A question of jurisdiction

Anglican Mainstream
July 8th, 2010
Chris Sugden

In this debate we need to keep in mind that we are looking at providing for the Church of England in 50 years time, not just in five years time.

Many orthodox evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics are agreed that there must be transferred jurisdiction to alternative bishops, which includes ordination, appointment and licensing. It is not clear whether these are included in the Archbishops’ proposals.

The difficulty in the way of securing this without creating two classes of bishops, in that people could appeal against the jurisdiction of a woman bishop, is the tradition of mono-episcopacy.

This is the irreducible minimum to which the Revision Committee have hung on. Yet it gives rise to the oddity that an innovation (women bishops) is resulting in objectors being excluded because of appeal to a tradition (mono- episcopacy). This theologically threadbare understanding of sole jurisdiction has no biblical or theological warrant that I have seen deployed in these discussions. This tradition is an accretion to the church – arguably through exercise of male power. A male pattern of ministry was developed over centuries without asking what pattern of ministry women should exercise in different situations. the rest