Part Three Equality and the demands of love
Equality between men and women is a major aspect of justice and central to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This equality is an expression of our faith and of our hope. We yearn for it, work for it, but always have to point forwards towards it. It is not our present possession, and will only made complete in our redemption.
The Church is sent to the world to bring it the whole blessing of God. So we Christians are sent to our contemporary British society, as witnesses to all that contributes to its true well-being.
The Church is able to give this witness because it passes on what it has received, from the Lord, and from all the many generations of Christians whom the Lord has sent to us. It tells our generation what is unchangingly true and good, so that our society may flourish. Amongst these are two complementary truths: one is that men and women (and every human being, of every status and station) are equal, and of equally incomparable value. The second is that, in order that each generation prospers, it must prepare for and give way to the next generation. In order to do this, there is a proper functional asymmetry and inequality. The Church witnesses simultaneously to an eternal equality and to a provisional functional inequality. In marriage it has always encouraged men and women to agree freely on this relationship of provisional inequality within ultimate equality, first for the sake of each other and then for the sake of their children. These two people, man and woman, may defer and subordinate themselves to each, and both of them together deferring and subordinating themselves to the children they bear. In this covenant, in confidence of their eternal equality, they may leave equality aside and take a demotion in order to serve and promote their children over themselves. They may do this willingly, in freedom, because they wish to, and because they can see the good and the happiness it may bring about.
The Church has always said that there cannot simply be perfect equality in time, because Generation One has to give way, willingly, to Generation Two. Only when Generation One has passed life on to Generation Two can the children of Generation Two, now adult, look back and recognise that their parents were indeed their equal. Our parents are our equal because they subordinated themselves to us, lowering themselves in order to raise us. Then the challenge for us is to become their equals, by lowering ourselves in turn in order to raise a new generation. Between generations equality is an emergent, not a static, quality. In the course of this great inter-generational transmission, in certainly does feel, to women in particular, as though there is not much justice or equality about it, since childbirth and child-rearing are draining, isolating and always undervalued. But we Christians praise those who go through it. We tell anyone who will listen that it is central to the flourishing of our society and to our happiness as individuals. Many of our contemporaries have been so afraid of the loss of status that child-rearing involves that they have not had families of their own, and have constructed ideological justifications of this. They have robbed themselves of happiness, robbed the next generation of confidence in its ability to love, and made our society much less sure of its own worth. We have given our children less than we received from our parents, so equality between generations has suffered because one generation has made an idol of equality between sexes.
The Church assures each generation that blessing comes through passing on life. We tell them, and show them, that vulnerability and apparent loss of status are not a permanent or real loss, but are the way that real gains come. We point out that our confidence in this eternal equality enables us to let go of some of the present appearances of equality, and make our descent into a provisional inequality. The Church demonstrates the asymmetry between the sexes that enables one generation take the steps – ‘make the sacrifices’, we used to say – to bring a new generation into being. The Church gives this witness against all attempts by the world to turn equality (or any other such good) into an idol. When equality is made absolute, male and female are rendered not just mirror-images, but identical and indistinguishable. Then neither has any need of the others, or any reason for seeking or loving another person. When its members doubt their ability to love, to be patient and vulnerable, that society as a whole stops taking the risk of love and mutual service, and ceases to sustain itself with children of its own. The Church must address this with compassion and clarity, as ever pointing to what is unchangingly good and true. When a society is dissolving, the Church must do the opposite. For their sake, we must hold firm. We must give our contemporaries all the truth we have received from all previous generations of the Church.
That is why the Church in its ministry give public witness of the goodness of functional inequality, just as much as it witnesses to the goodness of equality. It ordains people from one sex but not the other. One sex has to serve, the other to be served. This is the very conspicuous way in which the Church has insisted that love and mutual service are what make us human, and that it is only some indefinable difference between sexes that makes such love and service possible. The Church has always said that there are roles which men and only men can and should perform for women (and for the young and the old, the next and the previous generation), and which women can and should perform for men (and for the young and old, the next and previous generations). By God’s grace, each sex can allow the other to serve it.
Some of our contemporaries believe that both men and women now have to do and be everything for themselves, and leave the other sex with nothing to do or to offer. For their sake, we disagree. We say that men and women may to look to each other, wait for each other, and continue in their need. Love must always remain vulnerable. The Church is witness to the mutuality and complementarity of sexes, for this is part of the way in which God has given us to one another, to neighbour and to stranger. We are enabled by God to love, and do so even when no love is returned. We may love in patience, always conceding that person’s freedom to refuse to respond or recognise our value and our equality with them. We are witnesses of love, which cannot be nagged or coerced. This is the very good reason why the Church has always taught this, and not only teaches but demonstrates it in its ministry by ordaining only men to serve, and teaching the rest of us to be content to be served by them.
