The Ghosts of Gothard and the Headship Charismatics Still Haunt the ACNA

The new Most Rev. Steve Wood’s home diocese’s position on WO bears that out:

Bishop Wood’s position is more nuanced. The Anglican Diocese of the Carolinas Policy for Women in Order has supported the ordination of women as deacons and priests in the church, with the provision that women may not serve in the office of rector...

Alice Linsley a cultural anthropologist, former Episcopal priest who renounced her orders as a priest after extensive biblical scholarship, told VOL that the weird constraints placed on ordained women in Bishop Steve Wood’s diocese are the result of an unbiblical doctrine called “male headship.”

“Both women and men can be in authority, but not serve in the same roles. In the biblical texts, women of authority are not named as frequently as men of authority simply because the Hebrew were a caste of ruler-priests and women never served as priests. To be right believing means to uphold the received tradition in full. That tradition never involved females at the altar or men in the birthing chamber. Women and men have different roles in God’s plan and design.”

If you hear anyone talking about headship in a Christian church, you can be sure that the ultimate source of that is the one and only Bill Gothard, who made it a cornerstone of his teaching in the 1970’s. It’s been taken up in unlikely places like the Southern Baptist Convention. It was also the wellspring for the “Shepherding Movement” amongst Charismatics (Catholic and Protestant) in the same era, and that got a smackdown from none other than Pat Robertson. But the itch to be “in authority” has if anything gotten worse since that time, as evidenced by the NAR and even the ACNA’s decidedly undemocratic structure.

The most serious problem is that, in a chruch with an episcopal structure like the ACNA, the whole concept of the priesthood that goes with this is unBiblical. The desire to be a “fourth Rome” surfaces in things such as the conclave they recently had. I think some of the motivation for that stems from the idea that “the Episcopal church apostacised, the RCC didn’t,” but some of us saw the likes of the current Occupant coming.

The quoted article also notes the following:

There were Hebrew women of authority. Line of descent was traced through high-status wives, especially the cousin brides. Residential arrangements included neolocal, avunculocal, matrilocal, and patrilocal, and the biblical data reveals that the responsibilities and rights of males and females were balanced, yet distinct.

As a Palm Beacher, the whole concept of “high-status wives” ordering around men of lower status is a natural one. Pity the thought that the ACNA is that bourgeois!