Church split threat over female bishops

Conservative evangelicals tell General Synod they will train their own clergy outside the church if proposals go ahead

Conservative evangelicals in the Church of England today became the latest group to threaten to split the church if it decides to consecrate women bishops.

At the start of this week's meeting of the General Synod, the church's parliament, in London, they warned that their clergy would in future be trained outside the Church of England if the proposals go ahead later this year.

The pressure group Reform, which claims to represent 350 ordained clergy and which has a track record of threatening action unless it gets its way, claimed its parishes would raise money to train their own clergy and would accordingly reduce payments to the Church of England.

The conservative evangelicals oppose women's ordination to the clergy, let alone the episcopacy, joining High Church Anglo-Catholics – with whom they share little else in common theologically or doctrinally – because they believe the Bible does not allow women to be in "headship" of any organisation, including businesses or the family.

In a statement signed by 50 vicars and endorsed by one suffragan bishop, Wallace Benn, the Bishop of Lewes, they said: "We are not for a moment saying women are less valuable than men … this is the point we find hardest to communicate, since the world about us equates value with power … In the end this is an issue about our view of Holy Scripture and this is why it matters to us so much as ministers of the Word."

High Church Anglicans, opposed to women's ordination to the clergy – which the church has now adopted for nearly 20 years – have been offered an enclave within the Roman Catholic church by Pope Benedict XVI, but that is not a route that would tempt conservative evangelicals, who view Catholic doctrine with suspicion.

The letter warns: "Since we cannot take the oath of canonical obedience to a female bishop, we are unlikely to be appointed to future incumbencies. We see nothing but difficulty facing us."

The group's chairman, the Rev Rod Thomas, from a parish in Exeter, warned that if their views were not protected within the Church of England, like-minded parishes would train their own clergy outside the church, financing the process themselves, even though Church of England clergy are expected to study for ordination within the church's own theological colleges.

Thomas said: "These costs would inevitably put a severe strain on [parishes'] continuing ability to contribute to the Church of England."

Critics claim that Reform has regularly threatened in the past to withhold parish contributions to diocesan running costs and some already do so. The group's members are also among those most vehemently critical of any accommodation with the church's gay members.

Some have said they would not allow the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, to preach from their pulpits because of what they perceive as his heretical liberalism.

Yesterday, at the Synod's opening session, the Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester, was given the task of explaining why the senior group considering how to frame regulations to permit women bishops had still not managed to produce a formula 18 months after the synod voted for the move.

He told the synod that the group had faced "a daunting task … and extraordinary logistical challenge" in trying to produce a means of satisfying all the differently entrenched positions. "We very much regret that the scale of the task made it impossible to conclude … in time for this [session]," he said.

In a measure of the simmering divisions, synod members were not allowed to question the bishop, who promised that a draft framework would be put to the next meeting of the synod in July.

Christina Rees, of Women and the Church, which campaigns in favour of women bishops, said: "We have already tried our best to keep everyone in [the church] and to increase the level of communion between those who hold different views on women's ministry.

"It will be very important that once the law is passed that women are bishops in the Church of England that it is accepted and recognised as such.

"Therefore, of course there will be arrangements that will make it possible for individuals who disagree with women's ordination to stay in, but the thought of having a separate strand of bishops is precisely what the General Synod debated and rejected over a year ago."