CHURCH OF ENGLAND HAS IT ALL WRONG OVER BISHOPS.

The Church of England has its knickers in a twist over the question of whether or not to allow women to become Bishops. Personally, I always thought that Pawns could become Queens but have never given much consideration to this less significant issue.

 

Not being a churchgoer, in fact I'm an atheist, á la Dawkins, I have no idea what all the fuss is about. From a simplistic and uninformed point of view, surely the matter should be capable of resolution by reference to whatever it says in the Bible about the roles of men and women; but then, perhaps the Bible is ambivalent or even silent on the issue.

 

Whatever the rights, wrongs or otherwise, it occurs to me that this is a subject that has only arisen in recent times and since the attendance at church services began to decline. Now that most churches are pretty well deserted on most Sundays and many are even locked and bolted for much of the time, those in authority have become a bit panicky. How can we 'become more relevant ?' and 'How can we attract more devotees ?' are the rather ridiculous cries. If people believe, then they believe; if they don't they don't and that's all there is to it. Trying to attract bigger audiences or be more relevant is simply not relevant to any serious religion; religion is not about relevance, it is about faith and belief.

 

The fact is that the Christian religion is a dying cult, at least in this part of the western world. Most people have grown up and become wise enough to understand that belief in a mystical figure is not very sensible. It is inevitable that church attendances will fall whatever the Church of England does; it could ordain a donkey and few would either notice or care.

 

Advanced, civilized societies, the USA always excepted, do not need religion as a crutch, they have education and knowledge instead. Christianity in its traditional form in the UK is, therefore, a dead duck. The problem for us all is that we have increasing numbers of immigrants from backgrounds in which other religious beliefs have held sway; many of these immigrants are largely uneducated and hold firmly to the tripe with which they have been indoctrinated over many years. As our Christian churches fall into disuse and eventual disrepair, they are being replaced by an assortment of places in which these newcomers worship their gods.

 

The newcomers have their own thoughts as to what place women should have in their societies and we should, perhaps, pay more attention to this than whether or not women can be made Bishops. Forced marriages, honour killings, female circumcision and the like are anathma to any civilized person and these are the things we should be dealing with, not the irrelevant squabbles within a dying church.