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Oh. Please. I can’t believe that this is even an issue. Can women do the job? Yes. Does God mind women? There isn’t a reason why he should – unless he’s still got hangups about that apple thing.

What need does the Almighty have for a gender anyway? Is he/she going to meet another single God? I thought one of the main tenets of the Christian faith was that there is only one God (as say the Jews and Muslims of this world). So God definitely doesn’t need the apparatus of a male. Something more like those self-reproducing lizards would be appropriate. Even then, does an eternal being need to procreate? Why can’t it just exist?

According to the BBC’s correspondent on the issue traditionalists believe that because the 12 disciples and all of their successors were men, women shouldn’t be Bishops.

I have two problems with that argument:

• All jobs have been filled by men for the last several thousand years excepting female prostitution and domesticism. Shall we keep it that way just because?
• There were a handful of important women who played a key role in the events surrounding Jesus – Mary was the first to see the “Risen Lord”. But who wrote the Bible – the men of course. So we can never test the veracity of claims that the 12 male disciples were more important than the women in Jesus’ life.

And as for the Evangelicals, who believe that men should have authority over women, full stop. I can understand that being raised in a patriarchal society like ours, this may seem natural – providing, of course, that you have stuck your head in the sand for the last 50 years.

However, if you have lived in a matriarchal society, like some in South East Asia, Africa, Cleckeaton or the East End of London, it may seem more natural to listen to the female voice of authority – lest you incur several decades of snubbing for missing the Christmas lunch.