What else to do on the day that the Church of England consecrated its first woman bishop (and I am never one to bash the bishop)? I heard much of the ceremony on BBC Radio Five Live which was broadcast live from the magnificent York Minster where Adrian Chiles (peace be upon him) had been despatched to present the show. You get sacked from the football and this is your penance.
I am pleased that god has finally realised that women are not just there for cooking and producing children. I say this because Bishop Libby Lane, who is in my ears and in my eyes, said that her calling came direct from god. Well, she is one of the few frock-wearing clerics in the CofE who isn’t a man. She did not add whether he had sent her a text message, appeared in her dream or actually visited her in person, but it is clear that he, or rather HE, was highly involved in this matter.
The world really is moving forward for women now. The Sun has decided to get rid of tits, except for Kelvin MacKenzie, the hero of Hillsborough, who has returned to the paper in the middle of the Inquest currently going on in Warrington. I am sure this is a complete coincidence and not another crass attempt by Murdoch’s ugliest rag to stir things up again and dance on the graves of the victims. I digress, sorry.
Anyway, god certainly has had a change of heart about women, at least the CofE god anyway. Presumably, it will only be a matter of time that Justin Welby is replaced by a woman in Canterbury. Other gods do not seem quite so sure. For example, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died last week and men from all over the world turned up to praise his great record in bringing faiths together (Dave Cameron really did say this). This must have come as a surprise to Muslims other than Shia in the kingdom who are not allowed to worship at all, not to mention christians and others. Obviously, there was no point inviting women to the funeral since they had no way of getting there as they are banned from driving. (I think the driving ban for woman in Saudi is a little harsh. I know some women are not always the best at indicating, but a blanket ban seems a bit harsh to me.)
The next thing will be older women newsreaders or female pop stars who are allowed to grow old (Madonna isn’t, certainly not in the hate-filled pages of the Daily Mail).
I am not sure that having women bishops will make a great deal of difference. After all, hardly anyone goes to church these days and even most of those who do only do so for weddings and funerals. I suppose it will make some folk feel better but there was a lone voice of bigotry at the ceremony today when one (male) vicar complained that our Libby couldn’t be a bishop because the bible didn’t say so. This is a worry to me since the bible is a pretty scary book, full of killings, plagues and floods, usually caused by god. I assume the vicar likes all this stuff because it is in the bible?
Anyway – I hope Libby Lane is happy. It seems incredible that the church has taken so long to realise that women, who represent more than half the population, are up to carrying out the big jobs, even church jobs. They’ve left the middle ages now and hurrah to that. I’ll be more excited when they catch up with Darwin and realise that this religion malarkey might not be what it’s cracked up to be.
