Event · 1992

Church of England Ordains Women

The process by which the Church of England opened its ordained ministry to women: the General Synod voted in November 1992 to ordain women priests, and the first were ordained in 1994.

History

Roots

Women had served the Church of England in recognised roles long before they could be ordained. Deaconesses were revived in the 1860s, and through the twentieth century women worked as licensed lay workers, missionaries and parish assistants. The question of priesthood came from outside England first. In Hong Kong in 1944, under wartime conditions, Bishop Ronald Hall ordained Florence Li Tim-Oi a priest so that she could minister to a congregation cut off from male clergy (Ordination of women in the Anglican Communion, secondary). She stopped functioning as a priest after the ordination was condemned, but the precedent stood.

In 1974 three retired bishops ordained the “Philadelphia Eleven” in the American Episcopal Church, irregularly; the Episcopal Church regularised women’s ordination in 1976. Other provinces followed, including Canada and New Zealand. Each Anglican province governs itself, so the Communion as a whole never ruled the question settled; it treated it as a matter for each province, under a process later called “reception.”

Causes

In England the decisive pressure came from inside the Church. A 1975 General Synod motion said there were “no fundamental objections” to ordaining women, but a 1978 motion to remove the legal barriers failed. That defeat produced the Movement for the Ordination of Women (1979–1994), whose first moderator was Stanley Booth-Clibborn, Bishop of Manchester (MOW, secondary). Women were admitted to the diaconate under the Deacons (Ordination of Women) Measure 1986, and the first were ordained deacon in 1987, so that by the early 1990s many women already held parish posts in every respect but the right to preside at the Eucharist.

Proceedings

On 11 November 1992 the General Synod approved the draft Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure. It needed a two-thirds majority in each of its three houses. The bishops and clergy cleared it comfortably; the laity cleared it by a margin of about two votes (Bishops 39–13, Clergy 176–74, Laity 169–82, per the Associated Press report of 12 November 1992). Archbishop George Carey backed the measure. Parliament then approved it, and it received Royal Assent in November 1993 as the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure 1993.

The Measure let a parish pass Resolution A (no woman to preside or pronounce absolution there) or Resolution B (no woman as incumbent). The Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993 added Resolution C, by which a parish could ask for the oversight of a bishop who did not ordain women. To supply such bishops, the archbishops created three “provincial episcopal visitors,” popularly “flying bishops,” under the sees of Ebbsfleet, Richborough and Beverley (Provincial episcopal visitor, secondary). A companion Ordination of Women (Financial Provisions) Measure 1993 compensated clergy who resigned over the decision.

On 12 March 1994 Bishop Barry Rogerson ordained the first 32 women priests at Bristol Cathedral (Ordination of women in the Church of England, secondary).

Aftermath and the second stage

Several hundred clergy left, many for the Roman Catholic church (about 400 by 1997, though there were no exact statistics, per the Irish Times), among them Graham Leonard, the retired Bishop of London, who was received in 1994. Anglo-Catholic opponents organised as Forward in Faith; conservative evangelical opponents formed Reform. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI’s constitution Anglicanorum coetibus set up personal ordinariates for Anglicans entering full communion with Rome, and the English ordinariate drew a further group of clergy in 2011.

The campaign for women bishops took two decades. A draft measure failed on 20 November 2012, when the House of Laity voted 132–74 and fell short of two-thirds by six votes (Anglican Journal). A revised package passed in July 2014: the Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure 2014, which repealed the 1993 Measure, together with the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (2014), whose “Five Guiding Principles” replaced the Act of Synod. Libby Lane was consecrated Bishop of Stockport at York Minster on 26 January 2015 (Libby Lane, secondary). In 2026 Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London since 2018, became the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury, installed at Canterbury Cathedral on 25 March 2026 (Sarah Mullally, secondary).

Key ideas and contributors

The priest represents all humanity. Supporters argued that what the priest represents at the altar is the humanity Christ took on, which includes women. Gregory of Nazianzus’s rule “what is not assumed is not healed” was often invoked: if a woman cannot represent Christ, it seemed to imply that Christ’s humanity did not include hers. This reasoning stands behind most of the egalitarian case within Anglicanism.

Scripture points beyond its setting. Advocates read Galatians 3:28 (“there is no male and female … you are all one in Christ Jesus”) as the governing principle, and pointed to women named in Paul’s circle, such as Phoebe the deacon and Junia, “well known to the apostles” (Romans 16:1–7). The restrictions in 1 Timothy 2:11–15 were read as addressed to a particular church problem.

The Church may decide, provisionally. The Anglican answer to the question “who has authority to change this?” was that a province may act, and the wider Church then tests the change over time. This idea of “open reception” let the Church of England ordain women while formally granting that opponents held a legitimate Anglican position. It is the logic of Resolution C, of the flying bishops, and later of the Five Guiding Principles, the fifth of which commits the Church to “mutual flourishing.”

The Church of England’s settlement. Its distinctive contribution was institutional more than theological: a single church holding two incompatible convictions about orders, with legal and episcopal structures to let both continue. Archbishop Carey and successive archbishops defended this as a costly form of unity.

Key controversies

Catholic order. Anglo-Catholics held to a Male Priesthood on the ground that the Church has no authority to alter what Christ instituted when he chose twelve men. Rome had set out this argument in Inter Insigniores (1976). Eighteen months after the English vote, John Paul II’s Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) declared that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women” (Vatican). Opponents also argued that one province of a divided church had no right to change the ministry shared with Rome and the Eastern Orthodox churches, and that doing so set back ecumenical dialogue.

Headship. Conservative evangelicals objected on scriptural grounds, holding Complementarianism: teaching and governing authority in the church belongs to qualified men (1 Timothy 2:12; 1 Corinthians 14:34). Their objection grew sharper with women bishops, since a bishop holds oversight over male clergy. The 2014 settlement responded by consecrating Rod Thomas as Bishop of Maidstone in 2015 for this constituency.

Whether the provision was fair. Supporters of women’s ministry, including the campaign group WATCH, called the Act of Synod a “theology of taint” that let parishes treat a bishop as compromised by having ordained women. Opponents said the 2012 draft offered them too little and voted it down for that reason. The test case came in 2017, when Philip North, a traditionalist, was nominated Bishop of Sheffield and withdrew after protests (Philip North, secondary). The Independent Reviewer, Sir Philip Mawer, then reported on whether the Five Guiding Principles had been honoured (The Nomination to the See of Sheffield and Related Matters, 2017).

Effects on the Communion. The ordination of women strained bonds that later broke over sexuality. Several provinces still do not ordain women priests, and others accept women priests but not bishops. Mullally’s appointment drew regret from GAFCON, which said the Church of England had “relinquished its authority to lead,” though its stated objection also concerned her positions on sexuality.

What remains unresolved

The legal question is closed: women may hold every office in the Church of England. The theological question is formally still open, since the Church’s own settlement treats both convictions as loyal Anglicanism and promises opponents a lasting place. Whether “mutual flourishing” can last indefinitely, or is a long transition, is the live dispute. The number of parishes under alternative oversight has not fallen away, and each senior appointment of a traditionalist or of a woman tests the arrangement again.