A GROUP of senior Church of England officials have announced
that they intend to ask the General Synod to postpone tomorrow's
historic vote to allow women to be bishops, so that last minute
amendments made to the draft legislation by the House of Bishops
could be re-considered. If Synod approves, the earliest they would
be able to vote on final approval would be November, at a specially
convened Synod, which is likely to cost in excess of £100,000.
There were growing signs that supporters of women bishops would
seek to postpone the final vote on the draft law, or Measure; but
it was not clear whether such a move would be supported by a
majority in the Synod. But now the steering committee responsible
for drafting the legislation and taking it through the revision
stages say they want the vote postponed. It now seems more likely
that the Synod will agree to a postponement; but there are still
many who express a wish that the Synod will simply "get on with
it."
Traditional Anglo-Catholics and conservative Evangelicals, who
oppose women bishops on theological grounds, do not support a
postponement. They welcome the Bishops' amendments, which were
designed to ensure that such groups felt able to remain in the
Church of England despite what they see as a radical departure from
2000 years of tradition and biblical interpretation.
But the Bishops' amendments provoked a storm of protest from
some supporters of women bishops, who insisted that the amendments
were a "compromise too far". Some supporters of women bishops had
said that they would vote against the legislation if the amendments
were not withdrawn.
At a preliminary debate about the Bishops' amendments on Friday
afternoon, one Synod member said that by amending the legislation,
the Bishops had "thrown a spanner into the works", but added that,
rather than being Luddites, they were merely "clumsy
engineers".
The Synod will debate the legislation - and the adjournment
motion - during a full day's debate tomorrow in York. Final
approval requires a two-thirds majority in each of the three houses
of Bishops, Clergy, and Laity. If the Measure falls, the
introduction of women bishops would require a new legislative
process from scratch.