Tasha Lem and Libby Lane: the politics and law of the Church

 By Danny Nicol, University of Westminster 





In “The Time of the Doctor” (2013) we meet the Church of the Papal Mainframe, a security church dedicated to protecting you in this world and the next.  Its leader is the Mother Superius, Tasha Lem.  In our own reality, in the largest part of the United Kingdom, we have the Church of England, whose supreme governor is Queen Elizabeth II, albeit power lies with her (male) Archbishops and the Church's legislature, the General Synod.  The Church of England is an established church, connected to the State.  As such it enjoys a special position in national life and identity, even for agnostics, atheists (like me) and those of other faiths.  The notion of an established religion was so repellent to the American founding fathers that they disabled the US Congress from being able to create one.  It may, indeed, be difficult for some Americans to grasp fully the Church’s special significance in England’s national life.  


Be that as it may, the Church has recently appointed its first woman bishop, Libby Lane, as Bishop of Stockport.  This blog post considers the differences between Tasha Lem and Libby Lane.  It argues that these may be used to criticise both the Church of England and Doctor Who’s stance on women under Steven Moffat as show runner.

"There will now be an unscheduled faith change!"
Tasha lays down the law.

First, Tasha is leader of her Church, Libby isn’t.  It is good that Doctor Who imagines a religion led by a woman: the religious world is characterised by male domination.  In this regard it is to be hoped that Libby Lane’s appointment will kick-start a powerful impetus towards gender equality in the established Church, and that the time will come when the Church’s leadership posts, Archbishop of Canterbury and Archbishop of York, are held by women.  The omens are not all bad: women priests were introduced in 1994 and by 2010 more women were being ordained than men. On the other hand it is often easier to change the gender balance at rank-and-file level than at the top.

Secondly, Tasha is authoritarian, Libby isn’t.  Seemingly without consulting her Church, Tasha changes its aims and objectives.  Declaring an “unscheduled faith change” Tasha dictates that the Church will devote itself entirely to the cause of intergalactic peace.  This sounds laudable, but it is a pity that the decision is Tasha’s alone.  By contrast the Church of England’s rules diffuse power more widely.  During Libby Lane’s consecration ceremony a male congregant objected that woman bishops were “not in the Bible”.  The presiding archbishop was able to retort that women Bishops are now lawful under Church canon, and that, being the established Church, this canon is now the law of the land, approved by all three houses of the Church’s General Synod and both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament.  Against this backdrop of consensus, the Queen had commanded Libby Lane’s appointment – a command which the Archbishop declared himself compelled to obey by dint of his oath of allegiance to the Sovereign.  This explanation is imbued with the effect on our previously-Catholic church of the Protestant Reformation and the marriage of Church and State of the 16th century Tudor era.

Sonic crozier?  Libby Lane
with her new symbol of office

Thirdly, Tasha’s dictatorial approach to Church governance goes hand-in-hand with a public show of sexual desire for the Doctor.  In conformity with Steven Moffat’s favoured stereotype, the woman is powerful except…she makes the man the centre of attention.  Thus Tasha beckons him provocatively, flirts with him, and even suffers a sexual assault from him – as Alyssa Franke has observed in her excellent Whovian Feminism blog.  By contrast Libby Lane has expressed the hope that her appointment leads young women to realise that society need not dictate the limits of what is possible for them.

Finally, there is one point of symmetry between the two Churches.  Faced with war the Church of the Papal Mainframe becomes a political church.  Faced with rising inequality the Church of England has done the same thing.  In recent times pay-day loans, the need for food banks and the gap between rich and poor have all earned its vocal disapproval.  Like its Doctor Who counterpart the Church of England rightly cannot isolate itself from politics.