Nowhere is this illustrated more disturbingly than in Friday's Church Times feature by Rebecca Paveley about a coaching course to groom selected women for the top jobs in the Church of England.
Run by the Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd June Osborne, it is aimed at encouraging women to 'imagine' themselves in senior posts.
But the course does not just do imagining. A professional coach - Claire Pedrick who wrote a book about how to make 'good' ecclesiastical appointments - is laid on to guide the participants through the application process and give advice on interviewing technique.
According to Ms Paveley, Ms Pedrick also
touches on the tricky question of the social-interaction part of the interview process - otherwise known as "death by quiche".
The course has funding from grant-making trust the Panacea Society but Ms Paveley reports ominously that the organisers hope that it might get central funding from the Church.
Certainly, the attendees display a strong sense of entitlement. One said:
We're in the habit of not selling ourselves, aren't we? But there are some here whose stars are going to fly very high indeed.
Another said:
I suppose most of us are called to senior leadership, or we wouldn't be here.
Sadly, it would appear that this coaching course, fired by feminism, simply unmasks the rampant careerism that has long been a feature of the 'preferment' process.
The spiritual reality is that ordained ministry is a vocation and not a career. To angle and position oneself for promotion is therefore an appalling betrayal of a minister's calling to be a servant of Christ and of the flock for whom the Lord shed his precious blood.
That is true whether the angling is done by a man or by a woman.
Dear Julian,
ReplyDeleteYour original post was much better, with its critique of AMiE, and its eloquent plea for faithful continuation of pastoral ministry in the north of England.
You haven't been offered a bishopric in the south, perchance? :)
Thank you Peter - I felt on reflection that the two topics didn't actually go together. The coaching course needed its own treatment. I hope to blog specifically on AMiE - a hugely welcome development by the way - later on.
ReplyDeleteAnd no offers have come from south of Watford or indeed north of it. Anyone entertaining episcopal aspirations would be ill-advised to join Reform.
Kind regards,
Julian
There's something funny going on here. The Panacea Society are a strange lot:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panacea_Society
And a biography of there founder has just been published by Jane Shaw, according to the Church Times one of the main participants in this course:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Octavia-Daughter-God-Jane-Shaw/dp/0224075004/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309172042&sr=1-1
Maybe they're trying to get enough sympathetic female bishops to open Joanna Southcott's box?
Stephen Walton
Marbury
I guess that as soon (I don't 'guess' at all, in fact) as somone enters ministry who does not have as their sole purpose the preaching and teaching of the Gospel of salvation through Christ alone, as taught in the innerrant Bible, then this is a natural result.
ReplyDeleteIf "Christ alone", and the sharing of that message is the driving force then 'preferment' and 'career' just aren't important - though they might come up and bite you from behind unexpectedly!
"The spiritual reality is that ordained ministry is a vocation and not a career. To angle and position oneself for promotion is therefore an appalling betrayal of a minister's calling to be a servant of Christ and of the flock for whom the Lord shed his precious blood.
ReplyDeleteThat is true whether the angling is done by a man or by a woman."
Of course, this is true.
But a. the Centuries of male-only ministry hardly demonstrate an absence of 'angling and positioning oneself for promotion' within the Church.
b. I feel you've wilfully misinterpreted a somewhat more nuanced position. Granted, you probably feel the women shouldn't be bishops full stop: maybe you even feel they shouldn't be priests, I don't know you.
But assuming a world where that does happen, then there needs to be a situation where those newly enfranchised are made ready to minister.
The now Bishop of Bradford once said of being a Bishop (then of Croydon), "It suits my gifts." He was probably right. He wasn't placing himself as superior to others, just that the ministry of a bishop fitted his talents in the way school chaplaincy or whatever fits with others.
The Church needs to ensure that those whose gifts can be best brought out by being deans/ bishops / whatever actually get to do this as well as they can, and with as true a discernment as possible. This validates this kind of cousre in my mind. It may have been that some women left he course and thought, then 'this is not for me', and that would be fine. Part of the discernment process, I guess.
If you just think they shouldn't be in senior posts, then per se you're going to think this course is sinister and pernicious. But then, that's your preconception working. That preconception may be right (I think it would be wrong) but it's nothing to do with what happens on the course.
Thank you Sir for your comment. Those who are best able to evaluate a minister's gifts are those whom they serve and work with in their settings whether parochial or non-parochial and those to whom are accountable in their dioceses. If you read Rebecca Paveley's feature about this course carefully you will see that there is manifestly a wordly careerist dynamic going on here. And as I tried to say a course like for men would be just as bad.
ReplyDeleteA concern that has been expressed in a number of places is that the women priests who are promoted to bishop (assuming the measure passes Synod next year) may only be representative of a very narrow section of belief in the Church of England.
ReplyDeleteRegardless of whether or not one agrees with women bishops, that has to be cause for concern.