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How’s your French? I first realised that there was a difference between objective reality and our perception of it in the 1960s, when listening to a pop song by Antoine called ‘Madame Laure, Messenger de Dieu’. Here are the lyrics:
Madame Laure Messenger habitait une grande maison
Vide où elle gardait pour seuls compagnons
Deux poissons rouges fort jolis
Qu’elle nommait Claude et JérémieMadame Laure Messenger soignait fort bien ses poissons
Tous les jours, à cinq heures, elle changeait avec précaution
L’eau du grand bocal brillant
Claude et Jérémie pouvaient être heureux vraimentClaude et Jérémie se disputaient parfois
L’un disant «Dieu existe», l’autre «Dieu n’existe pas»
Jérémie a eu le dernier mot
«Bien sûr Dieu existe ! Qui crois-tu qui change l’eau ?»
God exists. Or he does not exist and has never existed. Or he is dead. That is the objective reality.
All the rest is our perception and understanding as mere mortals. We are the goldfish.
We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.
Or it is fed and watered by the forces of nature with no divine supervision.
All religions are based on perception, which may or may not match objective reality. As Bishop Desmond Tutu famously said, ‘God is not a Christian’, but for Christians, Christianity is our map of the universe, how we perceive it. (Bear with me, I’m nearly there!) And for members of the Church of England, including its priests and bishops, the Church of England represents the model which we find most congenial as a framework for worshipping God.
When it is said that the Church of England represents the Conservative Party at prayer, this is taken as mocking criticism (and it was indeed probably intended that way). But it is the Conservative Party at prayer. And the Labour Party. And the Liberal Democrats. And even UKIP. It is the Church of the people of England.
Two things which should be quite distinct have got muddled, in my opinion. The collective faith of members of the Church of England in God is not negotiable. But the way in which the Almighty is worshipped is something else again. If our way of worshipping God does not reflect the way the people of England live, move and have their being it will die. It is showing signs of this already, and the refusal to appoint women bishops will only distance the Church of England from the realities of life of the people whom it exists to bring to God.
Women have taken their place among men as leaders of the nation: to state the obvious, we have just celebrated 60 years on the throne of our Queen, and we live in a post-Thatcher era which is now part of our history. Women are surgeons, professors, bankers, politicians and, yes, church leaders. They are not yet bishops, but an overwhelming majority of dioceses (42/44) voted in favour of the raising of women to the episcopate on the same terms as men.
I am sorry that there are those in the Church who feel that their ways of worshipping God are being ignored. But it is important that the Church continue to reflect the community as a whole: it is a physical impossibility to alter the geometry and square the circle. There is no principle of any value at stake here, merely the force of ingrained habit.
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Mrs Laure, messenger of God, lived in a large empty house with only two goldfish for company; she named them Claude and Jeremy.She looked after her goldfish very well – at five o’clock sharp each day she changed the water in their bowl. Claud and Jeremy really had good reason to be happy. But they argued sometimes, one saying ‘God exists’, the other ‘God does not exist’. Jeremy had the last word on the matter: “of course God exists! Who do you think changes our water?”
I suspect that in some ways, this topic has been done to death. So many words have been written for and against the Ministry of Women that I’m feeling a bit jaded. I am exhausted trying to understand the opposition displayed in the HoB, who with what they describe in good intentions or to ‘clarify’ of to make ‘implicit’ amended a perfectly good measure in such a way as to introduce ‘taint’ as a part of it, which did not exist before.
I wan’t the measure to pass, but not at any cost. I wan’t it to pass, because if it doesn’t, it could be another five years before it comes back to synod. But, it’s imperfections, mainly due to ‘cack handed’ amendments by a group of out of touch men has made it unsafe in the eyes of many senior women clergy and a great number of the laity.
Put simply, men don’t want women in senior leadership positions in the church, shame on them.
Which reminds me of what frightens them – a poem Powerful Woman by Avis Pope springs to mind:
A POWERFUL WOMAN
A powerful woman is a true lady
who’s honest and loyal.
She is a woman of integrity
and given the highest respect of royal.
A powerful woman is a virtuous woman
whose steps are guided by God’s light.
She is connected to the most high
through daily prayers that lead to the night.
A powerful woman is someone you can rely on,
and she supports her King.
She will make sacrifices for anyone she loves
and will bring you under her wing.
When a powerful woman walks into a room
she is noticed as they stare.
A strong man admires a powerful woman
and recognizes that she is rare.
A powerful woman proudly
wears her invisible crown.
She is not envious of other powerful women
so you never see a jealous frown.
A powerful woman shows
compassion for people in need.
She will gladly offer her assistance
because she wants you to succeed.
–Original Poem By: Avis Pope–
© Copyright
http://minglecity.com/group/powerfulwomen/forum/topics/poem-a-powerful-woman
Call me a mad optimist, but I am hoping that the bishops will remove their amendments – and why should they not do so in time for York? OK, it is more likely to be for the next synod in Lambeth, but I don’t see why it should take another five years. By the end of 2013 I hope to see women bishops consecrated – and your poem is a very good job description of a woman bishop IMO!
When I stop to think about it, it seems to me that one’s perceptions can so color one’s thinking as to impose themselves as “objective reality” (which I rather suspect is an elusive and conceptual rather than a REAL thing). If we feel love and joy in our lives each day, it seems to me this can be at least part of our reality (however subjective it actually is to each of us as we live in it). The part of me that has lived for much of my adult life in some of the most liberal corners of the United States is appalled that female bishops are a contentious subject this late date. The part of me that grew up in the deep South would point out how much further your culture has come on issues like gender equality compared to the one I grew up in.
Thanks Alan. I don’t think I feel equal to a discussion of ‘objective reality’ and it may be that it does not exist outside my tidy brain, I quite agree! As far as the position of women goes, propertied (ie upper class) women in Britain got the vote in 1918, but this was not extended to all and sundry women until 1926 or 1928. According to wiki, the US had equal voting rights from 1920, when Tennessee signed up (I wonder if this applied to all races – though I appreciate that is a different question). The odd part of the Church of England is that it is operating like a 19th century institution in a country which has already had a British head of state and prime minister, without any fuss. Because this Church is part of the apparatus of the state, it really doesn’t have a leg to stand on unless it represents the way we live now. This is clear to one and all, I think, including those who are digging themselves in for a siege!
My stance would be to agree that personal position can make a difference to how one evaluates matters.Where you live and who brought you up affects the angle you view from.It may also influence any changes you make to the angle.Subjectivity can impinge on objectivity.
Neither men nor women had to be upperclass to own property in 1918. At the same time,plenty of upper-middle-class people rented both their business/professional premises and their homes.It’s more recent generations who’ve set store by ownership.Pre-1832 when the franchise was haphazard to say the least,property qualification where it existed tended to be about the rentable or taxable value regardless of who owners were and it didn’t necessarily exclude women.If I remember rightly my O-level history lessons,any women who’d had the vote lost it in the 1832 reforms.A female ancestor of mine who ran a pub lost her licence for allowing her premises to be used for a Chartist meeting.I wonder if she knew that one of their aims was manhood suffrage? My 1918 ‘property-owning’ grandmother was a midwife.She would have loved to be taken for upperclass,though,from what I remember of her,so thanks for that,Laura,on Grannie’s behalf. :)The cousin who’s researched the family tree on that side has found only one title,however,and that was a ‘Sir’in the navy.Grannie’s own mother was ‘propertied’ too : she left a dressmaking shop – mortgaged – when she died in 1896. In the days when women couldn’t vote,neither could many men,by the way.
The female heads of state who’ve been Defender of the Faith come to six by my counting. Their reigns span many changes of attitudes towards and positions of men and women,not to mention social status.
Grannie would have held up her hands in horror at the thought of doing anything merely for the sake of ‘equality’of the sexes. You were who you were. God called you to what He called you.If He wanted to call you to something else,He’d have made you somebody else. She’d no more have believed a woman could be a bishop than she’d have believed a man should be allowed to practise her profession or have said ‘gender’ or ‘first name’when she meant sex or christian name.
Grandma on the other hand,also a midwife as it happened,had female relatives in the ministry. She’d have been as horrified as Grannie,however,at the thought of their entering the priesthood.She had a great faith and was not in favour of anything she thought unscriptural. What a pity we don’t have a time machine:I’d be interested to ask those ladies what they thought.They were all dead or retired by the time I knew of them in the 1960s.It wasn’t an issue that was discussed much when I was young.
Like thousands of women of her generation Grandma worked not only to maintain her children but also a wounded husband. For men whose instinct was that they should be the breadwinner it must have hit hard. They had no choice but to accept the cards they were dealt.There were enough of them not to feel odd,I suppose.In those days,so I’m told,everybody got on with what they had to get on with just as they’d taken up arms.Equality didn’t come into it.
I don’t know what the latest thing is about bishops. Like most people I don’t take any church newspapers. From what I remember of the days when I knew and cared what was going on,there was far more to this sort of thing than equality.If it was as simple as equality,surely all disputes over it would have been resolved long ago ?
I am glad that your grandmother owned property in 1918, Joyce. That makes her upper class, in my book. It wasn’t until 1882 that women were allowed to own property in Britain, of course, so I would not have thought property-owning married women were a significant proportion of the population only a generation later.
You don’t need to take church newspapers in order to know what is going on in the church. If this subject interests you, I recommend WATCH, whose website is here and whose facebook page is here.
Laura, for the sake of overseas readers, I should point out that you might be confusing The Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 with the right of British women in general to own property,which had always been allowed.
I’m delighted that you think that my grannie and her mother were upper class.I suppose as the next generation but one that makes me a member of the upper class too. Wow ! And I’ve never even received an invitation to a Royal Garden Party let alone a peerage. 🙂 My great-great grandfather left a pub and a lodging house which the next generation worked in or used their share of to open their own one-man or one-woman businesses nearby.Said g-g f and his father had been coal miners so it’s a matter of speculation where the wherewithal came from to set up business above ground in the first place. I don’t think the term ‘working-class’ had been coined in their day so where if asked they’d have placed themselves on the social scale I don’t know.From what Grannie used to say I gather they were C of E and Church attendance of any denomination was the chief way young people met one another, made friends and did their courting. I daresay it was a way in which adults attracted the attention of customers too.