wfn.org | Campaigners For Women's Ordination Now Watching For Women Bishops

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16-December-1996 
 
 
96480         Campaigners For Women's Ordination Now 
                    Watching For Women Bishops 
 
                        by Cedric Pulford 
                  Ecumenical News International 
 
LONDON--Pressure for women bishops in the Church of England has been 
increased with the recent relaunching of the most influential campaigning 
group behind the original decision to ordain women as priests. 
 
     The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) was renamed National 
Watch (Women and the Church) at a Nov. 9 meeting attended by 100 
supporters. The statement of aims for National Watch called for women 
bishops in the church. 
 
     Chairwoman Christina Rees told ENI that the group would be "promoting 
rather than campaigning for" women bishops. "Now that women can be priests, 
we hope that being bishops will naturally follow." 
 
     There are already seven women bishops throughout the worldwide 
Anglican communion, she added. 
 
     However, National Watch will also press for improvements in women's 
situations across a range of church activities, including the appointment 
of women to senior positions in the church. 
 
     In its statement of aims, National Watch pledged itself to promote "a 
positive attitude ... to questions of sexuality" -- wording that has been 
understood to mean an acceptance of gay clergy.  Officially the Church of 
England does not accept practicing homosexuals as clergy. 
 
     Rees said National Watch was not officially supporting a celebration 
on Nov. 16 at Southwark Cathedral to mark 20 years of the Lesbian and Gay 
Christian Movement (LGCM), but added that she expected that some Watch 
members would be attending as individuals. 
 
     An evangelical group, "Reform," is calling on its members in Southwark 
to withdrawal financial support from the diocese, as a mark of protest 
against the LGCM event, which approximately 2000 attended. 
 
     The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, said last month that 
the use of the cathedral "cannot properly be taken as an endorsement" of 
LGCM aims. 
 
     But he acknowledged that the LGCM "comprises Christian people loved by 
God." Making the cathedral available was a "mark of recognition that 
followers of Christ should cherish all that we have in common," he said. 
 
     In an article in the Daily Telegraph, Colin Slee, the provost of 
Southwark Cathedral, wrote: "Chapters [cathedral authorities] are not 
censors of the private lives or public policies of those who ask to pray. 
We do not inquire about the private lives or investment policies of 
financial institutions who hold carol services nor refuse memorial services 
for people we think insufficiently good."                                    

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