Chadderbox on Reform's Lady Boss

Peter Levite: Linda Bode, our Chadderbox correspondent of the Church in England affairs - not actual affairs you understand - tell us the LATEST [shouting again] about what is happening.

Linda Bode: It's what has happened with Reform, the pressure group, Peter, in that they have appointed a woman to head up the body as its first full-time director.

Peter Levite: A woh what?

Linda Bode: A wo - man.

Peter Levite: Is that someone like you?

Linda Bode: Yes. I have the same bits.

Peter Levite: What's the significance of this, if there is any?

Linda Bode: Neither she nor Reform believe in female headship. Reform represents the New Puritans, the fundies, the Prots who think women cannot be bishops, cannot be priests when in charge, cannot be in charge.

Peter Levite: I can see a contradiction coming on.

Linda Bode: No, because it does mean that Reform business sessions are going to be unique.

Peter Levite: Oh, how come?

Linda Bode: The press conference at the Reform Group was not well conducted and reporters just did not know what questions to ask. But I have it on authority (ha ha) that business meetings conducted by the new full time director Sue A. Leaf will only take place in the presence of other women and little children.

Peter Levite: That's not going to get a lot of business done, if say little kids are going to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Linda Bode: But their real boss, Tom "Dino" Rod...

Peter Levite: Is he a dinosaur then?

Linda Bode: Oh yes. Reverend Tom "Dino" Rod will have men folk in the next room and they will pass messages to and from Mrs Leaf. Anything she decides will only be a suggestion and then the Christian Taliban will sit in a circle and decide during a Pow-wow session whether to agree to anything she says.

Peter Levite: How did Tom "Dino" Rod justify such an appointment then?

Linda Bode: He said that people like her just don't grow on trees. She has a lawyer husband and he's definitely the boss in the home and church. She was introduced in a prayer meeting, and no she definitely did not lead the prayers.

Peter Levite: Apparently a mover and shaker in your institution.

Linda Bode: She sits on the General Synod and says that our God is not Parliament.

Peter Levite: But God is well established, she'd think, with deep roots, wanting the status quo.

Linda Bode: Status quo ante or the seventeenth century: in retaining and continuing discrimination, yes.

Peter Levite: That's it, cuts you see, so no more time. Got to cut the phone budget. Weather?

George Hudson: As hot as a locomotive and probably as damp in the air.