On women bishops: why everyone should care about the Church of England vote

How many people watching or listening to the news coverage of the vote by the General Synod of the Church of England (the Church’s governing body) against the appointment of women bishops actually care? Not many I would guess, and then not for long. The Archbishop of Canterbury thinks the Church has ‘a lot of explaining to do’ to the wider community and that it has ‘lost a measure of credibility’ after the decision and the BBC are rightly making it headline news. But I believe the Church had already neglected the wider population of the country and the argument for disestablishment has been growing. Ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith tweeted that the Church no longer represented the country. How many people thought it did anyway?

But we should care. Not because of reasons of faith – we are a multi-cultural, multi-faith country and we can choose to have any faith or none. But we should care because the Church does still have a huge political influence in this country and across the world, often in countries where women experience far greater inequality than in the UK.  This decision  signals the long-term and inevitable decline of an established Church which I personally find alienating and dispiriting; but if the vote had gone the other way it might just have become a force for some sort of real change. How can we accept or take seriously the Church’s involvement in discussions at the highest level when it remains exempt from equality legislation? Whilst the House of Lords allows 26 unelected bishops a say in our legislation we have to take this seriously.