Senior politicians are in favour of breaking up the all-male enclave of the 26 bishops in the House of Lords, the cleric tipped to become Britain’s first female Anglican bishop believes. Canon Jane Hedges says that there is increasing discomfort at the highest levels of the Establishment that the power wielded in the Lords by bishops is entirely in the hands of men.
As Canon Steward at Westminster Abbey, she is in a position to know. She has access to the corridors of power and has met nearly everyone at the highest levels of the Establishment, from the Queen and the Prime Minister down.
In an interview with The Times, Canon Hedges, 53, said: “We pick up from parliamentarians that there would be strong support for women bishops.”
Unlike some male bishops who have recently attacked the Government for pursuing economic policies that have contributed to the country’s financial woes, she is also urging a more conciliatory response to the recession. She believes that worshippers should use the unique status of the established Church, the only institution with a presence in every parish, to help to rebuild a sense of community and encourage people to help each other.
Canon Hedges, the first woman residentiary canon at Westminster Abbey, a Royal Peculiar that comes under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Queen, said: “It is very important for people to be able to depend on others. It is an opportunity to try to rebuild community spirit. At local level, that is where the Church has something very positive to offer.”
Edward the Confessor, the 11th-century King most closely associated with the abbey, would probably be more alarmed by the singing Santa Claus and teddy bear outside her solid oak door in the cloisters of the abbey than he would by her being a woman.
Tradition is the most frequently cited argument against women bishops but the medieval King Edward, whose shrine is in the abbey and who built the original church of St Peter, was familiar with the concept of powerful women in the Church.
Edward the Confessor’s own sister was the Abbess of Wherwell, an influential nunnery founded in Hampshire by their grandmother Elfrida to atone for the many murders that she committed to ensure her descendants’ succession. It has taken a millennium for women to travel back down the Fosse Way to a point where prelatical power is once more within their grasp. But Canon Hedges is not interested in power.
“I have always believed it to be important that men and women work in partnership and that if women are consecrated to the episcopate and then included in the House of Bishops, that body will come to represent the wholeness of humanity as the priesthood now does.”
She has met the Queen, the Prime Minister and many MPs and members of the House of Lords in the Government and the Opposition. She believes that parliamentarians find it increasingly “uncomfortable” that only men sit on the bishops’ bench. She has picked up “strong support” from Parliament for women bishops.
As many as half, if not more, of the million worshippers in the Church of England each Sunday are women. With two sons, aged 16 and 17, and her husband, a science teacher at the abbey choir school, Canon Hedges is in a position to understand their needs.
One of 20 residentiary canons in the Church of England, she is a member of the Darc group – deans, archdeacons and residentiary canons – of senior women priests who meet informally to offer mutual support. The Church of England announced a deal this week to pave the way for the consecration of women bishops, with the appointment of complementary or “comp” male bishops under their authority to pastor opponents of women’s ordination. The first woman bishop will almost certainly be drawn from the Darc group.
Her role as Canon Steward is to make sure that all visitors receive a warm welcome and experience the abbey as a living church and not simply as a historical monument. As in all her previous posts, she has made the abbey more family-friendly.
“After services people will come up to me and say how wonderful it is to see a woman taking part. Often Roman Catholic visitors will say how moving it is to see a woman as part of the chapter.”
If she is the first woman consecrated as expected in 2012, that will be the 20th anniversary of the vote to ordain women priests.
“In terms of church history, that is a short time. A lot of people cannot believe how quickly it has moved on.”
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(Source: TTUK)