Make no mistake, as the date of Archbishop Sarah Mullally’s enthronement in Canterbury Cathedral draws closer, the world of social media is currently as vile as it can get. Along with the C of E which has discerned her call to this role, she faces a barrage of accusations of heresy and even apostasy. Try defending her, and you just act as a magnet for the hatred. All this is happening over thirty years after women were first ordained to the priesthood, and despite the Five Guiding Principles calling us to “mutual flourishing” and “due respect and canonical obedience” towards those who are “true and lawful holders of the office which they occupy”.

In this blog post, I would like to reflect on the reception of women’s ordained ministry while noting some parallels with where the Church of England is on sexuality after the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) years; a topic which forms the theme of this whole blog. For women’s ordained ministry, we have the Five Guiding Principles (hereafter the 5 GPs), endorsed in 2014 as part of the ‘package’ for the Synodical measure to open episcopal ministry to women, and addressing the variety of differing convictions on this matter, and the key document is the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests. Discussions about women and about sexuality are similar in that they are about bodies, and about who holds the power, as well as being about how we read the Bible. In what follows, I’m going to focus on one of the other official documents about the 5 GPs, to see if and how that helps us when we are thinking about how we deal with difference in the Church of England.

That other official document is one issued four years after the creation of the 5 GPs, partly to offer a resource to those trying to make sense of them to others, such as to potential ordinands. Published by the Archbishops’ Council, it was written by the Faith and Order Commission, and is entitled The Five Guiding Principles: A Resource for Study(hereafter FAOC 2018). This document was also informed by the experience of the Church since 2014, in particular the 2017 Report from the Independent Reviewer which concerned the issues raised by the nomination as bishop of Sheffield of a bishop who does not ordain women. The Independent Reviewer asked FAOC to “examine the theological challenge which [this] has … posed to the 2014 Settlement”.

I do wonder who has read this “resource for study”. But, I believe, FAOC 2018 remains relevant. It is relevant when thinking about the lack of women bishops even now, as well as the microaggressions which women in ministry still endure. It is relevant when thinking about the standing of the 5 GPs; they were issued “without specifying a limit of time”. Does that mean they are with us until Jesus returns? And it is relevant to our current divisions on full inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the Church. Some of the claims of FAOC 2018 – that the 5 GPs are “life-giving” (FAOC 2018), and that they enable “mutual flourishing” in seeking the good of the other – are now very widely challenged. 

Holding the tension

Despite the insistence in the 5 GPs that they should be “held together in tension, rather than being applied selectively”, I am far from being the only person to observe that – like the Five Marks of Mission – it is all too easy to focus on one to the detriment of others. Some people will emphasise GP1 – “the C of E is fully and unequivocally committed to all orders of ministry being open to all, without reference to gender”. Hooray, women priests and bishops. Others will highlight GP4 – “the C of E remains committed to enabling [those who are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests] to flourish within its life and structures”. Hooray, you don’t have to accept the full and unequivocal commitment after all. 

How can those principles be reconciled? Similar questions have been asked for the whole Anglican Communion in the Eames Commission, which followed a resolution of the 1988 Lambeth Conference by trying to combine respecting other Province’s decisions without accepting the principles behind these. In the 1997 report of the monitoring group for this Commission’s work,  examples of bad practice mentioned included an Australian case where a man who had been ordained deacon by a male bishop in a service during which a woman was also ordained priest was “conditionally reordained” when he moved to another diocese (paragraph 24). In 5 GPs language, though, would we call that “mutual flourishing’? What does it do to our ecclesiology?

The “tension” (or contradiction) between the GPs was noted even when the then-Bishop of Rochester first introduced them at General Synod (FAOC 2018, p.27). FAOC suggested that the answer on GP4 was that it’s fine to reject women’s ministry because of “theological conviction”, but not because of “personal preference, local custom, or any kind of prejudice” (FAOC 2018, p.28). But how do you prove whether something is misogyny, or a theological conviction? It doesn’t make it any better if, like the Forward in Faith group, you also reject the men who support women’s ordination; that’s just misogyny at one remove. 

The relevance for the current debates on full inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people is clear. Here too, are objections based on homophobia or theological conviction? How can you spot the difference? 

The FAOC document notes that “Such respect for the integrity of one another’s theological convictions means that those opposed to the ordination of women should not characterize those in favour as caving in to the fashions of the age, and nor should those in favour stigmatise those opposed as supporters of discrimination and injustice” (p.28). Yet this is precisely what happens now with LGBTQIA+ inclusion: those describing themselves as orthodox accuse those calling themselves inclusive of “caving into the fashions of the age” while the latter accuse the former of “discrimination and injustice”. Interestingly, in a world where binaries are being reasserted in sexuality and gender identity, the 5 GPs speak of “the spectrum of teaching and tradition of the Anglican Communion” (GP4). It’s good to see this recognition that “orthodoxy” isn’t either/or, although a spectrum is much more difficult to manage than a simple binary.

Feeling the pain

Where one group thinks the other group is causing harm to people, FAOC 2018 argues, it is fair for this to be stated but their “participation … in the common life of our church” should not be restricted in any way (p.30). All are “loyal Anglicans” (p.31). Easy to say, but what does it mean? What counts as “common life”? Taking part in synodical processes? Access to central funds? Coming together at the altar for Holy Communion? More on that last one shortly.

On women’s ordained ministry, FAOC 2018 notes that the costs of accepting the mutual flourishing on which they insist “may be unevenly distributed and fall more heavily on some for reasons not of their own choosing” (p.37). I’ve been at General Synod when we’ve heard speeches from those who are in pain because their stable same-sex relationship of many decades is not recognised by the Church, and also from same-sex attracted people who insist that to honour such relationships would cause pain to them. Why, when nobody is telling them that they should abandon their chosen celibacy and get married? But the first group cannot follow a sense of call to ministry if they marry their beloved partner: the second can. I would class this as an unequal distribution of pain.

As for reasons “not of their own choosing”? Surely today we realise that people don’t choose to be gay. Frankly, when you look at how gay people are treated, even by the Church, would you ever choose this? False equivalences of pain really don’t help here. And, while straight people may also feel strongly that they are called to celibacy, the conservative position is that lesbian and gay people have no choice but celibacy (other than the concession from the organisation Living Out, that lesbian and gay people can just marry a person of the opposite sex). Shouldn’t celibacy be about making a free choice, rather than having no other options available? 

Getting worse rather than better

FAOC 2018 asked for more theological work on the 5 GPs. Did that happen? Not that I can see, and the effects of this have been felt ever since. In an important paper published in the Winter 2025 edition of Modern Believing, entitled “Mission Creep: The Five Guiding Principles and the Curious Incident of the Vanishing 2020 Statement on Episcopal Consecrations”, Judith Maltby challenged the ongoing lack of theological thinking which has meant that the 5 GPs have “been used to support increasing segregation in sacramental arrangements in the consecration of bishops” (my italics). 

Originally, archbishops who supported women’s ordination to the priesthood were still involved in consecrating new bishops who did not believe that women could be priests. But in the years since 2015 the consecration of such bishops was reduced to a small number (under canon law, the minimum is three) of similarly opposed bishops, in stark contrast to the usual mass of episcopal hands being laid on the candidate. At the first consecration of a traditional catholic bishop after women had begun to be consecrated, in 2015, the Archbishop of York stepped aside and was not involved at all in the consecration, nor did he preside at the Eucharist. This appears to have been about establishing a pure line of succession, something which a bishop opposed to women’s ordination could point to as a sign of his (and it is of course ‘his’) credentials. 

This situation was strengthened by a Statement made by Archbishop Justin Welby on 15 July 2020. He announced that the norm would shift from an archbishop being the chief consecrator, to having another bishop in this role. This bishop would be one of the three laying on hands, with others present but not doing so. Although it was made in the context of the Covid pandemic, this statement was not presented as a temporary arrangement. Far from it. The Archbishop of Canterbury stated “These new arrangements are made in the light of the pandemic and in awareness of the sad reality that not all in the Church of England agree on issues of ordination, and yet all are committed to upholding the Five Guiding Principles.” There was no attempt at providing a theological rationale for any of this and at some point in 2022 Archbishops again returned to their roles as chief consecrators. 

In her Modern Believing article, Judith Maltby made clear that she was not recommending the abolition of the 5 GPs, but was encouraging more debate on how they are applied, and recognition of the ecclesiological consequences. Nowhere in them is it stated that candidates opposed to the ordination of women should have their own services of consecration; so how has this come into being and what does it mean for our understanding of what it is to be the church?

A new archbishop

An unexpected bonus of FAOC 2018 is that it devotes a page to one bishop describing her own experience of being a woman in a diocese where some find her appointment difficult. And that bishop is none other than Sarah Mullally herself, writing from her time as Bishop of Crediton (FAOC 2018, p.44). She mentions being invited to preach in churches which do not accept the ordination of women, and describes working alongside colleagues from both the Anglo-Catholic and conservative evangelical parts of the church. It all sounds polite enough. But of course that was 2018, before she moved to the London diocese, let alone was chosen for Canterbury. Here, as elsewhere, my impression is that things have become worse, regardless of the 5 GPs.

In recent years we have heard Archbishop Sarah being more open about the microaggressions which she has experienced as an ordained woman in leadership. I was at Synod in February 2025 when, on the podium, she was visibly upset as she recalled these; and I point you to a particularly offensive piece on a website where the (male, of course) author talks about the “rule of women”, accuses her of “ideological delusion” and describes “Anglican apostasy”. Of course, as I’ve described in a much earlier piece on this blog, if women cry it’s supposed to be evidence of their weakness, or of emotional manipulation, but if men cry then it’s shocking and serious and shows they have the maturity to express their feelings. Unless they are gay men, in which case their tears, like those of women, don’t count but are just “sentimentality”.

Three spaces?

FAOC 2018 is also interesting when we consider Bishop Martyn Snow’s advocacy, while LLF lead bishop, for what he called “three spaces” in the C of E around sexuality. FAOC 2018 asked “what it means within a single church to hold distinct sacramental and collegial spaces, in which not all who participate in one can participate in the other in the same way” (p.45). Indeed; and the separation of particular groups from the rest of the Church of England that was institutionalised over women’s ordained ministry has already raised questions which move us even further apart from each other. As Charlie Bell asked in 2020, “if the sacrament of ordination cannot be accepted from a non-traditionalist bishop, can any of the sacraments be received from them?” For some of those in the Church of England, the answer seems to be a “no” which extends to the Eucharist. This is, and has been, very much apparent at General Synod when the Eucharist is celebrated at the start of a day of meetings.

I discussed here what Bishop Martyn proposed in  June 2024: “A space for those who are absolutely committed to the present doctrine of marriage; a space for those who want to see some development of current arrangements; and a large space for those who are undecided, or confused by the whole debate, and see no need to make such a choice at this time. Three spaces in one Church.” What that meant was never clear to me. Were parishes supposed to vote for their preferred space? Why did he assume that the middle space would be so large? What would it mean, in practical terms, to be in one or the other space? How would people move across the lines between them?

Doing “the things of the church apart from each other” is a major concern which has become far more pressing now that it is common for conservatives to identify some bishops as “false teachers”. Back to FAOC 2018, which contains a useful warning: “It may be tempting for the majority to think that, were the minority to leave or disappear, the ‘problem’ posed by their existence would be resolved and all the energy unfortunately required to manage it be liberated for more productive endeavours. It may be tempting for the minority to think that the more they can separate themselves from the majority and insulate themselves from its influence, the more secure their survival will be” (p.41). Tempting, but wrong. Separation is not the solution.

And what next for the 5 GPs? Five is one of those churchy numerals: I’ve already mentioned those Five Marks of Mission. But here’s the punchline: we don’t have to leave it at five. My authority for that is, once again, FAOC. The final question posed to the reader demands our attention as we think about difference: “If you could do so, is there a Sixth Guiding Principle you would now like to add?” (FAOC 2018, p.53). Even in the early days of thinking about them, they were not as set in stone as some people now seem to think. We need to be honest about what doesn’t work; about what has become worse as the years of trying to live with them have rolled on; and about how their legacy hangs over us as we think about LGBTQIA+ inclusion and how to live with difference there. We not only can, but urgently should, be discussing how we can add to the Five something which would make a difference, in the light of what has happened in the decade for which they have now reigned.