New Archbishop of Canterbury

[ProudWomanXX]

Is a Woman!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c992f6dd6b34cbde

That's a big deal - I still remember the debates over whether women could be priests in the Church of England.
Hope she's a good one.

How can the CofE possibly know the new Archbishop is a woman?

Did we know anything about her ? I read that she is a feminist and modernist ( more accepting of same sex marriage having a blessing in church - which is a start, for example)

Just hoping she is the right sort of feminist and not one of the handmaiden post modern type ….

The “Forward in Faith” movement and the Evangelicals which are both very big around here ( West Country ) - I suspect they are not going to react favourably .

They (F in F ) were given their own bishop when women priests were introduced- the Bishop of Ebbsfleet , in order to ordain men only . Now there will be no place to hide .

Hopefully they will have to leave and get out of their beautiful churches and hold services in village halls with posters up about brownie meetings, yoga classes and WI coffee mornings.

I think she’s a good appointment. People outside the CofE imagine that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a lot of power, but this is isn’t the case. It’s really not like being a CEO. But she will have a lot of influence. As Bishop of London she will have had to hold together a diocese bitterly divided between liberals and conservatives, and she’s done that well. She has paid a tremendous price personally because it’s incredibly hard being a senior woman in the CofE. All the way up she’s been a pioneer and that’s a hard road to travel. Already we see the spite and smearing she has already and will continue to face. But it will be some time before we see what her priorities are, and what her style will be.

Hahahaha brilliant.

Appointment of the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury is a big deal.

It means the heads of the Church of England and the Church in Wales (the Welsh Anglican Church, which is organisationally separate) are now both women.

Well, given that she believes that anyone can be a woman, i'm not as delighted as some of you.

Evidence?

Shame if that’s the case

As I understand it - she is an impressive lady who will probably be very good for a lot of the role. However there are two things about the appointment which will be very divisive:

• some of the church believe that headship (theological leadership) should ultimately be men - this will be divisive and the relevant part of the church is the growing and wealthy evangelical section... Interestingly that is not a sexist thing per se, (as in it is not a view that men are better than women / above women), but that there are different roles in the church for men and women and this specific role is biblically stated to be for men. (For clarity, I am a man - come from that churchmanship, but do not hold that belief).
• More of an issue though is that Sarah Mullally has been very clear in promoting and leading the church towards definitions of marriage which would allow anything to be acceptable - her teachings on marriage and sexuality are not what the bible says and as such her appointment will cause considerable issues across not just the Church of England, but across the worldwide Anglican community. Gafcon (which was established in 2008 as a biblical counterpoint to the increasing move of the Anglican church away from the Bible - and which encompasses a huge part of the worldwide church, esp in Africa / Asia / South America) has stated that they will not be recognising her in the traditional role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. (https://gafcon.org/communique-updates/canterbury-appointment-abandons-anglicans/)

So, I think there will be a large fall out from this.
Interestingly there were three female Bishops (London / Chelmsford / Cheltenham) who were all being considered, clearly there was a strong drive to have a woman in post.

Good job Justin Welby didn't get his way when he proposed the snivelling Paula Vennells to be Bishop of London!

Times Radio said the new ABC is the niece of 'comedian' Bernard Manning!

Disappointing to see DEI weaving it's evil web in the church.

What?

I have dealt with her in her role as Bishop of London. A very impressive woman. I’m pleased she’s got the job.

The C of E produced some appalling safeguarding breaching “trans” guidelines for their numerous schools. They were so dire that the ‘be kind’ brigade did do a rewrite I believe. But the fact that they were written for schools in the face of the tsunami of safeguarding scandals in the C of E says a lot about who holds the power in the institution and why so many predators have been unchallenged.
Gender Identity has a massive hold over senior clerics in the church. Will she in any way challenge this?

She sounds like a very impressive woman. This is from the BBC:

Dame Sarah Mullally, 63, has become the first woman to be named Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England's almost 500-year history.
But before she became a priest in 2006, she had a successful career as a nurse.
Married with two children, she spent over 35 years in the NHS - and became the youngest-ever chief nursing officer for England in 1999.
Although she was volunteering in the Church at the time, it was just a few years later that she decided to become a priest and was quickly tasked with helping make reforms in the way the institution dealt with abuse.
She became canon treasurer at Salisbury Cathedral in 2012, before becoming Bishop of Crediton in the diocese of Exeter in 2015.
As Bishop of London she was seen as someone who used her experience as an NHS administrator to help modernise the diocese.
She said at the time of that appointment: "I am often asked what it has been like to have had two careers, first in the NHS and now in the Church.
"I prefer to think that I have always had one vocation: to follow Jesus Christ".
One of the areas she has been most outspoken about it is assisted dying - she is a vociferous opponent, as was her predecessor.
And she described the decision to finally allow priests to bless same-sex couples in 2023 as "a moment of hope for the Church".

[Interesting post above about the divisions in the Anglican Communion. I have no skin in this game at all, so simply observe from a distance. I am an atheist and in the distant past I was brought up in the Church of Scotland (which is Presbyterian) and then the Presbyterian Church of England and Wales, which merged with the Congregationalists to form the United Reformed Church. Non-conformist all the way! My parents regarded the bells and smells and bishops side of Christianity with great suspicion. ]

You'd hope a former midwife who has risen to the top of a formerly male-dominated organisation would have a very good grasp of the importance of sex, but we've been disappointed before.

I agree GI has been accepted by senior leadership. But I think this is because it’s seemed like an easy gift to liberals in the face of the continuing stand-off over same sex marriage. It’s not that I think that senior bishops are transactivists, but that they bracketed it off as ‘let’s not fight that battle when we’ve got so much else our hands.’ As in so many other places, it’s felt like an easy, no cost win. As we know that is absolutely not true, and in my view there is a real battle to fight in CofE. But the small ray of light is that CofE is much less captured than some other denominations - Methodists and United Reformed Church for instance.

I agree that it will hasten the inevitable split in the global Anglican communion. My own view is that this is much better than accepting intolerance and hatred in the church as the price of compromise, but I think it's better clear from your post that our views on gay people in the church, marriage and Biblical literalism vs. following the spirit of the example of Christ are quite different.

She is somebody who rose to the very top of one profession, nursing and then started at the bottom of another, the church. She’s now risen to the top of that. Extraordinary woman.

A split in the global Anglican communion is inevitable anyway. I’d happily let the homophobes breakaway- if her appointment hastens it, then Godspeed.

I, like millions of others, wasn't part of the selection process.

If she welcomes people in, helps clear up old messes, moves forwards then great.

Really not bothered about whether she is male/female etc.

I wonder how many of the grumblers actually attend. Or would if she was this or that etc.

I used to be very CofE, and am now just a vaguely sympathetic interested atheist. But this is a brave appointment internationally - it’s going to have massive repercussions.