Oops. Sydney now has women priests. Sort of.

[Matt Williams]

This latest Sydney Synod has been rather amusing, in my view.

Early in the Synod they voted down a motion by Rev Chris Albany that the diocese make space for those parishes who wish to have women priests.

Sydney already has women deacons. In fact it has women priests (ordained elsewhere) who they only licence as deacons.

In the meantime they have been playing a little game with the threefold order of ministry, reserving ordination as priest for those who are to be incumbents and leaving all other clergy as deacons until they agree to jump through several more hoops (including an MA or MTh degree).

But now they have pushed for diaconal presidency (indeed lay presidency, but that's another matter). Although they have not officially passed it, in a move reminiscent of the women bishops "oops we now realise that legislation we passed ages ago accidentally removed the impediment to this when we weren't looking" they have found a similar "oops" regarding diaconal presidency in the General Synod repeal of the Act of Uniformity. So Glenn Davies announced to the Synod that there would not appear to be any valid basis on which the Archbishop could censure any deacon presiding at the Lord's Supper. The Synod welcomed this news very happily. Indeed it was specifically argued that women should be able to preside at the Lord's Supper by Narelle Jarrett - she meant in women's prisons etc, but if you can preside you can preside - in for a penny, in for a pound.

The ironic upshot of all this is, if I'm reading correctly, that Sydney now has women associate priests in everything but the words on the licence. They have women who are ordained as priests, and licenced as deacons - to do everything only a priest can do in the rest of the country (bar, of course, incumbency appointments).

What a funny little church we are.

M

[Luke Isham]

I imagine the Sydney Diocese would be reluctant to allow women to preach to mixed congregations.  If you were a complementarian who believed that church leadership is expressed by presiding over communion then this would be an inconsistent position. However if you believe the Scriptural injunction is focused primarily against women being leaders over and preaching to mixed congregations then this isn't inconsistent. It all depends I guess on how closely the Lord's Supper should be linked to church leadership.  

[Tim Johnson]

So Luke are you suggesting that a sacramental ministry which is separated from the word is OK? Or are women only to administer the sacraments to women?

[Luke Isham]

It depends on how you define separateness, Tim. Is the Lord's Supper separate from the proclamation of the Word if it occurs in two separate but godly services?  Or does the Lord's supper and a sermon have to be in the same service to not be separate?  Is the Lord's supper separate from Scripture if two different people are doing them?

Any activity that is separated from Scripture is wrong.  However not all activities need to explicitly cite Scripture to be connected to Scripture.    Now I personally don't know the exact answer to all these questions myself but I wouldn't want to rush into an answer that said as long as the Lord's supper occurs within a service that contains a sermon we're OK.  

So the real question remains; is it consistent to allow women to preach and lead other women with both preaching and the Lord's supper and then allow them to preside over the Lord's Supper to a mixed congregation?  Yes, but if the authority over the mixed congregation seems to pass to the woman presiding I'd say it's going against Scripture's injunction.

[Jereth]

I'm not going to be dogmatic about this, but my opinion is that the Anglican understanding of communion (as expressed in Articles XXIII - XXIX) puts the "presider" (president?) over communion in a very high and important office which is linked to the public ministry of the Word and the exercise of Christ's authority over a church.

In practice, we see this when the presider of communion leads the church in the communion liturgy, which is an authoritative proclamation of God's word.

Thus, I think that if we're going to talk about the Anglican church, then lay presidency is not very appropriate, and administration of communion should be the function of a duly appointed male minister. A female presiding over communion, in an Anglican church, would go against the grain of 1 Tim 2:11-15 and 1 Cor 11:3-11 in the same way as a female preacher would.

It seems Sydney goes down a different road because they apparently have a fairly "Baptist" view of communion. (Does Sydney use prayer book liturgy when they do communion?)

Jereth

[Jenny George]

Luke Isham wrote:

I imagine the Sydney Diocese would be reluctant to allow women to preach to mixed congregations.

Though this may well be true of many people in Sydney diocese, including influential individuals, the diocesan position is not this rigid. Churches which accept women as preachers are not prevented, according to people I have spoken to. In fact women training at Moore whose consciences allow them to preach to mixed congregations do this in some evangelical churches in Sydney I believe.
 

Luke Isham wrote:

 If you were a complementarian who believed that church leadership is expressed by presiding over communion then this would be an inconsistent position. However if you believe the Scriptural injunction is focused primarily against women being leaders over and preaching to mixed congregations then this isn't inconsistent. It all depends I guess on how closely the Lord's Supper should be linked to church leadership.  

 
Yes, this is an interesting question. There may well be churches that would choose not to have women presiding at communion because they believed that this was an unbiblical exercise of authority in a mixed congregation. On the other hand, because the Archbishop has licensed women as deacons and may soon allow deacons to preside at communion then, like preaching, presumably there wouldn't be anything stopping churches who did accept women's ministry in mixed settings from going ahead.

[Luke Isham]

Hi Jenny,

Jenny George wrote:

Luke Isham wrote:

I imagine the Sydney Diocese would be reluctant to allow women to preach to mixed congregations.

Though this may well be true of many people in Sydney diocese, including influential individuals, the diocesan position is not this rigid. Churches which accept women as preachers are not prevented, according to people I have spoken to. In fact women training at Moore whose consciences allow them to preach to mixed congregations do this in some evangelical churches in Sydney I believe.

But I wonder if it would acutally be a large number of parishes that would take up this appreant 'loop-hole' and be allowing women to preach to mixed congregations, or whether they will be an exception like the occasional anglo-catholic parish.

This round up of lay administration/presdiency of communion and the leadership of the women in the church in Sydney, is very interesting.

[Andrew Godfrey]

At the risk of making broad generalisations about a diocese as big and diverse as Sydney...

What might be helpful to understand is that there are two orders of ministry, those with incumbency licenses and those without. That is the reality on the ground in Sydney. Trying to fit current reality in Sydney into the three orders of ministry is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Following on from what Jenny noted the official position is that women can anything except hold an incumbency licence and consequently the things that only priests can do. (Because anglican priesthood has been tied to incumbency) The real issue is not what only ordained priests can do but what only incumbents can do. Administration of the sacraments is not widely considered an act that can be limited to the holder of an incumbents licence. Remember the issue has never been ordination of women to the priesthood - priesthood is a catholic concept. The issue has always been female headship in church.

Regarding women preaching to mixed congregations, opinions on that are as big and diverse as Sydney is.

Jereth, I think you are right in saying that Sydney tends towards a more baptist understanding of sacraments. To answer your question on Sydney communion liturgies. Yes they do have them and you can find them here: http://www.sundayservices.anglican.asn.au/index.html. Those services started out as the evangelical bits of the red brick (the latest prayer book), but may have been modified somewhat since I last looked at them. A great thing about this is the facebook group: Sydney Anglicans make the best Baptists

Andrew G