The voice of the people
As expected, this week the General Synod of the Church of England at last agreed to allow the consecration of women as bishops. I say ‘at last’ because for some time it has seemed to be a matter of time and getting the wording right for the legislation to pass, and that has now happened.
I understand from those who were there that 1 Samuel 8 was quoted several times in the debate: “Obey the voice of the people”. It is somewhat amusing to discover the original context of those words, and actually rather sad. It comes when the elders of Israel ask the prophet Samuel to give them a king to lead them. This dismays Samuel, but the Lord tells him: “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7, ESV). Surely nobody who knew this context would quote such words favourably?
It is pretty clear to me that this decision has not been reached through a careful and humble searching of the Scriptures to see what God is saying to us. Rather, it has come from the pressures of our society to be ‘egalitarian’ and ‘modern’ and the Bible has then been consulted to see if it allows this move. Whenever we use the Bible in this way, unsurprisingly, we find the answers we want. It would be a terrible thing indeed if, in obeying the voice of the people, we are rejecting God himself as king over us.