Crying Female Bishops and the Ecclesial Harm of Feminism
The Church of England continues to cultivate the seeds of its own demise with such unerring success that sometimes you wonder if it is deliberate.
By Aaron Edwards
That Good Fight
Feb 22, 2025
At a recent Anglican Synod, the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, broke down in tears.
Why was the Bishop of London moved to tears? Was it because of the utter lack of faith in so many modern churches? Was it because of the catastrophic decline of the Church of England in our time? Or was it due to the hundreds of thousands of aborted babies every year in the very nation to which that Church is called? None of the above. She was moved to tears because of “micro-aggressions” and “institutional barriers” against women within the Church of England.
“I would love to encourage women,” she said, “which I do all the time. But there continues to be institutional barriers. We continue to experience micro-aggression…” It was at that point that she broke down in tears, after which she was lavishly applauded by the well-groomed crowd.
It’s difficult to describe just what those culturally Marxist terms of the Zeitgeist communicate at such a time as this. This is, after all, a time in which women are “permitted” to teach and exercise authority over men in the church as preachers, vicars, and even as bishops, with many even calling for a first female archbishop.
Never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more influenced by the rule of women, and never in the history of its existence has the Church of England been more at risk of collapse. Yet it is the apparent ongoing raft of subjective “micro-aggressions” against women deemed to be the greatest cause of ecclesial harm.
I wonder, then, whether the bishop might class it as a “macro-aggression” if I suggested that her very response—whether a symptom of her own ideological delusion or a subtler form of emotional sabotage—shows why we need not fewer institutional barriers against women in the Church, but more?
THE PROBLEM WITH FEMINIST “PROGRESS”
We might start with the very barrier Mullally so rudely stepped over in order to become a bishop in the first place, continuing the pattern of Anglican apostasy which seeks to justify their fundamental embarrassment of the Bible's representation of women to the feminists of this world, whom they have so desperately sought to impress for so long.
This ought to go without saying but because we have now become so accustomed to living with perpetual compromise, it ought to be said again: The very fact that women can dress up as bishops is itself evidence of a form of divine judgement upon the Church of England. As Isaiah says, so very politically incorrectly:
“My people—infants are their oppressors,
and women rule over them.
O my people, your guides mislead you
and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.” —Isa. 3:12
“Ah,” the feminist bishops may say, “but that was in the ‘Old’ Testament, when things were all so terribly intolerant and God was far less educated and far more micro-aggressive than he is nowadays.” Perhaps the “New” Testament might provide us with this apparently much-needed “progress”? Alas, it seems Paul is even more politically incorrect than Isaiah:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” —1Tim. 2:12
Nor was this a one-off. For a doctrine that is now apparently seen by many as a take-it-or-leave kind of issue, it comes up an awful lot in the New Testament. You may leave it if you wish, but only if you wish to build on sand. It may seem fine for a while. The women may even seem to be doing a far better job than many of the men in many respects. But then come the storms, and then Jesus’ words (Matt. 7:24-27) come back to haunt, and all is too late.
The fact is, the acceptance of women vicars and bishops in the Church of England is not an isolated issue. It is inseparable from the torrent of subversive unfaithfulness that has poured in and out of that once-great institution in recent decades, undermining its foundations and eroding its convictions. This will remain the case unless and until it repents and returns to the Word and Spirit of the God it claims to serve.
To the average cultured unbeliever, the very notion of women bishops is seen as obviously good. In such a politically correct age, many will have been amazed that the CofE ever made it to 2013 without them. Look how well the decision was received by parliament at the time, for example: “obviously very welcome news”. Some of the comments in the parliamentary exchange in response to that decision were very telling about the naivete the impact this decision would have on the mission of the Church.
Martin Vickers, a Conservative MP, said:
“I, too, welcome the fact that the Church has at long last made progress on the matter of women bishops… Is [my hon. friend] confident that the Church can now move on from these endless internal debates and start preaching the gospel and working for the good of society?”
Further on, a Labour MP, John Cryer, further highlighted how crazy the idea of not having women bishops already was to the world:
“The congregation of the Church of England has been in headlong decline for a long time, and that is continuing. How likely is it that that trend would be reversed were the Church of England by some chance to pursue its existing policy of barring women from being bishops, which most people think is redolent of a past era?”
He seemed to assume that the Church of England’s decline was linked not to the seeds of unbelief that had already been long sown by its alignment with subversive modern ideologies like feminism, but linked rather to the previous “policy” of remaining obedient to Scripture in keeping with virtually all churches of that “past era”.
To this, the Conservative MP, Tony Baldry replied:
“I am glad to say that a large number of parishes are growing. The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it clear that his primary mission is growth. We want to see the Church of England grow. Hopefully, now that we have resolved the issue of women bishops, everyone in the Church of England and everyone who supports it can focus their intention on that growth.”
Reflecting on such comments twelve years on from that momentous decision, how did that season of Church of England growth turn out? Has the Church of England been free to “move on” past all those “internal debates” that it may “start preaching the gospel” and get on with its “work for the good of society?”
Of course not. A good deal of that time they have been embroiled in abuse scandals, trans ideology, and arguments for same-sex relationships. And indeed, even now we have the female bishop of London weeping over micro-aggressions and institutional barriers against women.
The subversives were never going to be happy with breaking down the “barrier” to women bishops. Once fed, the wolves always come back for more.
THE ECCLESIAL HARM OF WOMEN BISHOPS
The politicians may call it “obviously welcome news”, but in light of Scripture and Church history, the advent of women bishops was obviously shameful news. It dresses itself as kindness and liberation and Christian charity, but it is borne of a spirit that is entirely of the world, and truly foreign to Christianity. It would not and could not have happened were it not for the tide of unbelief in and through secular western society which eroded Christian norms in general.
This tide coincided not only with the rise of feminism in the West but with the decline of the institutional Church in the West too. This correlation is patently obvious to anyone who looks at this issue beyond the gaze of the sophisticated horde of feminists who have been entrenched for so long now across the breadth of the Church, who can only keep denying this connection between unfaithfulness and decline for obvious reasons.
Such people seem to think that the modern Church's "breaking down of barriers" against women—barriers which were instituted, remember, not by men but by God—is evidence not of unfaithfulness to God but evidence of progress and enlightenment, demonstrating the true kingdom of God advancing into new ways of thinking and being which are less “oppressive” and “harmful”.
The voices should not have been heard, let alone obeyed. They have aggressively harmed the Church more than all the Bishop-pretenders may ever know. Such voices were the voices of serpents and wolves. They have been at work for some time, devouring the flock from within.
“But how could speaking about being less oppressive to women by restricting their freedom in ministerial leadership be tantamount to ‘devouring the flock’?”, one might ask. Well, aside from the necessary undermining of Biblical authority that is an obvious by-product of ignoring the Biblical passages which teach against it, having more women in leadership positions simply does different things owing to the fact that, because God made man and woman differently (cf. Gen. 1:27; 1Cor. 11), men and women often sin differently.
Joe Rigney, having previously written extensively on the connection between empathy, feminism, and the church, recently weighed in on another emotive bishop—Bishop Budde of the US episcopal church—who was praised by some for preaching various Democrat talking points in the guise of Christian compassion at Donald Trump’s inauguration service last month. In an article titled, “The Bishop’s Untethered Empathy,” Rigney noted the danger of misplaced compassion that results from the feminist lens:
Feminism’s destructive nature is owing to two basic facts.
First, women are more empathetic than men, a fact that, in its proper place, is a great blessing. God designed women to be life-givers and nurturers, and the feminine ability to intuit and share emotions serves such care and compassion. When a baby is crying or a person is hurting, female empathy enables women to be first responders, moving toward the hurting with comfort and welcome.
But, second, what is a blessing in one place becomes a curse in another. When it comes to upholding strict standards of justice, empathy is a liability, not an asset. It’s why in certain circumstances involving gross error and high-handed sin, God’s law forbids empathy and pity. If someone—even a close family member—enticed Israel to commit idolatry and abandon the Lord, God told them that “you shall not yield to him, or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him” (Deuteronomy 13:6–10). It’s why some of us have taken to warning about “toxic empathy” and “the sin of empathy.”
It is in this way, decision after decision, micro-compassion after micro-compassion, that unpopular Biblical truths—the kind that might not always strike a mother as “nice”—tend to erode away in the hearts and minds of the faithful. Compromise comes in many forms, male or female, of course, but in our time this appears to be the weak spot, and one which was first enabled by weak men overly susceptible to the tears and frowns of women over and against the rock of God’s Word.
Those who think of women’s ordination as a liberation from oppression—God’s Word being the ultimate “oppressor”—will only ever see it like the aforementioned parliamentarians, as an “obviously very welcome” step towards further progress and advance. But how can anyone honestly look at the present-day instantiation of the Church of England and say that its direction of travel represents an “advance” of the kingdom of God in any sense? Is God really looking on all this and saying, “Well done, good and faithful servants. Keep up this good and faithful progress. Onward!”?
WHAT IS THE CofE GOOD FOR?
It is increasingly clear that any substantial good that still occurs within/from the Church of England now is only ever an aberration from the norm, from that inevitably “progressive” trajectory which moves it further and further away from the security of God’s Word and Spirit.
This has already been the case for some time. I expect the average unchurched person in Britain knows that too (regardless of whatever the MPs of a decade ago believed). That’s not to say that the institution of the CofE won’t retain a good deal of heritage and societal gravitas in the eyes of many. But if we’re honest, the modern Church of England has become an embarrassment to the Christian faith, and an appallingly impotent witness at a time when the world needed it most.
It grieves me to see it and to say it, because it ought not to be this way. The Church of England ought to be a shining light to the nation and the world, representing truth, beauty, love, grace, order, joy, and peace. But instead of glorifying God by upholding His Word against the scoffers who hate what that Word says and implies, they have chosen instead to align themselves with their enemies, trading light for darkness, selling their birth-right for a pot of stew, denying the very Word of God in order to warm their hands by the fire with strangers who do not mean well.
Much of what we appreciate about the legacy of Christendom in Britain is rooted in the heritage of what eventually became the Church of England. Thus, even those who are not Anglicans, even those who are not English, should care about what does or does not happen behind its walls. I so felt the need to care about it that I got fired from my job for doing so. What happens in the CofE is no small thing. It affects much of what happens in the churches across this nation, and even beyond this nation.
It seems as though the CofE now has so many leaks that it becomes too difficult to know where to start plugging. I still have Anglican friends who are labouring away faithfully within the behemoth, and there are also many pockets of faithfulness and beauty and tradition here and there. Just last week I enjoyed a very pleasant time in the library and chapel of Pusey House in Oxford, a centre within the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England. As I’ve discussed many times before, evensong remains something of a national treasure, and something from which many evangelical “low churches” could learn a great deal. There is indeed much of the sinking ship that may be salvageable.
The ongoingly depressing reality, however, is the tangled bureaucratic web which has been so comprehensively infiltrated on so many fronts over so many years. Thus, it seems more likely that the good that remains within the institution will need to leave that web in order to better flourish and advance the kingdom elsewhere in our time. The trojans may keep fighting on if called to do so, but they must be wary lest their mission to the institution end up conforming them to the very worldliness which made that institution so desperately sick in our time.
God knows what the future may hold. We know He is not averse to rebuilding broken walls and temples, but not before He has first allowed the fullness of judgement and exile upon those who refused to hear and heed His Word.
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