The Bishop

 Not the Bishop you think I'll talk about. I'm not interested in the Bishop of Winchester. What's been happening at Winchester has been inevitable for a long time. 

The Anglican Bishop of St. David's, Wales. 

Underline that it doesn't matter if someone is using their personal or official account, if they are in public office, behaviour such as that shown on Joanna Penberthy's twitter isn't appropriate. 

Unfortunately it has led to the whole pack of mysogenists, the anti-women-clergy brigade, the anti women brigade and anti-church brigade answering with their own streams of ignorance and hatred. Not helpful to other female clergy.

Jesus didn't speak against women clergy as far as I know, we were given the message that we are all one in Him. Jesus spoke against the Pharisees - the original C of E so to speak, and against divorce, and against paedophiles, He didn't say that 2000 years later when society and roles had changed, women couldn't lead church. Many people get hung up on St. Paul and his bigotry, but Jesus treated all as equal and spoke plainly to men and women. 

The bigots making the current fuss can't really justify themselves, they're just bullies and ignorant men who don't want women to be in positions of authority. Little Men, no maturity.

The issue isn't women in leadership, it's the behaviour of C of E leaders that's increasingly angering the decent people. The Bishop's twitter account was curated. This means she wasn't sending hundreds of tweets per day, someone else was lining up and setting off explosive tweets, with her knowledge or not so much. Stupidity indeed, and in her position she should certainly have known, her name was being used for terrible statements. But...do curated accounts just tweet? Or do they reply to tweets in the same toxic way, as her account was doing? How much of it was her? Hm. She couldn't physically have been a Bishop and tweeted every few minutes every day. A curated account in a way is a falsehood, and doesn't reflect well on her. Really she should have the grace to resign. You can't use your position to attack a whole sector of the voting population, no matter how much you hate that sector. In a position of esteem and authority, it can be very damaging and unpleasant, especially to her congregants in that sector, and gives off completely the wrong message on behalf of the Church. And I understand that the Welsh Church isn't best pleased. But this shouldn't have happened. 

The Bishop has apologized, deleted her account, and claims she trusts the electoral sector who she has attacked through hundreds of tweets. This isn't really an answer, changing what you've strongly stated you believe doesn't give you credibility, will you do the same in church? Do you believe what you are preaching if you don't believe what you've tweeted hundreds of times? I think she should take a graceful demotion and a little bit of training in engaging with the public. She's not really the right person for a high profile public role. 

I have kept my voting opinions out of this, what I can tell you is, I didn't vote for the current government and I don't vote Labour or Lib Dem either. It's not relevant what I vote, my feelings aren't personally hurt by the Bishop but other people's will be, and I understand concerns about the current government, I also understand that I post the occasional sharp tweet about matters that concern me, but not hundreds per day continually and not habitually as awful as some of the Bishop of St. David's and my sharper tweets mainly relate to misconducts and harm to the vulnerable, I also tweet humour and general chat, I'm also not a holder of public office. We all have opinions, and twitter is a minefield of offending or not offending people with our views, some people will enthusiastically back us, some will be furious with what we put, if it doesn't agree with their view. A persistent tirade like the Bishop's is a different matter.

The Bishop's hundreds of tweets per day all attacking and some in a very Donald Trump style, cannot be condoned, are not acceptable. A person of her standing would be expected to write a personal letter to the Conservative Party with her grievances and have a private dialogue with the party, not attack them on social media.

'Just Don't Do It, Okay?'