If I convert, the bishop is a woman, and all priests are women. What am I supposed to do?!

I may pull an AW Pink and disappear.

 

That last post was a joke, kinda.

This is a serious questions: How did the early church handle Arian Bishops? Did you leave the church and start new ones?

Schism is a sin, isn't it?

At what point is schism allowable?

Yours in the Lord,

jay

 

Here is where St. paul says that women are not to speak in the church and I do see many women leading on main line liturgical churches

 

Paul’s Policy on Women: Three Key Questions
In 1 Timothy 2, verse 12, Paul writes: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent." Primarily because of this verse, we as a denomination did not ordain women as elders until the year 2007. Our change of policy involved a change in the way we understood this verse.

Our study paper on this verse was 22 pages long; this article does not pretend to give a thorough analysis, but to briefly identify three key questions that can help us clarify what this particular verse means. For more details, see our study papers.

1. Was this Paul’s permanent policy, or was it a temporary policy?
Answer: It was apparently a temporary policy, needed for the situation that Timothy was in. This can be seen by looking at 1 Corinthians 11, verses 3 to 16. In this passage, Paul said that women should have something covering their head whenever they prayed or prophesied. Scholars do not agree on precisely what this head covering was, and for our purposes it does not matter. What is important is that Paul was allowing women to speak.

Where were the women speaking? Paul would not need to give instructions about how women appeared when they were in private. This was some sort of public setting in which male and female believers gathered, prayed, and spoke to one another. This sounds like church.

What were the women speaking about? We know what prayer is, but what were the women doing when they prophesied? Paul tells us what prophecy is in chapter 14, verse 3: a message spoken to strengthen, encourage, and comfort other people. It might concern the future, but need not. It might be like modern preaching, or might not. The important thing is simply that the women were speaking in a church meeting. Verse 5 says that these messages edify or build up the church.

So the women in Corinth were being inspired by God to give messages that helped men and women in the church. Paul allowed some sort of speaking in Corinth, but in 1 Timothy 2:12, he said that the women should be silent. So to avoid contradiction, at least one of these verses must be seen as temporary. If silence was a permanent policy, then Paul violated his own policy when he allowed women to speak in Corinth. But if permission was the normal policy, it would still be possible for Paul to issue a temporary restriction due to some need in Timothy’s situation.

So this line of analysis tells us that 1 Timothy 2:12should be seen as a temporary policy. Indeed, that is the way that Paul himself describes it: "I do not permit…" This was his policy at the time he wrote.

2. This was Paul’s policy at the time; was it also God’s policy?
In question 1, we focused on the silence that Paul commanded, and saw that Paul did not always require women to be silent in meetings of believers. Now we can look at the issue of authority. When Paul wrote 1 Timothy, he did not allow women to have authority over men. So we must ask, are we today supposed to have the same policy as Paul did? Or we can ask it another way: Does God have this policy? Does he ever allow women to have authority over men?

Yes, he does. Judges 4:4-6 gives a clear example. Deborah was a prophetess God used to lead the nation of Israel. She "held court under the Palm of Deborah," which was a public place that people could come to. God spoke to her, gave her commands, and she gave those commands to Barak, the military leader of Israel (verse 6). God gave her authority over Barak and the other Israelites.

This was not a worship service, but it is a clear case in which God allowed a woman to have authority over men. However, when Paul wrote 1 Timothy, he did not allow women to have authority over men—and he made no distinction about civil and religious authority (Deborah made no distinction in the two types of authority, either, since in her case they were combined). In question 1, we saw that Paul’s policy about women speaking in church was apparently a temporary policy. Here, we see that his policy about authority is also temporary, since God does not make that sort of restriction permanently.

3. Is 1 Timothy a manual for how churches ought to operate today?
Sometimes people assume that if Paul had a particular policy, then we ought to, too, because he was inspired by God. But if we take a careful look at his letter, we will see that parts of it don’t apply to us today. It was, after all, written to Timothy in first-century Ephesus, not directly to all of us. The letter has a lot of good material in it we can apply today, but is also has some things in it that we don’t.

The best example is in chapter 5, verses 3-16. Paul is telling Timothy to put widows on some sort of list (apparently a list for financial support) only if they were over age 60. He says that younger widows are probably going to want to get married and will end up breaking "their first pledge" (apparently some sort of vow they took in order to be on the list for financial support).

Nowadays, we do not maintain this sort of list, and we do not put age restrictions on which widows we will help. Our social and economic circumstances are quite different, and almost all church leaders and biblical scholars recognize this. Nevertheless, Paul gives several commands in this passage that we ignore—even commands can be limited to the culture they were given in. How much more so the policy that Paul states in 1 Timothy 2:12?

Paul also commands in verse 8 that men should lift their hands when they pray. We do not enforce this as a command today, nor do we greet one another with a holy kiss, as several letters command (for example, 1 Thessalonians 5:26). The principle of friendly greeting is good in today’s church, but Paul went beyond generalities and commanded a specific form of greeting that is not appropriate in our culture today.

Clearly, there are some things in Paul’s epistles that do not apply in our culture. The question that we should ask is, Is 1 Timothy 2:12 one of those temporary instructions? From our analysis above, apparently so. This does not mean that it is less inspired, or that we are choosing to ignore the Word of God—no more so than when we decide not to command kissing in church, or commanding women to wear head coverings, or when we decide that men do not have to raise their hands when they pray. We are not ignoring the Word of God when we recognize that some of it was written for ancient Israel, or for the ancient church, and it does not necessarily apply today in all its details.

Now, not all Christians agree on this matter. Some people believe that the church should restrict women from having leadership roles in the church. We believed that way ourselves for a long time, but we believe that we have now come to a better understanding of the scriptures—more like what Paul really meant, and what God really meant, and what the epistle really is. We believe that when God gives pastoral gifts to women—the ability to teach, to encourage, and to inspire people to follow Christ—then those women may be recognized as elders or leaders within the church.

Michael Morrison
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I guess I'm good then, thanks.

 

Last nights service was truly amazing, awe inspiring...then I wake up today to stumble upon the news that the Anglican Church of Canada will officially go into schism by making gay marriage canon law in 2019.

Back to the drawing board.

Next week the local EO parish will be having services. I use to attend years ago and it was more like a cultural club than a church but maybe things have changed?

If not, I dunno.

jay

 

Can you tell me what the ANIC situation is like around you?

Also, if they're doing that in 2019, that means there will be a LOT of exodus in that time. If you can establish a small scripture and liturgical circle, literally 5, 7, 10 people now, then it will balloon t0 50 or more when the ACoC officially schisms from The Church in 2019. So can you tell me honestly that you wouldn't fight to preserve reformed Catholicism (Anglicanism) in your neck of the woods?

You know that people have burned and given their lives amid horrid and cruel torture to give you what you're weighing throwing away so easily.

 

This seems on face value difficult to believe given that the entire Church catholic did not ordain priestesses or female bishops and the Anglican Communion did not do so until 1944. The notion that the biblical truth of what the Apostle Paul meant was only discovered 1,944 years after the fact seems unlikely to me.

 

Re my EC back in East Tx.. a lot of the well healed folk in town made it seem like a country club

 

Where were there women "priests" in 1944 ?

 

Where were there women "priests" in 1944 ?

I stand to be corrected but from memory this may have occoured in Hong Kong due to wartime conditions.


In 1 Timothy 2, verse 12, Paul writes: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

In light of this verse is it wrong for the Anglican church to give authority to a woman over a man, not necessarily in the area of ordaining Bishops and priests?"



Also can someone just remind me again of how to do forum "Quotes

 

I'm just trying to worship God and didn't plan on starting a church plant, sounds selfish I know, but I'm not even convinced episcopal government is biblical. I have just been enjoying the worship services because they are conservative (even if the leadership is not) and trying to figure out if I should stay or go.

There was a woman 'Priest' in 44 but she resigned after the war and Asia did not ordain woman again until 71.

Yours in the Lord,

jay

 

I want to remind you that worship is between you and the Lord, and it is your duty to worship your Creator. Being in a nice polite environment, surrounded by socially conservative people: those are just icings on the cake. To omit worship is to commit sin. Therefore even if you stay at home on a Sunday and just do the Offices yourself, you will have fulfilled your duty. Obviously partaking of the holy sacrament is vital as well but it isn't sinful to not have it every Sunday, whereas to omit worship is; even if it has to do with just doing it yourself.

The Book of Common Prayer is the most pious and faithful and profound manner you could offer worship to the Lord, even if you weren't in an Anglican parish yourself. Doing an Eastern Orthodox this or that would not be as faithful, and in some ways would actively contravene both the Gospel and the Church Fathers, not to mention the Anglican divines. Thus you seem to prefer the social comfort of numbers, to the act of intimacy between you and your Maker. Just pointing that out.

And if you're coming out of a Reformed tradition that has qualms with episcopacy then I really don't know how you could cast an eye at EO services, but that's a separate story.

In short I won't offer you pity. Your duty is to manfully stand up and do your duty. Salvation is not for the pusillanimous.

 

This thread has been helpful, thank you all for your posts.

 

In what way do the Orthodox contravene the fathers and the Gospels?

 

The EO had Deaconesses until the Middle Ages. There is discussion about having this order again. In the EO the office of Deacon (and previously Deaconess) was not a step in the ladder to the Priesthood but a toatally different office altogether.

 

As it was in the early church, the earliest orders appear to have been bishop and deacon. Of course Rome has reinstated permanent diaconate for married men.

 

So if you lived at Corinth at the time of St Paul you definitely would not have been one of Chloe's people. More likely one of the ones her people reported to Paul perhaps?

 

Matt.23:9. You shouldn't be calling any man "Father". You either obey the teachings of Christ himself or ignore them, like any good RC or Ortho.

 

As we all know, Anglicans have historically referred to Bishops as fathers in God, in the 16th century and thereafter. We don't interpret that command in the way you do, for by your interpretation we should not even call our biological fathers as fathers. But we do. And so we may call our spiritual fathers as fathers.

Why not? Chloe was a pious and godly woman, just about the last person to advocate transgenderism, or sodomy or women priests. The firmest bulwarks of Christian orthodoxy have always been women. It was often men pushing the church into heterodoxy. When the Episcopal Church 'ordained' the first women deacons in the 1970s, all of the existing women deaconesses resigned en masse, for they couldn't brook that heresy.