Sarah Mullally Named Archbishop of Canterbury

On October 2, 2025, the King of England approved the nomination of the Right Reverend and Right Honourable Dame Sarah Mullally DBE for election as the archbishop of Canterbury, a see founded 1,400 years ago. She will be the first woman to head the Church of England. This marks a major step in the evolution of Christianity and religion.

There are two ways to view this evolution. It’s about time or religion does evolve eventually, even if slowly. Her appointment will be controversial in some parts of the Anglican Communion, but conservatives resist or reject any change that uplifts those they believe subordinate to them. Christian ideology insists that it never changes in essentials, often quoting Hebrews 13:8, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (KJV). Any good book on the history of Christianity quickly exposes this claim as ridiculousness. (See Peter Heather, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300–1300.)

In 1974 eleven women deacons presented themselves to three retired bishops for ordination at the predominately Black Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia. Since the bishops were in good standing, the women were ordained deacons, and the Ordination Rite of the Book of Common Prayer was followed, no valid theological argument against their ordination existed. The Anglican Communion had previously settled the issue of women’s ordination “in principle” when it allowed the ordination of women to the diaconate. After a short interim of expected controversy, ecclesiastical huffing and puffing, in 1976 the General Convention of the Church recognized the ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven and authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Eleven’s ordination, the eighty-first General Convention of the Episcopal Church approved July 29, the date the women were ordained, to commemorate the event.

Fifty-one years after the ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven, Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, was nominated to become the next archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion.

Carter Heyward, one of the Philadelphia Eleven, on the tenth anniversary of her ordination, spoke at Yale Divinity School and celebrated Eucharist in the Divinity School chapel. I was present, as I was a visiting professor at the time. I found it a profound experience and utterly normal.

I was raised Roman Catholic and, until graduate school, all my education was in Catholic schools. My first teaching job was in a Catholic seminary. As a New Testament scholar, I was well versed on the issues surrounding the ordination of women. There is no evidence of priesthood associated with Jesus groups in the New Testament. Priesthood is a Jewish phenomenon connected with the Temple in Jerusalem. The Greek word for priest, hiereus, does not occur in Christian writings until the third century. Presbyteros, which becomes the Christian word for priest (in Latin presbyter), means an older man. Episkopos (bishop) is an administrator and diakonos (deacon) is one who waits on table. Only in the late second and early third centuries do these three words take on clear ritual roles. Jesus did not ordain the apostles as priests at the last supper, as I had been taught in grade school. There was a last supper, but did Jesus know it was his last? Apostles are a post-resurrection group and Paul knows female apostles (Romans 16:7). Ordination does not occur in the New Testament. Besides, why should genitalia be the chief criterion for ordination? Why not Jewishness or Galilean? The Roman Catholic position on the ordination of women is a house of cards sustained only by authority.

I had attended Protestant services where women presided as minister, but the Reverend Heyward’s presiding at Eucharist in the Yale Divinity School chapel was a first for me. How did my Catholic sensibilities respond? It seemed perfectly normal. She presided with grace, authority, and presence, as to the role born. And it was powerfully moving. I saw a woman in a way I never had before. The Roman Catholic notion that only males can represent the divine was evident nonsense. As fate would have it, that very morning I was working on the Parable of Leaven. “The empire of God is like leaven which a woman…” Yes, in the words of the Preface at Mass, “It is truly right and just.”  

Addendum:

I am impressed that ministry is Archbishop-designate Mullally’s second career. In her first career she was a cancer nurse and later chief nursing officer for England. Then she went to seminary. The majority of ministers follow this pattern today. Those who sign up for ministry right out of college are exceedingly rare. It is important to see that those starting later in life still have time to reach the top.

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