CHURCH OF ENGLAND DENIES WOMEN AS ORDAINED BISHOPS (605 hits)
CHURCH OF ENGLAND DENIED LEADERSHIP TO WOMEN BISHOPS
YOUR WORLD NEWS NOVEMBER 2012 DAY 20 London, England
Days of becoming a presiding bishop with The Church of England will not be soon according to the governing body of the church. The female leadership failed to pass the clergy vote as the laity voted outnumbered 132 to 74 on Tuesday, November 20, 2012. This has been an ongoing debate among the Church of England for decades. It has been 36 years since the General Synod declared it had no fundamental objection to ordaining women as priests, and 18 years since the first women were ordained. However, that change has never won universal acceptance in the church. The defeat was a setback for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams will be retiring at the end of December 2012 who had strongly supported and proposed the decision that women be permitted ordination as bishops. The leader of Women and the Church, Rachel Weir stated that the group was “absolutely devastated” Weir also expressed that it was an enormous blow to clergy women and disaster for The Church of England. Despite the ruling it was noted that a woman Queen Elizabeth II is the church’s supreme governor. The church has 80 million members worldwide.
