Objectors to female bishops
by David Pocklington, Law and Religion UK:
On 20 July, WATCH (Women and the Church) issued a Press Release commenting on the presence of objectors at the consecration of female bishops, and hoping that at the next consecration of female bishops, “things will be arranged differently”. A letter from WATCH to the Archbishops of Canterbury commented:
‘…such interruptions create the perception that the Church is willing to allow a woman who has been called by God and the Church, and appointed by the Crown, to be publicly insulted and undermined. If that is so, it undermines and insults all women: and especially women for whom female bishops are potent symbols of a radical shift in the Church’s treatment of women. ‘Maybe things haven’t changed at all, underneath’, they might conclude.
The Press Release, a copy of which is reproduced here asks for supporters of WATCH to write to Cathedral Deans, “who carry the responsibility for what happens within the buildings concerned”, and to the Archbishop.
Comment
In addition to generally-applicable legislation such as Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, there are secular provisions directed specifically at the disruption of church services (see Neil Addison’s Religious Criminal Offences and Ecclesiastical Bouncers). We also note the availability in some cases of the Clergy Disciplinary Measure 2003, although this is not applicable in the case of those referred to in the WATCH Press Release; in Christian Today Ruth Gledhill indicates that at the last four consecrations of female bishops, the same objector identified as Rev Stephen Holland, a minister from an independent church in Lancashire., has asked to voice the same objection.
During the consecration of Libby Lane, the first female Church of England bishop, when the Archbishop of York asked the congregation asked if she should be ordained as a bishop, the Rev Paul Williamson stepped forward shouting “not in the Bible”. The second time Dr Sentamu asked the congregation, there was no opposition and the ceremony continued. Fr Williamson is an Anglican clergyman who is active in his opposition to the ordination of women per se. Following various unsuccessful actions in in the courts, he was declared a vexatious litigant by a Civil Proceedings Order on 16 July 1997, [R v HM Attorney-General ex parte Reverend Paul Stewart Williamson [1997] EWHC Admin 691]. This significantly restricts the access of Fr Williamson to bring an action in the civil or ecclesiastical courts, as we examined in Vexatious litigants and the consistory courts; however, the views of a vexatious litigant may nevertheless be heard as evidence.
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