Bishop Compares Fight Over Female Bishops To World War II

By Al Webb
Religion News Service

LONDON (RNS) A leading bishop in the Church of England has triggered fury in British religious circles by likening the debate over allowing female bishops to the "serious threat" of warfare posed by the Nazis on the eve of World War II.

Bishop of Lewes Wallace Benn told a conference of conservative Anglicans in Hoddesdon, England that, with the conflict over women bishops, "I feel very much increasingly that we're in January of 1939."

Benn, who's due to retire in two years, warned his audience that "I'm about to use an analogy, and I use it quite deliberately and carefully. And it slightly frightens me to use it, but I do think it's where we are at."

What he meant, he said, was that "I feel very much increasingly that we're in January of 1939. What we must not do is create a phony war, but we need to be aware that there is real serious warfare just around the corner."

The date marked a speech by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler that predicted the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." Germany invaded Poland eight months later.

His remarks infuriated James Smith, chairman of the Holocaust Center in Britain, who told journalists that Benn downplayed "both the scale of the suffering the Nazis caused and the scale of the moral challenge they represented."

The bishop's office, in a statement, insisted that Benn "never mentioned Hitler or the Nazis," claiming instead that "he said that the situation in which we find ourselves in the church feels like people probably felt as they viewed the year ahead in January 1939."

"There are storm clouds on the horizon and warfare around the corner," the statement said.

Comments

[upstatebabe]

04:05 AM on 11/11/2010

Can we stop comparing everything to Hitler? Women bishops are not Hitler.

[Bostontru2u]

12:58 AM on 11/09/2010

If it was'nt for women....NONE of those priest, bishops and Popes would be here, on any throne!

[ManiDeli]

06:49 PM on 11/08/2010

If the get a Pope-ette she won’t need to buy any new outfits. She can use Ratzinger’s transvestite wardrobe.

[Ioan Lightoller]

05:07 PM on 11/08/2010

This man needs to apologise for his disgusting sexist remark. How women being allowed to be consecrated is equivalent to the murder and genocide perpetrated by the Nazis is beyond me! This is nothig more than more institutional hatred of women in the Anglican (as separate from the Epsicopal) Church.

[3fingerbrown]

11:15 AM on 11/08/2010

Y'know, aside from those millions of dead people, and those dozens of cities blasted into rubble, and the dropping of two atomic bombs, the guy has a point.

[SensibleJoe]

08:58 AM on 11/06/2010

Bishop Benn's comment was a false, over-the-top analogy for which he ought to apologize profusely. Consecrating women as bishops will not result in warfare, bloodshed, genocide and mass destruction as did the rise of Nazism. Instead of speaking, he would do well to pray this verse from the Bible over and over: "Set a guard at my mouth, Lord; keep watch at the door of my lips" (Psalm 141:3).

[NYC123]

08:14 PM on 11/05/2010

When Jesus was on earth the timing for women to be addressed directly as leaders of the flock would have been a distraction to his purpose and mission because of the culture at that time. With that said, women are, were, and will continue to be the backbone of our Christian faith/movement! Today the time is right for the recognition of women as leaders -- our Christ would approve! Note, I am one that is not a proponent of these over dressed pompous looking bishops! Jesus would never dress like that -- and I believe that speaks volumes against "holier-than-thou attire!!"

[SensibleJoe]

09:00 AM on 11/06/2010

And yet it was women who announced the good news of Jesus' resurrection to the all-male apostles -- not the other way around.

[Leah Kunz]

04:30 AM on 11/08/2010

yes, obviously this act and others like it were on par with the apostles being able to hold council and teach the word as trusted figureheads of god...

women were obviously underrepresented in religion no matter how you slice it.

[MyFatCat]

10:59 PM on 11/04/2010

And I repeat, if women priests are as bad as pedophiles, and the discussion over their admission is "World War II" then the men in dresses are very afraid indeed.

I would point out that it's hard to understand that a church that protects pedophile priests has a problem with women priests, given that the problems are equated. It shows just how deep the hatred of living real women is, compared to the long-dead ones.

[MyFatCat]

10:45 PM on 11/04/2010

If female priests are the equivalent of pedophiles and the recognition of them is World War II...the establishment of men in dresses must be very frightened indeed.

And considering that pedophiles were allowed to be priests--protected, in fact--the whole flap is a wee bit inconsistent.

[NYC123]

06:14 PM on 11/04/2010

When Jesus was on earth the timing for women to be addressed directly as leaders of the flock would have been a distraction to his purpose and mission because of the culture at that time. With that said, women are, were, and will continue to be the backbone of our Christian faith/movement! Today the time is right for the recognition of women as leaders -- our Christ would approve! Note, I am one that is not a proponent of these over dressed pompous looking bishops! Jesus would never dress like that -- and I believe that speaks volumes against this "holier-than-thou attire!"

[eric14]

06:09 PM on 11/04/2010

This subject is so passée. Time for a lesbian Pope.

[mggwa]

09:03 PM on 11/04/2010

"Time for a lesbian Pope. "

Very likely many such exist. Your problem is not knowing who they are and where they are. This lesbian pope might only have two followers in a rented flat down in New Orleans.

[ManiDeli]

06:42 PM on 11/08/2010

A popette would hit the spot.

[BobEvansZombie]

05:16 PM on 11/04/2010

It's past time for this little boys only club to dissolve.

[mggwa]

08:32 PM on 11/04/2010

"It's past time for this little boys only club to dissolve. "

What time was that? Is this a thing that is for you to decide?

At least in the United States, we have this thing called the First Amendment right of association. If a group of boys want to have a boys only club, then it is so, and there is nothing you can do about it -- except of course, choose to join (if they will have you) or not.

[MyFatCat]

10:46 PM on 11/04/2010

As long as they don't take money for it.

[Ghost803]

04:35 PM on 11/08/2010

she wasn't talking about bringing the government into it, so why are you? It was her subjective opinion she was espousing, just because you disagree with her opinion does not make this a constitutional issue. You have the first amendment and it is her right to tell the "boy's only club" to suck on it.

[sunshine14]

02:45 PM on 11/04/2010

Example Mary M has been told was the one called -my most beloved disciples. In Jesus time, was a huge no no, for woman period. Why till this day her gospels are believed to be really John, for Mary M safety. Woman were to be see but not heard, strictly submissive to man. Servants

[Carroll27]

09:59 PM on 11/04/2010

"Why till this day her gospels are believed to be really John" .... I'm guessing what you mean is that the Gospel of John is really the cover for the Gospel of Mary Magdalene?

[John Camp]

02:48 PM on 11/06/2010

There is no evidence at all, none. That Mary Madeline write the gospel of John. John is the most historical of the apostles (meaning that we know the most about him with surety.) His gospel was in circulation within his own lifetime and his friend and disciple Polycarp affirms his authorship, as does Polycarp's disciple Clement of Rome. There is also the foot of the cross passage where Jesus tells the beloved disciple to "behold your mother" and his mother to "behold your son" (19:25-27) after which the disciple took her in his (masculine genitive in the greek) own home.

[sunshine14]

02:42 PM on 11/04/2010

To explain about woman priest of Bishop, bare with me.
I hope that everyone will agree that Jesus teaching as it relates to children (Let the little children come unto me) provides a more guide than the teaching of Psalm 137 ('Blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashers them against the rocks")

Similarly some biblical views of woman are superior to others. And so the apostle Paul's attitude about women is that they could be and should be Leaders of the Christian communities-as evidenced by the fact that in Paul's own communities there were women who were church organizers, deacons, and even apostles (Romans 16) That attitude is much better than the one inserted by a latter scribe into Paul's letter of 1 Corinthians, which claims women should always be silent in the Church (1 Corinthians 14:35-36)-or the one forged under Pauls name in the letter of 1 Timothy, which insists that women remain silent submissive and pregnant ( 1 Timothy2:11-15)

In thinking about which parts of the Bible have something to say in the modern context, it is important to recall the historical view that the biblical authors were ALL living in a different world from ours and reflected the assumptions and beliefs of people in their world.

This is true for everything found in the Bible. It was written in a different world, a different context.
above written from book of -Jesus Interrupted- by Bart D Ehrman.

[John Camp]

03:02 PM on 11/06/2010

Even the most dead set against against Pauline authorship of all of the epistles affirm Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians in its entirety (google haupte briefe not that I agree with this view). Dr. Erhman's objections are in truth not textual, but theological. The UBS 4 Greek new testament does not bracket 1 Cor 14:35-36, nor is there anything in the text critical apparatus that might indicate that it is a scribal emendation.

[AbeMartin]

01:19 PM on 11/04/2010

His Excellency, the Bishop of Lewes is obviously well past when he should have retired. His generation and those following have seen not just catastrophic war and holocaust. He has also witnessed the recognition that the professions, the highest executive positions in government, universities, and in business are not limited to those who are white, Anglo-Saxon and Anglican or Catholic. Women have taken the reins of power except among conservative religions.

There is no justification for the continued exclusion from ordination as priests or rabbis or mullahs by any of the Orthodox and Traditional rites of Christianity, Judaism or Islam, except by those who blindly and unquestioningly follow centuries old traditions of misogyny born out of the nonsense about "original sin" and the belief that menstrual cycles somehow render women "unclean." Biblical scholarship and archaeological discoveries over the past sixty years have demonstrated that many biblical books and gospels that described the role of women such as Mary of Magdala in Jesus' ministry or during the pre-monarchical, pre-rabbinical periods of Judaism, were deliberately suppressed by male "religious leaders." And too often, those who continued to believe and preach religious equality were persecuted and often killed.

With both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church's wracked with discord, paranoia, scandal, and shrinking numbers of males willing to accept the Rule that they must strictly follow, it is time for the octogenarians who carry the titles Bishop, Archbishop, etc. to step bravely into the 21st Century.

[mggwa]

08:35 PM on 11/04/2010

"obviously well past when he should have retired"

Indeed. This oversight would have been quickly corrected if only they had asked you a long time ago. Not only you, but really, so many people here have all kinds of advice for the Church of England. It would be intresting to take ALL of the advice, put it into a pot, stir it up, and see what comes out -- if anything -- after the opposing views have cancelled each other out.