As the Church of England gears up to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury, the female candidates appear to be more able than the male contenders.
On January 6, the day Justin Welby stepped down, The Independent newspaper ran an article by Aine Fox, social affairs correspondent with the PA news agency: Who might be the next archbishop of Canterbury?
Her front-runners are: Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London; Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford; Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich; Michael Beasley, Bishop of Bath and Wells; Martyn Snow, Bishop of Leicester; Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover; and Helen-Ann Hartley, Bishop of Newcastle.
Having spent many hours as a freelance journalist since I left C of E ministry in 2019 watching bishops in action at General Synod sessions, at press conferences and in the House of Lords, I would agree with Fox's short-list.
I believe these are the candidates the 17-voting-member Crown Nominations Commission, chaired by Lord (Jonathan) Evans, a former director-general of the UK security service MI5, would be likely to consider as having the best leadership ability out of the 42 diocesan bishops of the established Church.
But what is striking in this list is the superiority according to modern leadership values of the female candidates. An analysis into why this situation has arisen so starkly in the leadership of the C of E might provide a budding academic with a doctoral thesis.
Suffice it to say here that the four women in the running for Archbishop of Canterbury seem to have in greater measure than the three men the qualities that the secular world considers necessary for a primary role – force of personality, televisual communications skills and an ability to read the room.
Bishop of London Sarah Mullally has had her critics. I criticised her in an article for The Conservative Woman in July 2021 for not being overjoyed enough that Christian people were once again able to sing hymns in church after the ending of the lockdown restrictions.
But during Justin Welby's disastrous farewell speech in the House of Lords on December 5 in which he joked that his head was the one required to roll after the Makin Review into the John Smyth abuse scandal, among the bishops sitting on the benches she very clearly registered in her body language the inappropriateness of Welby's tone. Her ability to read the room in this instance gained her plaudits from safeguarding campaigners.
But she is not the front-runner for the top job, perhaps because she is too closely associated with the managerialist style of the Welby era.
The front-runner in terms of intellect, eloquence and representing the clean break that many in frontline C of E parishes want from perceived bureaucratic bossiness from the centre is the Bishop of Chelmsford, Guli Francis-Dehqani.
I have no brief for her theologically. She has consistently acted to ditch the Church's traditional sexual ethic by supporting the introduction of services of same-sex blessing in various General Synod votes since February 2023. But her plenary lecture last September at the Church Times Festival of Preaching at Great St Mary's in Cambridge was a tour de force.
She revealed that she had earned herself "a slap on the wrist from central church" for questioning the Archbishops' Council's national "Vision and Strategy" programme to grow new congregations during an address to Chelmsford Diocesan Synod in 2022.
She told the St Mary's congregation: "The language of Vision and Strategy risks ignoring the reality of frailty, brokenness, sin - all of which can of course be redeemed, but it risks missing the blessings in that which is small and vulnerable and marginal. It leaves us relying heavily on our own strength, instead of remembering that everything depends on our faithfulness and our reliance upon God."
She said to laughter from the audience: "These reflections seemed to chime with a number of people and, to my great surprise, gained a little bit of traction on Twitter (as it was then). I should also say that they earned me a slap on the wrist from central church - who told me that such talk undermines the work of the Vision and Strategy department."
Her Iranian background clearly plays well for her in the present cultural climate prizing diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI). She would not only be the first female Archbishop of Canterbury but the first from a non-European ethnic background in the history of the office.
But even without her DEI advantage, she would appear to have the political edge over Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who would be the first black Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, both of whom might be perceived as too confrontational in their approach.
Bishop Hudson-Wilkin has been withering in her criticism of the continuing provision for opponents of women bishops in the conservative evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church. Bishop Hartley was the one diocesan bishop to call publicly for the resignation of Justin Welby after the publication of the Makin Review in November.
I am not arguing that the values of the secular world should drive the choice for Archbishop of Canterbury. But the C of E has turned itself into quite a worldly institution since the 1960s. That is why I believe it is likely to turn to the Bishop of Chelmsford to lead it in present circumstances.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
