirations to the priesthood. No, he replied immediately, they hadn’t. Lynda promptly responded that actually all 5 of us felt we were called to be priests. When the incident was discussed later the tutor’s reaction was, ‘Don’t discuss women’s ordination, it’s a minefield!’ None of the teaching staff had asked the women students regarding our vocations; they simply assumed that we didn’t want to be priests. And the lesson the tutor had taken from this was not, ‘I shouldn’t assume I know what people think before I’ve asked them,’ or even, ‘Next time I’m asked for someone’s views, I’ll let them speak for themselves.’ Instead he had labelled the whole topic as dangerous and to be avoided. Women are tricky, let’s not discuss them!
In my files I have an order paper from a long-ago General Synod, which was due to discuss the report ‘Making Women Visible’. The debate was listed instead as ‘Making Women Invisible’ – a typo which was perhaps a more honest reflection of the Church of England’s intentions.
My recent reflections have not concerned merely the behaviour of the prelates in the provost’s vestry, however. In 1988 I was already a feminist and I later became an activist, but for more than 30 years I had never questioned my feeling that I should not have spoken out. In fact, my shame at having done so had kept me silent all that time. I have come to see that that too is extraordinary. I come from a nonconformist and independent-minded background and had had none of the awe of the hierarchy with which many Anglicans are brought up; yet in barely a year I had internalised the view that women and junior clergy should be invisible and inaudible. No doubt my critics will say I was never very good at being silent, but the fact remains that for the whole of my ministry I felt uneasy and even guilty whenever I spoke out. And I was all too aware of the disapproval of my seniors when I did so.
IICSA identified deference as one of the reasons why abuse could so tragically flourish in our Church. It is so much a part our Church’s culture – and that of the Anglican Communion as a whole – that usually we don’t even think to question it. But it corrodes our sense of common humanity and impedes justice; what in biblical terms is called ‘righteousness’.
Deference to Peter Ball’s rank as bishop, his class and social standing, along with his immense personal magnetism, hindered many from discerning his narcissism or believing the allegations against him. Ball was a bishop and a bishop would not do such evil things. Deference means that college tutors don’t have to value their ordinands’ experience outside the Church. Deference means that bishops can pronounce on all sorts of matters of which they have no real experience, while ignoring the perspective of those who do. Deference prevents Church leaders from accepting what survivors of Church abuse have to offer.
Let’s put an end to deference. It’s destructive.
Quite wonderful Janet. Well done. Not wishing in any way to dilute your message, it’s my experience that ALL juniors are oppressed. That was so in medicine and in academia, and when I became Head of Department I made sure my juniors’ views were heeded along with everyone else’s. I discovered early on that that the most important people in departmental well-being and efficiency were not my academic colleagues, but the technical and secretariat staff. The church is in the Stone Age.
I was interviewed for a minor management position (which I didn’t get) and said among my stated aims that I would involve junior staff by including all members of our (small) department in regular team meetings. At that time only a handful of ‘senior’ people attended these. The interviewer’s reply was “You do realise that this is a management position”.
A colleague of mine used to label this attitude as treating people as being ‘below the salt’. I think, and hope, that things have changed.
Novel experience! Having ideas below your station!
Let’s rid the church of pompous titles. Rev, Very Rev, Rt Rev, Most Rev, Increasingly Rev (Runcie on Parkinson), Ven. The church is obsessed by them. Even chatty monthly letters are headed “From the Very Rev xxx”. I call my bishop by his Christian name face to face and in informal communication, and formally “Dear Bishop”. As a Professor I asked students to call me by my name: Professor was a job title. Some did so.
Thank you Janet. As a Reader, and a former verger, I too have often experienced clergy talking in front of the servants! Clergy and Readers shouldn’t meet together because lay people don’t understand. Clergy and Readers can’t ever really be friends… this round my dinner table! And as a woman, men discussing all male choirs!! Like you, I do speak out. Like you, it’s followed by a silence. And then feel embarrassed about doing so! I’ve only twice had a Bishop introduce themselves by their first names.
Janet, I forgot to say, I actually laughed at the thought of your speaking out in front of all those big wigs! I’m glad you put their noses out of joint!
Fine article – point well made. Thanks Janet.
Thank you Janet- could relate to this well as a lay preacher, and recently as a Reader I was allowed to lead prayers at a friend’s funeral in a neighbouring evangelical church so long as I didn’t robe or look like I had a ministry. I was surprised at Tutu, but, as you say, the culture of deference needs its glass ceiling to come down!
That’s offensive!
The anecdotes supplied on this thread are instructive. I was a [not very effective] churchwarden for a few years and our resident stipendiary priest (who only had charge of about 500 or so souls, of whom about 20 consistently attended church) would only speak to me for more than a few seconds once every six months or so. I imagined I must be part of the lumber, but at length I decided to quit that church and become a peripatetic.
As James I and VI remarked, ‘no bishops, no king’. In other words the ecclesiastical hierarchy is essential to the maintenance of a secular hierarchy and vice versa. The two hierarchies have affirmed and upheld each other, and we cannot be certain that has necessarily helped the development of English society (though, of course, class stratification has arguably been as, or more, severe in a number of societies where clerical hierarchies have long since been abolished). However, let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that deference has been anything other than integral to the Church and its offshoots since this country was first Christianised.
However, the logical corollary of the argument that an episcopal hierarchy is of scant worth is that the whole clerical order might be called into question. Who is anyone to presume they are entitled to a leadership role, whether at a parish or diocesan level? What insolence [perhaps]! I have encountered a great many SSMs, readers, pastoral assistants, churchwardens, treasurers and other laity who hold no position whatever, who provide as much or – in many instances – notably greater value added, and are somewhat more Christian in their daily lives, that the local paid clergy (whilst they are also, not infrequently, better pastors, better preachers and nicer people).
I am not anti-clerical per se, but I have argued elsewhere that the concept of paid ministry is increasingly unaffordable, so anything that diminishes barriers between ordained and lay churchpeople, and which allows the latter to flourish, can only be for the good.
Froghole: “the concept of paid ministry is increasingly unaffordable”. Indeed. More and more incumbencies are being replaced by House for Duty ministers and part-timers. HfDs won’t last, I think, because as pensions become more fragile, fewer clerics will be able to afford to take one. And the age profile of those taking them means that the posts will be vacant within, say, ten years (if that), and there’s no evidence of a cohort to replace them. The cohort of mature women ordained over the last decade will soon be gone too, and I can’t see their daughters being as willing as they were to be put-upon by a misogynistic organisation.
This diocese, Lichfield, has just announced that one of the cathedral residentiary canonries is to be filled HfD. Is this a first? Does it have financial significance?
But fret not. Renewal and Reform will doubtless be a great success at Synod next month, and discussions about why there are no children will be fruitful. (We all know of many reasons why there are no children, but doubtless a working party will be appointed to report in 2025.)
… I hear on the grapevine that Sheffield diocese is considering culling stipendiary clergy.
Sorry about this: yes, the information pack for prospective Archdeacons of Doncaster says 92.5 now but, if present trends continue, only 75 will be affordable in 2029. Sheffield is doubtless not the only diocese that will see such a culling, so why is the CoE training so many new priests? Are they all to be non-stipendiary? If so, do they know that?
From the glorious twelfth? Or immediately?
https://www.sheffield.anglican.org/UserFiles/File/Vacancies/AoD-Job-Person-spec-2019-FINAL-23.12.19.pdf
page 4 onwards
The army has a practice of asking the most junior person present at a meeting to speak first. That way he or she will not simply agree with the top brass for fear of contradicting a superior.
As is the practice of the UK Supreme Court when deliberating after the conclusion of the oral arguments.
An excellent example.
My experience suggests that the church does not use its Readers properly, or enough.
Thank you so much for this, Janet. I am sad and angry that so many of my sisters have had to face so much prejudice while fulfilling their calling. Kind of worse when a brother from another oppressed minority also silences you when you might hope for some solidarity. Doesn’t totally surprise; in the 80s I worked with ANC &PAC activists here in UK, and the Afrikan sisters that I met were total warriors yet the men kept them in second place. They expected to be relegated back to childcare and cooking after the revolution.
Totally agree about deference. I was constantly challenging that (and clericalism) as a lay DYO. It’s the toxic combination of deference and misogyny that keeps the vulnerable silent- women, children, lay people, disabled people, LGBT people, people with mental distress, BAME people; and of course those pesky victims of abuse…
Great practice. Ask a child at the next church meeting
Thank you all for your support. I’ll post her what I’ve just posted on Thinking Anglicans:
I don’t consider that Desmond Tutu was any more to blame than the other men in the vestry. Indeed, as an overseas visitor he may have felt it necessary to fit in with what he perceived to be local custom.
What I am trying to say is that in the Church (and elsewhere in British culture) we have a problem with institutionalised disregard of anyone perceived to be less important. When we moved from the USA to the UK in 1974 I was struck that waitresses and shop assistants were hardly acknowledged, whereas in the USA they were generally treated as equals.
I’ve noticed also that in England this deference is more pronounced among men than among women, who are usually more egalitarian (unless they’ve been socialised into the ways of the C of E). John Bell speaks of being in a church meeting, mostly men, where the chair and officers sat at a table facing serried ranks of committee members. He then went to a women’s meeting in the same building, where all the women were sitting in a circle with no visible leader. He preferred the women’s meeting.
Our attitude to deference in the Church is not a gospel value. It’s things like this we should be challenging, not the issues on which some of our leaders get their knickers into a twist over.
What I hope emerges are some good stories of how Justin Welby and others practice this change around deference he says he desires. I’ve heard people say great values which have not been followed through – particularly in more awkward circumstances