Tuesday 13 July 2010

Women Bishops

The vote has been cast but we won't see any Women Bishops until 2014!
I was thrilled with the decision but saddened by much of the discussion, what many who were against were trying to explain was that this would be going against tradition - nothing about what the bible says!
I spent a very long breakfast with Christina Rees at a conference led by 'CBE' (Christians for Biblical Equality), 'WATCH' (Women And The CHurch) and 'MWG' (Men Women and God).
At the conference there was a paper presented on Romans 16:7. "Andronicus and Junia... they are prominent among the apostles." A man and a woman!
The Authorised version has Junia, as does William Tyndale's 1526 translation, but in more recent translations such as the commonly used NIV, 'Junia' has been changed to 'Junias' - a made up name with a masculine feel to it!
There were female apostles and Paul wrote about at least one!
When the decision to have women priests was made, my Roman Catholic female friends were horrified at the thought of the traditionalist Anglican priests defecting to them - they were not against them as Anglicans but their views on women priests!

We Baptists may have been ordaining women for eighty years, and have the equivalent of a woman bishop but as it is the membership of each church which decides on who will be their minister, our number of women ministers is still quite low.
Why is it that the church which should be at the forefront, stills lags behind on the question of equality?

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