Jamie, As I showed by quoting from the flyer and the Bristol CU events calendar the title given in the tweets and on the flipchart was different. My irritation is caused by your condescending and dismissive comment that minimises the equality of 50% of humanity as "some past bad practice and the tabloid student journalism". You clearly have no idea how important this issue is to reaching people with the gospel message. Instead of dismissing those "heckling students" it would be better to be properly listening to their experience that the CU has been seen as worse than irrelevant, in fact as totally negative because of it's position on gender. When the UCCF do is irrelevant when the CU is what students actually see. What the UCCF could and should be doing is helping those 19 year olds understand the impact on the gospel of their bad decisions and not allowing problems to exist for years.

Jamie, "Passing hecklers may not be representative of the student body but its fair to say the CU's reputation with some may well have suffered from some past bad practice and the tabloid student journalism but the real story is what's actually happening." Several hours have passed since I first read this. Yet my irritation with such condescension and lack of understanding has not calmed down much. A salutary lesson in missing the point.

Absolutely with you on the subject matter. Realistically the first time you have a woman allowed to speak that will be the subject. Key test is what happens next.

BWAHOA, Apology accepted.

BWAHOA, Messy Church was awesome. See this

BWAHOA, "Two years with a female president (one when I was on exec) and several female speakers." Several women speakers in 2 years? How many is several? How does that fit with my points in the "Next" section of this post?

Yr Ieithydd: "This reduces the pool of women who speak in church who can speak at CU meetings." BWAHOA: "That has been my point all the way along." 2 responses a) If you have made a public commitment to equality then even if it is harder you put enough effort in to make sure that you have women speakers. b) If you claim to be for "ALL" Christians but you discover your Doctrinal Basis is preventing lots of Christians from being speakers for you then logically you would either review that Doctrinal Basis or cease to claim to have a vision and strategy of uniting All Christians. Clearly can't have both. Of course it can't be that difficult to find women to speak. As people have been pointing out we currently have no evidence in the SW region for any CU's apart from Bristol not having women speakers. It is unlikely that there are no women speakers able to get to Bristol when they can manage to get to Bath for example.

BWAHOA, Busy at packed Messy Church. Reply later

Anon, Where did I say fault?

Rhflan, It depends. Larger universities often have a range of Christian Societies. Part of the problem is that CU's try to position themselves as "The" Christian Society.

BWAHOA, I am pretty sure I have been clear that equality matters across every area of human diversity. However, just to be clear here. Equality applies to gender, age, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, disability etc etc The only qualification for Church leadership that matters at the end is to be called and equipped by God through the power of the Holy Spirit. Of course the way that Churches and individuals discern, explore, affirm and celebrate such a call and equipping varies and can be complicated. No I am not worried about alienating people :-) Try searching my blog for words such as homosexuality. I have written plenty about it.

Tom, I had trouble thinking of how to word that one. It is not about the size of the CU but about it's range of events. If you invite women speakers to only certain types of events or to speak on only some issues then there is not equality. [Update] I have updated the post. I hope it is clearer now.

Anon, Updated. Also see my new post "Updates on Women Speakers in CU's in the South West" Joe, I am not sure what to do about that. I don't want to write off CU's that the UCCF list without some evidence that I can point to.

Tanya, Thanks. I hadn't made the connection between Marjon and St Mark and St John. Am updating the list.

BWAHOA, There is a search box in the side bar of this bog. Try using it to search for equality. I have written a lot about it!

Anon, Do you realise that you have just compared allowing women to speak at a CU to allowing someone to speak about pornography!