Women bishops - Same as it was before

Well, I have to admit to being shaken when I heard the result read out. Literally.

We knew all along it was a possibility, I'd actually predicted it to a couple of people, but actually knowing it had happened was a different thing.

I've given it a couple of days before blogging to let it sink in. And because there's been a huge amount written on the web about it. I said in advance of the vote that we need to look for what the Holy Spirit is doing in all this. I still think that, perhaps even more so - though that implies I wasn't sure before hand.

It seems to me though, that nothing very much has actually changed. The General Synod in particular, and the Church of England in general were discussing how to proceed towards having women as bishops last week; and discussing it on Tuesday; and we're still discussing it now.

Make no mistake - no one is really suggesting that there won't be women as bishops. We're not back to square one. It's just his very specific way of doing it that has been rejected. In a hundred years from now, Tuesday's vote will surely be not much more than a footnote in the pages of history.


But there are various things being said around the web which I think are unhelpful, and I want to respond to a couple of them - but I'll do it in separate posts, to keep tings neater and shorter here.