This is the fourth post in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.)

We see a sign of this incompatibility of the two positions of egalitarianism and complementarianism in a recent post on the Ugley Vicar’s blog. He reports a conversation where a prospective ordination candidate in the Church of England was informed that they could not be ordained if they did not agree with women bishops. This was hardly a surprise to me, I have heard similar reports back in Australia coming from dioceses that were seeking to have women bishops (and I’m hardly Mr Networker). What this suggests is that usually, if not in absolutely every instance, when a diocese or denomination is close to having the political numbers to introduce women bishops, it makes support for women being bishops a requirement for ordination. Complementarians are henceforth excluded from that structure—first of all from the clergy and, eventually, from the laity as laypeople eventually find it impossible to find a church where complementarianism is not treated as a form of sin. Only those complementarians prepared to submit to a woman bishop’s authority and, one suspects, not be too vocal about their view that their bishop is sinning by being a bishop in the first place, can be ordained once women bishops are set up. (more…)

This is the third post in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.)

We are looking at why various Christian institutions are going to divide over the question of women’s public ministry. In the previous post I argued that the fight over whether women should wield authority over men in the church is a high-stakes debate. It is fundamentally a fight over the question of authority and equality—whether authority and necessary submission must always be linked to genuine inferiority. Those championing women’s ordination generally believe that authority can only exist when one person is inferior to another—a view that I will classify as egalitarianism. Those opposed believe that authority and real equality can coexist—a view that I will classify as complementarianism. (more…)

This is the second post in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.)

Complementarians like me see egalitarians as reading the Bible under the shadow of the Enlightenment. Their notion of equality is not value-free, or intuitively obvious, or true at some pre-critical presuppositional level. It is a view of equality that was articulated in the Enlightenment as part of that movement’s attack on Christianity. So for the complementarian there is a close relationship between egalitarianism and theological liberalism: not all egalitarians are liberals; but almost all liberals are egalitarians; and both read the Bible in light of convictions that lie at the heart of the modern liberal-democratic state. For both movements, culture and modern reason define all the key terms, and the Bible is then understood in light of that first step made by culture. God isn’t just a Westerner and a convinced democrat, he is an ideal example—the kind of guy any Western cultural liberal would be proud to know; the very model of a modern major general writ large.

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This is the first post in Mark Baddeley’s series on complementarianism and egalitarianism. (Read parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.)

As I write this it looks overwhelmingly likely that the Church of England will embrace women bishops and—despite commitments made when women priests were introduced—will introduce women bishops without any structural solutions for those who disagree with the change. A structural separation is imminent. Those opposed to women’s ordination—conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics—will leave the Church of England (unless they find a technically illegal mechanism to stay in, such as consecrate their own bishops, who would be Anglican but not Church of England). Consequently, the Church of England will be composed almost entirely by those who agree with, and support, the ordination of women and their role as bishops. Similar moves are afoot in other denominations in different parts of the world.

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