Sarah, Archbishop of Canterbury

History 4

On Wednesday 25 March 2026, something extraordinary is taking place in Canterbury Cathedral. For the first time in history, a woman will be installed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, and de facto leader of the Anglican Communion.

Where were you when you learned that the Archbishop of Canterbury was going to be a woman for the first time?

Appropriately enough I was with a group of Anglican clergy and spouses in Melbourne celebrating the birthday of one of our number. We all got the news on our phones at the same moment. In true Anglican style, each of us laid claim to the event: who had met her, who had predicted this, who had the hot gossip on why and how this had happened.

I grew up in the Movement for the Ordination of Women. One of my childhood memories was giving up my bedroom for Patricia Brennan when she stayed the night before attending an EFAC Conference with my mother. I was 13 when my mother was ordained, becoming one of Australia’s first clergy couple kids. I even joined the MOW Committee as a teenager, learning a great deal about theology, justice, belonging and change. And I wrote my Master’s thesis on the early history of the ordination of women debates in Australian Anglicanism.

So I expected to be a little emotional on hearing this news. But my first reaction was unexpected: well, that was obvious. After Archbishop Justin’s resignation, Canterbury and Durham were vacant, Winchester was newly appointed, and York was only a couple of years from mandatory retirement. Of the Church of England’s most senior bishops, the Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, was the safe bet. She was the only one who was both young enough and experienced enough to take on this calling: she had 7 years under her belt in one of the biggest jobs in the Church of England, and she was 63 and able to serve for long enough to make a difference.

So praise be to God that Archbishop Sarah’s gender did not stand in the way of the Church’s call.

Nevertheless, this is an extraordinary moment in the history of the Anglican Church. Many women have served as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but they and their male counterparts have all been crowned by men. Half a century ago in 1975 the General Synod of the Church of England affirmed in something of a back-handed compliment that there were “no fundamental objections” to the ordination of women. And it was only in 2014 that the General Synod passed legislation enabling the consecration of both women and men as bishops.

In the wider Anglican Communion, women have served as deacons since 1861, as priests since 1944, and as bishops since 1989. This is a relatively short time in the long centuries that constitute the history of the church. According to my spreadsheet of female Anglican bishops (yes I am a bit of a nerd about this), in 2015, Sarah Mullally was only the 46th woman to become an Anglican bishop. It took 26 years to get from 1 to 50, 30 years to get from 1 to 100, and 35 years to get from 1 to 150. Women are now bishops in Angola, Aotearoa / New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Kenya, North India, South Africa, South India, South Sudan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and beyond. The first female Primate, Katharine Jefferts Schori, was elected in 2006; today four women serve as Primates of the Anglican Communion (Brazil, Wales, England, and as of yesterday, Mexico).

So how is it that we have gone from having a single female bishop in 1989 - the late Barbara Harris - to the installation of a woman on the throne of St Augustine in 2026?

Never underestimate the impact of theology in the life of the Church. When the question of ordaining women was first seriously raised in the early twentieth century, two things happened. First, as early as 1935 theologians realised that the case against the ordination of women was seriously underdeveloped: we might assume that women could not be priests, and there might be good practical reasons why women could not function as clergy but were there good theological reasons for this gender barrier? Some Anglican theologians realised, for example, that the default arguments against the ordination of women were the same arguments used to promote the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. Second, advocates for the ordination of women revisited the Scriptures and uncovered a wealth of evidence that women such as Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Prisca, and Junia were leaders in the apostolic age, called into public ministry by the Apostle Paul and Jesus Christ himself. What seemed to be Pauline pronouncements against all women’s leadership were confined to specific contexts.

Never underestimate what happens when we experience apostolic ministry - both good and bad. The early experiments with first deaconesses and then women deacons bore much fruit in both Church and world. And we discovered that women could be just as good as - and just as bad as - men when it came to the ordained ministry.

But above all, never underestimate the power of Jesus in whom we are purified with the refiner’s fire. On the day Archbishop Sarah’s appointment was announced in October 2025, just 164 women had been called to serve as bishops in the worldwide Anglican Church. 7 of them have died, over 30 more have retired. Every one of them has the experience of being the first woman to do something; for most, their whole career is defined by the scripture “See I am doing a new thing!”. Every one of them has experienced rejection of their acceptance of the Church’s call because of their gender (just read the comments on any news story about Archbishop Sarah; actually, don’t). Every one of them has lived with being stereotyped for their gender, not known for their particular gifts. They have only persevered because of what Jesus has done for them and where the Spirit calls them to be this day.

So as we celebrate the installation of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, I have two prayers.

Let us move beyond the present moment when we see gender first and foremost into that divine place of belonging in Christ where we discern the true talents and gift of each disciple.

Let each of us be courageous enough to follow the example of Barbara Harris, Kay Goldsworthy, and Sarah Mullally in saying with the Virgin Mary “let it be with me according to your will”, and following God wherever that promise might take us.