The place and position of women within the Church of England, both within the clerical hierarchy and their accepted status within the wider congregation has been a controversial subject since the Reformation. Indeed, the Reformation in England was essentially institutional change to accommodate the needs of a man; women were incidental to its form and function, and it was never intended to accommodate women. The role of women in this patriarchal religious world has been to gauge orthodoxy, whilst defining their proper roles has been the focus of numerous church councils, theologians, and religious authorities. (Ruth Adam : "Reclaiming the power of women in the early church.") The early church focussed on the biological functions of women - capitalising on pre-existing pagan fertility worship which celebrated the fertility of the land and people, and the union of the divine masculine and feminine. Mary as the Mother of God was central to Catholic worship and women's subservient roles as procreators and carers were reinforced, a model acceptable to traditional pagan societies. Yet there is plenty of evidence women played a key evangelical role in the early church, albeit informally. (Smith : Women & their Roles in Early Christianity")
Small wonder that association of power and maleness led many women who aspired to play an unorthodox role to jettison their femininity, believing the patriarchally enforced myth that femaleness personified weakness. So powerful has this association been over the passage of time that this process is still played out in the West today with a powerful element of gender in eating disorders, and anorexia in particular. Certainly for female sufferers, arresting female development is exerting control over one's body and for many teenagers, whilst this might have little to do with their personal views on their femininity it feels the only part of their lives they have any control over. By losing weight, a girl loses her femininity. She androgenises herself. It is a deep and fundamental rejection of what is female and feminine, embracing the asexual and often masculine, whether intentional or not. Female hormones are no longer produced as body fat is depleted and curves vanish. Menstruation stops and the figure remains or returns to looking boyish. There is considerable evidence of women deliberating doing this in history. Female "anchorites" in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period used self starvation as a means of gaining a foothold in a male-dominated world, their views and opinions were given a level of credence otherwise denied to women at the time.
The fundamental difficulty with women in the C of E is that their role, position and function has always been a male problem. Right from the scribing of the Book of Genesis, women were considered secondary to men, Eve's sin a female problem for men to bear - and indeed for mankind. Femaleness does not sit well within a fundamentally male institution. But how does one solve a problem like Maria?
As Rev'd. Martine Oborne wrote in 2022, sexism is alive and kicking in the CofE: -
"In 2014, with great fanfare, women were finally allowed to be bishops as well as priests. But, in almost complete silence, provisions were then made so that parishes who didn’t accept female vicars and bishops could avoid their ministry. And this situation remains."
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| Source : WATCH (Women and the Church) |
Women and their participation in the CofE is still viewed as a problem to be solved, something to be managed. But perhaps it's time to reverse-engineer from the obvious solution - women have so much to offer the church, how can we solve the issue of male domination? This may seem obtuse, precisely because the church is fundamentally patriarchal. But does it need to be? Jesus would arguably have had an even more challenging time on earth as a woman, it certainly served God's purpose to take a human male form since the church was founded at a time when women had no voice.
