Why I Support the Not Equal Yet Campaign
It’s time we exposed the truth about a toxic bias against women in the Church of England. It’s also time we got to the root of the problem. The Not Equal Yet campaign is trying to do just that by finding a generous way to put an end to the ‘Five Guiding Principles’, a form of explicit discrimination against women called to be priests. These so-called principles contribute to the bullying, micro-aggressions and abuse that so many women have experienced as lay and ordained women in the Church by creating a two-tiered ‘separate but equal’ system. I hope you will join the campaign and come to the Not Equal Yet conference on Saturday 29th March at St John’s Waterloo, London (link below) to learn more and lend your voice to the cause.
Why am I so passionate about this cause? Allow me to share some of my story.
When I was 10, I wondered why I couldn’t be an altar girl at my Catholic school in suburban Milwaukee. In my Nashville all-girls high school, I wrestled with why women couldn’t be priests. No one had a good answer. My dad usually ended our discussions with, ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’, encouraging me that things would change and to stick with Catholicism, the ‘true religion’. I remember the first time I met someone whose mother was a priest, a Methodist. I recall thinking, ‘I’d like to do that one day - but first I need to make some money.’ I was determined to be financially independent, so after university, investment banking it was.
Twenty years later, I left banking and finally explored the call to become a priest in the Church of England. I was ordained deacon at St Paul’s Cathedral in 2014, just up the road from my old office behind the blue clock on Fleet Street. It was incredibly fulfilling to walk down that aisle with my husband on one side and best friend on the other.
But in terms of sexism, leaving banking for the church was like going from the frying pan into the fire. I sat on Goldman Sachs’ diversity committee and while the battle for equality of opportunity, compensation, and recognition still rages for women there, it doesn’t pretend to be the body of Christ. At least Goldman Sachs doesn’t claim discrimination was ordained by God, or use the Bible to substantiate patriarchy and ‘male headship’. It doesn’t make its new hires sign a document sanctioning different treatment of men and women and gaslighting dissent. Banking has a long way to go before women have a fair shot, but at least they don’t bring God into it. I could give scores of examples both overt and covert from my own and others’ experiences highlighting the challenges women lay and ordained face in the Church. Moreover, employers like Goldman are held to account in a way the Church is not because of its exemption from the Equality Act on religious grounds. That exemption is based upon the assumption that most of those in the denomination agree with the discrimination. I wonder how many churchgoers even know how the C of E explicitly discriminates against women, much less agree?
‘Something IS rotten in the state of Denmark’, er, the Church of England. The recent flurry of abuse scandals in the Church of England make it clear that something is wrong, but not enough people are talking about the root of the problem. While more robust safeguarding processes and resignations are afoot to clean house, I wonder if we risk just moving furniture around. Without addressing the rot in the foundation, powerful men will continue to abuse women and young men, prevent women in congregations and in dog collars from exploring a call to leadership, and silence bystanders from speaking up.
The thing is, the church’s discrimination is explicit and state-sanctioned, embedded in the ‘Five Guiding Principles’ adopted in 2014 as a compromise for allowing women to be bishops. The first of these principles writes, ‘Now that legislation has been passed to enable women to become bishops the Church of England is fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all, without reference to gender’. The second continues that the Church ‘has reached a clear and unequivocal decision on the matter’. But the fifth allows for ‘pastoral and sacramental provision’ ‘without specifying a limit of time’ for those that don’t agree, which essentially means churches can still say no to women being a candidate for their vicar, no to a woman presiding at the communion table and no to being under the authority of a male or female bishop who has ordained a woman as priest. Every Ordinand (someone training to be a priest in the C of E) and candidate for a central church position (Bishops, Deans, including Deans of Women’s Ministry, etc) must sign up to these principles in order to be considered, with a commitment to ‘mutual flourishing’ of both church traditions. This commitment means there needs to be representation for those who don’t agree with women’s ordination or episcopacy — so a diversity and inclusion initiative for those who don’t support diversity and inclusion.
Sound crazy? I agree — as do most of our friends outside the church whom I encourage to give Jesus a go but who won’t walk through a church door for anything other than a carol service. These arrangements and the abuse scandals do not make it easy. Why SHOULD non-believers trust a church when such ‘Guiding Principles’ are a core part of its foundation? If I had known when I started, I am not sure I would have either. I remain on fire for Jesus; the Church of England not so much. But now I am here, and I feel my role, alongside serving in my church is to be a voice for those who feel they can’t speak out and encourage those of us who can by joining the Not Equal Yet campaign. The more of us who do, the more things are likely to change for the better. Whatever your gender, I think it is time to speak up to advocate for real change. Finding a generous way to end the ‘Five Guiding Principles’ and appointing a head of Gender Justice for the C of E would be a start.
If you are moved and you too want to stop being a bystander, join me in supporting the campaign and come to the Not Equal Yet conference on 29th March at St John’s Waterloo in London - sign up here https:// www.womenandthechurch.org/. You can also sign up to the WATCH mailing list, regardless of your gender on . We need your voice!
We plan to host a number of other roadshows across the country to raise awareness of the current situation, help people find their voice, connect with a more diverse range of people including new ordinands and Evangelicals (like me!), hear your stories and explore a concrete way to get a motion back to General Synod, the C of E’s governing body, in hopes of finding a generous way to end the arrangements that sanction explicit discrimination and lay down a runway for abuse.
One day I am convinced that we will all laugh at the current situation, like we laugh at the fact that it was only 50 years ago a woman could get a mortgage without a male guarantor, 105 years since a woman could receive a degree from Oxford and even less from Cambridge, that as late as 1982 women were not able to order a drink at some bars without a man, and until 2010 employers could legally fire a woman for being pregnant. Someday we will laugh at the Five Guiding Principles too, not only for its overt discrimination, but that it makes no sense! But not now - because we are Not Equal Yet. I sincerely hope you will join me.