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Hello, this is Carmen Mangin. It's the 27th of May, 2024. I'm here at Birkbeck, University of London. Can you please tell me your full name, your date of birth and where you were born? Yes, I'm Helen King. I was born on the 2nd of September, 1957 in Wimbledon.

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Can you tell me a bit about your parents' education and what they did for a living? So my dad was an architect. He wasn't a sort of high-ranking architect. He did petrol stations, filling stations were one of his big things. And he was always quite impoverished because he tended to work for friends rather than for a company, so he didn't really have any

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pensions. So we were sort of in a position where it looks like, you know, solid middle class architect, but we were actually not very well off despite that. My mum didn't work after she married, classic for her generation. She worked before that as a bank clerk and for one of the utility companies, she was very good with money, which was useful because

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there wasn't much money. So that was the background. It was very traditional. I was an only child and they'd always wanted a girl. When I was born, the obstetrician who delivered me, because I was born by forceps delivery, knew my mother wanted a girl and said, it's a boy, because he had a sense of humour, apparently. I mean, this is terrifying, isn't it, that that was

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considered funny? And she went, no. And he went, no, no, just joking. It's only a girl. So I always say I was misidentified at birth. But yeah, they wanted a girl. And I think my dad wasn't very sporty. He was into arts and theatre and he wanted a girl who could share those interests and that's what he got. So yeah, just me. They did have an attempt

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at another child, but that was a miscarriage. So I ended up as an only child, but a much-loved only child. And your education? I went to a local private school, a sort of small, privately run private school, cheap private school, because I think it was pretty clear I was quite academic from an early age and it was considered I have a better chance of thriving

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there, which was true. It was a very nice little school. Linton Preparatory School in Epsom. And then I did the 11 plus and got into Sutton High School, one of the Girls' Day School Trust schools. So single sex education after 11. And in quite a, again, academically intense sort of school, where again I flourished, because I wasn't any good at sport or anything

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like that. But if you were good at academic stuff, you could do, for example, you could do Latin very early from 11 and I did Greek from I think 14. So the sorts of classical things that I ended up doing in my career when I became a professional classics person, I was able to get those at school. So it was a good school for me. I think it wasn't a

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good school for some girls, because if you didn't fit the narrow academic model, you maybe didn't realise quite how good you were at things, because it was such a high-flying school. You could be actually very good, but in that school you looked like bottom of the class. So there were lots of issues, I think, in that environment. And of course

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the single sex thing, I do wonder now whether that was a good thing or not. It meant I was quite nervous around boys and, you know. But I did do a job, a Saturday job, in the last few years at school at the local library, which was, I was thinking, you know, I was I met all sorts of boys from the other local schools and I got to go to discos with them

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and things. So it wasn't quite as single sex an upbringing as it might have looked, at least by a sort of sixth form level. How was faith, religion, played out in your family? What role did it have? So my mother's father, my grandfather, who I never knew, because he died when I was sort

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of four or five, he was a choir boy at All Saints Margaret Street. So very high church connection there. And I think he loved that. And as a result of that I think that my family was very religious. My granny, my mother's father, my mother's mother, was always very keen on church. I remember going to a lot of services, the sorts of things on Good Friday

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where you're there for three hours. My mum was like, you must be joking. And my granny was, oh no, we're going to that. So I went to a lot of church things with my granny. And my father's background, he was a choir boy as well. So the sort of robed choir type Church of England background was very strongly there. It's interesting, I hadn't really

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thought about that, but it was on both sides. And neither of them, neither of my parents were particularly keen on going to church, but they did insist I went to Sunday school. So I went to a very evangelical Sunday school at St Paul's Howe Hill in Cheam, which was a sort of gathered church. It was getting people in from a very wide area who were into

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evangelical worship. But it had a very good youth section. Very strong Sunday school, huge number of children, a very strong youth club. So it was tricky because I couldn't get there on my own. You had to have transport. So it meant being dropped off there. But nevertheless, that was where I went to church on Sundays. Festivals, like the Good Friday things, that

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would be our local parish church where my granny went. So sort of experience of two types of church there, I suppose. And as a young person, it was very good to be with lots of other kids of the same age. On the other hand, it was extraordinarily narrow what we did. You couldn't really ask questions. You were taught stuff. So we did, because

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it was St Paul's Howe Hill, we did St Paul's flipping missionary journeys over and over again. They were really fed up with us. It meant nothing because at that point, I hadn't done the ancient history, so these places were just names. It meant nothing. But there was a point when I was, I suppose, 16, 17-ish, when my local parish church decided it needed

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a youth group. And the vicar at the time, Peter Hogben, now deceased, lovely, lovely guy, spotted me quite early on as the sort of girl that likes doing stuff on committees. Now how you can spot that in a 16-year-old, I have no idea. So he got me onto PCC at the youngest age I could. Parochial Church Council, so doing the local church government stuff.

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He got me on, and he got a girl from the choir on, because the choir was its own entity really. It was like a church within a church at the parish church, as it often is. So me from a sort of normal congregation, if you like, and her from that. So he had two young women he was encouraging, which is pretty good. And because we'd been on the Parochial

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Church Council, it meant that we got much more sense of what church government was about. And then somebody on Deanery Synod died, who held like every position on Deanery Synod. It was his life. And suddenly there were all these vacancies turning up. And because just one person died, a lot of vacancies opened. So it became possible at that point to think,

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well actually, these young people I have, my vicar's thinking, on the PCC, that Helen, she seems quite into the way the church works, and she's got clear ideas, and maybe she'd like to stand for Deanery Synod. So I did, and I was the youngest. I've always been the youngest.

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And how old were you when you... Well, so I must have been 18, 19 at that point. And yeah, I know. It's terrifyingly young really. But it was remarkably good fun, because the thing about Deanery was it exposed you to different sorts of church. So I already knew what it looked like at the evangelical

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end of the Church of England, and the sort of middle-of-the-road robed choir end. But now I was in Deanery Synod, I was aware of the high church end, because our deanery spanned everything, really, from the very conservative evangelical to the very high church. And because I was on Deanery Synod, I thought I should go around to different churches and

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see what they were like. And my dad was quite keen on coming on some of these with me, not least because he had to give me a lift to get there. So we went to St Barnabas Epsom, which was a very high church. And my dad actually thought the whole service was in Latin, because it was done at such speed, with a lot of incense and crossing yourself

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and genuflection. And he was completely overwhelmed by it. He said, well, that was in Latin, wasn't it? I said, actually, that was in English, but very, very fast. Good grief. So I got a sense of other sorts of church. The first time I heard about Taizé and was exposed to Taizé music was again through that Deanery Synod. We had a video about Taizé.

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I didn't know any of this. It just opened up the doors for me. So that sort of experience of church government was happening there in my late teens. And at the same time, the vicar thought we ought to start a youth group in the parish church. So I decamped from the evangelical church to the local church, which was great because I could walk there.

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Great relief to the parents who hadn't got to drop me all the time. And so I joined an evening group there. It was sort of a house group, but meeting in the church hall. And I was getting absolutely youngest. My father described me as being the universal niece. That's what I was in the church, really, because I was so much younger than everybody

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else who was doing anything. But it was great. So I was hanging out with the grown-ups and also being in the church youth club. It was quite a good experience. And this would have been in the mid-seventies? Yes. So that's right, mid-seventies. And then I just felt, actually, I can do this

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church governance stuff. So I'm always looking for people to go on diocesan synod. So when the vacancies came up there, I was put forward by my dean to go on diocesan synod. And one of my friends from the parish, an older chap, who I'm still in touch with his daughter, actually, he decided that he would take it upon himself to drive me to

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all these diocesan meetings. So we had great trips in the car to diocesan synod. We'd sometimes take the scenic route so we could have a really good chat about faith stuff on the way. It was extraordinary. When you think back, it really was a very weird existence. So I did a lot of diocesan things as well. And I was always the youngest. That was always my experience

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in church. So you were the youngest, but what were the other social dynamics of the groups you were in? I mean, were they mostly male, mostly female, socioeconomic? It's interesting, isn't it? Most of the groups I was in were mixed in terms of gender, but

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very middle class. It was Surrey, it was a very middle class place. So not much exposure to anything else there. But when you went to sort of big things at the cathedral, they were so male. So I have a very strong memory of some particular, I have no idea what it was, big service at the cathedral with huge procession down the aisle, all of the men.

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And I cried. There was that moment of knowing that you're not represented there, which was very, very strong for me. When you were on these different dynamic groups, did you feel that way then, or was there enough kind of...

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I think there was real contrast between the sort of actual governing bodies, which were mixed, and the liturgical side of the church, which was exclusively male. And some point in this, again, it's quite hard to remember quite how the timing works on this, but again, it's late teens. One of my friends from primary school, who I kept in touch with because

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his mum and my mum were friends, he was feeling very strongly called to priesthood. And he was feeling more and more inclined towards the Anglo-Catholic end of stuff. And we would go up on the train together on some Sundays to London. We would have bizarre things to do on a day out in London. We would go to All Saints Margaret Street in the morning,

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where my grandfather would be in the choir, and then we'd go out to the steakhouse nearby and have lunch. And then we'd go to St. Mary's Bourne Street for a very, very high church, very Catholic-looking service of benediction. So we would have two services and a lunch day and go back on the train. And it was on the train back that he taught me how to do

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double genuflection. It's a skill that many of us do not have, but I hadn't even realised there was such a thing. But we went to some service, I think it was All Saints Margaret Street, where someone did this movement I'd never seen before. And I said, what is that? And he said, well, I'll tell you on the train. So we had a practice session in a carriage

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somewhere on South West Railways with me doing double genuflection, and it was pretty good. I got it quite quickly. It was very, very strange, really. Now, he ended up entering priesthood, and over the ordination of women he left. At that point he'd been working at the shrine at Walsingham, which again tells you something about his spirituality. But

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he left completely over the ordination of women and went into teaching, where he's been ever since. So that's a moment there where a sort of childhood friendship and an experience of different types of church together ended up with us going in completely opposite directions. Let me segue a little bit now just to your professional career. After secondary school,

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what were any of these experiences that you're having in church? I mean, what were your thoughts about the future? Well, at that point, of course, women couldn't be priests, so that was never an issue. I knew I couldn't be a priest. I wanted to do things in the church, but I wasn't sure what.

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My professional life was developing in a different way. So I did a year out between school and university and worked in a bookshop, because a sort of logical follow-on for all those Saturday jobs in the library. Worked in a bookshop, and during that decided, yes, I did want to go to university, I wasn't sure. And I discovered ancient history and social

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anthropology at UCL, and that sounded like me. I'd done ancient history at school, and anthropology appealed because it included things like symbolism and belief and ritual and religion and all those areas, and myth. Those were things that really attracted me. So there was something going on that was parallel to what was happening in my spiritual life.

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And when I got into that, that was also the point when I started to think, actually, the Anglo-Catholic end of things is where I want to be. So I joined the church union, which when you tell people now, they always think, oh, that sounds like a trades union. No, it's not at all. Church union is an extremely Anglo-Catholic and anti-women group. But at

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that point, they were going through charismatic renewal. So the charismatic movement and the Catholic movement came together for me. It's quite a mixture. I'd had experience of the charismatic movement when I was at St Paul's Howell Hill, the evangelical church, which was great. And the charismatic movement sort of hit the youth club at a point when

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it probably didn't even touch the main church. I didn't see any sign of it in the main church at all. And so just thinking about that side of things at the same time as thinking about the Anglo-Catholic side of things, church union with its charismatic renewal movement struck me as the right place for me to be. But of course, it felt increasingly uncomfortable

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because women were really, really marginalized. And that was difficult for me. The moment of transition came when I was deanery synod secretary, and I was taking the minutes on a day when Mary Tanner, who was local to us, was giving a talk about women and the church and ordination in the early, early days of all these discussions. And Mary was speaking

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and she was going through reasons why some people don't think women can be priests. And she got to standing at the altar in Persona Christi, that you can't do that because you're a woman, so you can't stand there being Christ because you're the wrong sex. And she said, this is completely ridiculous because it's not like you say you've got to be the right

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age, you've got to be the right race. Why have you got to be the right sex? And I thought, oh, oh, that's me. Oh, she's just blown all my arguments out of the water. So because she got the leaflets for movement for the ordination of women with her, I picked one up and I went home and I filled it in before I went to bed. Put my postal order or whatever

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in it and posted it the next day and joined the movement. Now, where is feminism at this stage? Because, of course, the feminist movement of the 1970s more generally, does that touch you at all? It touched me through anthropology, it had to. But I was always quite good, until that

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moment with Mary Tanners speaking, I was quite good at separating professional life as in yes, feminism, of course, you know, women have absolutely every right to do everything and religion is, hmm, that's a bit different. I kept them apart somehow. And the moment where they stopped being apart was that Mary Tanner moment. And after that, the questions

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started even more. Why? Why are we excluded? What's the problem here? I was never, within movement for the ordination of women, I was young, again, I was very young, but I was never sort of up there in the organising stuff area, but I was very much a very happy participant in anything that was happening. So, you know, illegal Eucharist held by a

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visiting woman priest from another province, I'm in there. And it was so exciting. And it felt odd too, it felt transgressive, you know, it's very strange the first time you hear a woman saying the words that you're used to hearing a man say. And you think, gosh, this is very strange, but then you realise, but it's right. It's only strange

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because I haven't had it before. There's nothing wrong with it. So I went through all the debates on General Synod, because I haven't talked about standing for General Synod. We can go there. Well, actually just to...

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Backtrack? Yeah, backtrack just a bit. With regards to Mo, where is your involvement? Is it, you know, Mo in London, Mo in, you know... It had branches, it had branches. It was not, I didn't belong to a local branch. I

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don't know if there was one in Guildford Diocese, but I didn't belong to a local branch. So it was through Synod membership from 85 onwards. So through the national organisation and through the events the national organisation organised. And were most of those events organised in London or elsewhere?

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These would be London events. Okay, okay. Yes. So you travelled into London...

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Yeah, on the train from Epsom, very convenient, you see. That's the thing, I was very well situated. So you were still in Epsom at the time? I was still in Epsom. I didn't go, I didn't live in halls when I was at university. I

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stayed at home and commuted. Okay, to UCL. To UCL, yeah, which was easy. Is that where you got all your degrees?

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Yeah, BA and PhD, yes, both. BA was 1980 and PhD 1985. Okay, okay, great. Okay, so yeah, let's move, well actually a bit more about kind of Mo and the activities that you attended. I think because I wasn't in a local branch and was attending things that happened in

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London, so big services or small talks and things, I was also very connected through the literature. So very excited when I could get either leaflets, which were really helpful just setting out arguments, but also the sort of more fun things, so Uppity magazine, just that sense of humour, that sense of, I don't know, a different way of approaching

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it, rather than seeing this all as terribly serious theological debate, actually sending it up a bit, making fun of it, that gave me a lot of pleasure, a lot of pleasure. I think I was probably the only person involved in Mo in my parish, but it didn't seem to matter because I was connected through the material that we were sent. It was very strong and

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just knowing there were other people out there, it's very, very powerful. How did your, how were the people around you reacting to your involvement with Molly then? Well, yeah, I was wearing badges, so it was all pretty clear, and family members, yeah, sort of thought that was fine, I don't think my parents saw any issue whatsoever in this.

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At the church, you know, if you wear a Mo badge and people would ask you what it was, they didn't necessarily respond much when you told them, but I think that the general mood was that it was okay to be in favour of the ordination of women. How you got there was another matter, but the point that actually there's nothing stopping women being priests

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except the fact we decide not to have women priests, that was, by the 80s, becoming more common in an ordinary parish. I don't know what it would have been like if I'd stayed in the Conservative parish, where I didn't see any evidence of women doing anything up front. So in an ordinary parish, women were always readers. There was also the interesting

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thing about sidesmen, so this was something in my ordinary middle-of-the-road parish which became interesting, there were no women as sidesmen, it was only men welcoming people to church and handing out the books. And so that's what a sidesman is?

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Yes. So it was very odd, and again, you can tell what sort of person I am, because I'm me, I thought, why is this? And so I went and looked up, I don't know how I did it, I must have gone to a library somewhere other than my local library, I looked up church representation rules to find out whether there was anything in there about the gender of sidesmen, and

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there wasn't. So I maybe even ordered a copy online, no it can't be online, we have a pre-computer, I must have written off. I had a copy of the church representation rules in my late teens, early twenties, that's scary, but I did. And I remember saying to my vicar, the really nice Peter Hogburn, why don't we have any women? And he said, well

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no one's ever stood. Why don't you stand at the next parish annual meeting, and I'm sure it'll be fine. And I thought, maybe it'll be fine, maybe it won't. So I need to actually check the rules, yep it's fine, they make it very clear that when they say he, it includes she at this point, okay. So I stood at the next, I don't know when this is, I was about

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twenty I guess, so late seventies. I stood at the annual meeting as a sidesman, I said I'm offering myself because we haven't got any women, and it seems to me that welcoming people is something that women can do very well, and if you're worried, and someone said what about, couldn't you make the coffee? And I said I make really rubbish coffee. Which

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is true. And I said in case anyone's worried about it, in terms of holding an armful of books to take them back to put them away at the end of the service, I have a Saturday job at the library, and I carry huge piles of books around. And they went oh okay, that's fine. So at that point another woman at the annual meeting said I didn't know women could

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be sidesmen, I'd like to be a sidesman too. So that was fantastic, so there were two of us. And then of course it was normal. So I was already interested in the way that roles that have got nothing to do with priesthood had, because of not having women priests, that had somehow been extended to roles that were just very important, welcoming roles,

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but not at all priestly roles. But the type of parish you belong to is very relevant here, because perhaps if you had for whatever reason belonged to a more high church parish, this was something, despite there being no rules against this, this might have been something that was discouraged. Yes, I don't know when it happened that people realised that

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church wardens could quite easily be male or female, because things like church warden, I know nowadays post-Covid it's really hard to find church wardens, but it's always been hard to find them because it's a legal role and it requires a lot of responsibility and a lot of form filling as well as actually within the parish. And I think the desperation to

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find church wardens must have led to women coming in there. I know that the very high church parish in my former deanery did have women church wardens before we had them at our own church. It was an okay role. Once you start cutting away a little bit here and going, well actually these roles can be done by women, oh so can these and so can

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these, and it's cumulative and you maybe get to the point for some people where they think, so why are we stopping here? So just even things like women on the PCC can lead to women as sideswomen which can lead to women as church wardens and then people start to ask the question, why are we keeping this as a separate role? And in a high church parish

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I can see the problem because you're more likely to think about the universal church and about wanting the whole church to move. In a conservative church you're more likely to be relying on some of the headship passages in the New Testament. But in the middle of the road church where I was, really neither of those had much sway. It was more about

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custom honestly. It was what people had done. Once you've got people who were women as sideswomen, no problem. That's interesting. So back to Mo, I'm kind of distracted there, so you're involved in these activities at Mo, I mean what other, I guess how, were you with a group of people

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your own age? No, no. Just by yourself just attending? Yes, just by myself attending. It was quite an isolated experience but it was great when

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you were there because it didn't feel like you were isolated once you were back in the room. No, I didn't have any friends I went with or anyone from my parish or anything like that. And then of course the General Synod thing, if we come to that. So because I was a student at UCL and because I was interested in how the church worked, I went along to

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General Synod at Church House Westminster to the visitors gallery, public gallery, and I would sit and watch debates, which is a pretty weird thing to do but we all get our pleasure in different ways, and I thought, you know, I could do that. You'd hear a debate and you'd think, that is a rubbish argument, I could do that. You'd hear I'm on Deanery

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Synod and Diocesan Synod and I'm thinking, actually why not General? And I stood for election in the 1985 election, so I'd been thinking about it in 84. So this is a point where I'm still sort of living in the Guildford Diocese because I was a research fellow at Newnham College. I didn't stay up there in the vacations because there was not a lot

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going on, other than to have some library use. So I go back to the parents in Guildford Diocese. I was not what you call settled anywhere, so I was still mostly in Guildford Diocese in my mind. And then from 86 to 88 I was working at the University of Newcastle as a research fellow, but again I'm a research fellow, I'm quite free to be wherever I want to be, and

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that was off in London because that's where the best materials were for my research. So again I'd be based in Guildford Diocese. So I stood for Guildford in the 85 elections. I knew a couple of people on Diocesan Synod who were already on for General Synod and I talked to them. And these were guys, but they were very open to women doing anything.

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And most of the women that I'd heard about on General Synod were in fact clergy wives. And certainly when I was on General Synod I had the experience of someone saying that was a really good speech, did your husband write it? I said I am not married and no, I wrote it myself. Because I used an ancient Greek word in a speech quite early on. I said

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oh my gosh, a woman who knows ancient Greek. Hello, I've been doing it since I was 14. It was quite extraordinary the levels of prejudice. Bizarre prejudices that were going on there. So I stood in the 85 elections nominated by one of the other Guildford Diocesan members who was on General Synod. And that immediately was good, I was in with the right people

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at the diocese to be nominated. At that point, what's the makeup of General Synod, men and women? Well of course all clergy and all bishops, male. By definition. House of Laity, I don't know the precise figures, there were certainly over a third, maybe between a third and a

00:30:07.920 - 00:30:36.760

half women. There were women, there were certainly women. But as I say, quite a lot of them were clergy wives. Quite. So that was an interesting thing. And I stood for election and I came second to the guy who proposed me. Because I presented myself as I'm a woman and I'm young. At the hustings, we had in-person hustings, and I remember another candidate

00:30:37.140 - 00:30:56.220

saying, I may seem to be young, he was about five, ten years older than me, I may seem to be young, but I've got an old head on a young body. And I thought, flipping heck, that is garbage. So I went after him, because it was done by surnames, usefully, so I was in the middle. And I said, this other candidate said, old head on a young body, well my head

00:30:56.220 - 00:31:22.580

is the same age as the rest of me. And I think really that's what you want. If you want to know who is young. So I presented myself very much in terms of not knowing for sure what I thought until I heard the debate, which I think is actually true still. There's no point going to a debate unless you are willing to have your mind changed. And I had fresh

00:31:22.580 - 00:31:44.440

in my mind the fact my mind had changed on the ordination of women. So I said I was in favour of the ordination of women. That was clear from my election address. And the other sorts of things I was interested in, like education obviously. But I think I came across as a genuinely functional young person with a lot of diocesan experience. And again, that's

00:31:44.440 - 00:32:07.200

helpful. I did know what I was doing, and I said, I've been to hear the debates in London, I'm still amazed that people stand for general synod, they've never been to a general synod. Okay, now you can watch it online, so that's probably okay. But then, you have no idea what actually happens. So when I was elected in 1985, I was one of a group of maybe five

00:32:07.200 - 00:32:31.340

or six younger members. I wasn't the youngest, but I was pretty near the youngest. I was in that youngest five. And there were a couple of people there who were very, very nice and very welcoming. And we did hang out a bit as the young members of synod. We didn't specifically go to the bar. But we would chat, and that was good. There were also some really

00:32:31.340 - 00:32:56.880

good people who were supporting our presence. That was encouraging too. And I didn't feel any nerves in putting in to speak. I didn't put in to speak very often. But I wasn't worried about it, because I'd been used to making speeches at also some synods, so what's the difference? So I was quite well positioned for that. And I was never on any sorts of

00:32:56.880 - 00:33:20.060

committees for general synod. I was actually trying to make a career at that point. I didn't have a lot of spare time, and I didn't have much experience. But I was sent to the Council of European Churches, I think it was 1986, as a delegate. I was hoping it was going to be somewhere really exotic, but it was actually sterling, but never mind. It was still fun.

00:33:21.420 - 00:33:43.060

Went to that, and that was again a very, very great experience for me, because to be exposed to lots of other Christian churches, again many of them very male-dominated. Most of the women I met, the younger women I met there, were there as stewards. They were not there as delegates, but we hung out together. And they were telling me terrible stories about

00:33:43.060 - 00:34:09.720

senior male delegates arriving and saying, take my bag to my room. This was not the way it was done. So the whole thing about being young and being a woman, you could see it was very problematic for many of the senior men in the church. And I did stand for one of their international bodies, and was not elected. I suspect it was one of the usual

00:34:09.720 - 00:34:29.020

ones, where certain chaps who have been in this movement, the European ecumenical movement for years, get in. But I was happy about that, it was fine. I stood, I tried. And other people were very cross that I didn't get on, and that was sort of reassuring. I don't know what would have happened if I had. But it was an experience. And on the way back from

00:34:29.020 - 00:34:52.980

that experience, I was on the plane from Stirling with a fairly senior member of the Church of England, and he said, have you ever considered having a vocation, whether you have a vocation to ordained ministry? And I said no, because I was 86. I said no because it's like asking me if I have a vocation to be a stone. I can't be a stone,

00:34:52.980 - 00:35:15.560

so there's no point thinking about it. I was interested, even then, there's the assumption if you are a woman and you're active, you should be an ordained woman. Even if the ordained women aren't possible yet. The idea that you can be a lay person and active in the church seems hard still, actually, for some people to get the hang

00:35:15.560 - 00:35:42.940

of. So that was my answer then. So when we did get to women's ordination, that's the only point at which I could start thinking about it. But I'd already had, obviously, six years of people saying, have you ever thought if? To think, no, I don't think so. Interesting. So what kind of time commitment is involved? As you said, you're building

00:35:42.940 - 00:36:05.020

your academic career. What kind of time commitment was involved with the Synod? I mean, I guess in some ways perhaps your involvement all through the past, what, 10, 15 years, that you were used to that. But is it an increased time commitment from what the others said? Yes, the thing about General Synod is that at that point they were still having three

00:36:05.020 - 00:36:31.220

annual meetings. So February, July and November. February and November in London, July in York. And those were residential meetings of four or five days. But Guildford Diocese didn't pay for residential. It assumed you would commute. I mean, I do wonder now if I should have pushed on that. Whether it was just I was a young woman and I didn't think you

00:36:31.220 - 00:36:57.060

should. But certainly I wasn't aware of anyone from Guildford who did stay. It meant you missed an awful lot. You missed all the evening fringe events. You had to be up at some ridiculous hour to make sure you were there in time. It did change the dynamic because I came off Synod in 1993 after women had safely got through. But I came on again in 2021.

00:36:57.560 - 00:37:26.620

Hang on, this is 2021. Yeah, 2021. So I've been on Synod again now for the last three years, three and a bit years. And it's a completely different experience because now I am residential. I'm on for Oxford Diocese and we stay over. And so time commitment, it's a lot of time because you're actually there 24 hours a day. But it's not the same as that flipping

00:37:26.620 - 00:37:45.280

back and forth. So the flipping back and forth actually helped in terms of career stuff because I could do some reading on the train, I could catch up, I could stay in touch. But it was not a good experience. It was not an equal experience to what people from other diocese had. And I don't know whether that was the norm for other diocese that they wouldn't

00:37:45.280 - 00:38:11.200

pay or whether you had to ask very nicely. I really don't know because I was not aware of any option for me to stay. So time wise, it was those three weeks of a year. But because I wasn't on any committees or sort of subgroups, I didn't stand for any of those. I didn't have the experience probably to get on to any of them. So I wasn't offering myself

00:38:11.200 - 00:38:36.600

to appointments committee to say I'd be up to do this job. So therefore there wasn't any extra time whereas Synod Now for me is really all year round, all the time because I'm on things. And because I'm very heavily involved in the gender and sexuality group which is now together for the Church of England. So I'm doing a lot of activist stuff there.

00:38:37.580 - 00:38:51.480

So it's a different experience. It was basically, in those days, it was three weeks of your life and you've got to catch up on the papers. But again, if you're commuting in every day, you've got a chance to read the papers. And they were physical papers. You had to carry this great load of paperwork around with you all the time.

00:38:53.700 - 00:39:18.700

So tell me a bit about kind of the evolution of the ordination of women in Synod. So when does it start appearing? Well, I would say it had been around for a very long time. So when I was doing some research into a speech I made in Synod, I discovered that women had not always been

00:39:18.700 - 00:39:42.700

allowed to be laity. But in the earlier days before the general Synod, the days of the church assembly, there was a house of laity and it was men. And it was in I think the 1920s that they decided women could be lay people. And one of the arguments was if you admit that women are lay people, the next thing you know is you'll be asked to ordain them.

00:39:43.500 - 00:40:04.360

If they got a vocation to be lay, they could have a vocation to be clergy. And you think, what? There's actually a debate about whether women could be lay people? So it's certainly been around since then. My mother's godmother was a deaconess. I have never been able to find out anything useful about this unfortunately. But I'd love to know whether she felt that

00:40:04.360 - 00:40:25.180

that was what she was called to or whether she felt that the ordained ministry was what it was all about. So yeah, there's been a very, very long history. But the point where I came into it was the point where women deacons were the big thing. And I had this odd dual identity in that as well as being in MOW, I was also, because I was in church

00:40:25.180 - 00:40:52.220

union, I was on Catholic group in Synod. Now these days, the Catholic group exists, but there's also Affirming Catholicism in General Synod. There's an Affirming Catholics group which is pro-women and pro-LGBTQ inclusion, and I belong to that. I'm in Affirming Catholics in General Synod, ACES. So I'm in that, and we have a, usually most Synods we have

00:40:52.220 - 00:41:13.140

a meal together and a mass, and it's lovely. A great group of people. So in those days it was Catholic group or nothing. So I went to Catholic group, which meant I got to know a lot of people in Catholic group, including various priests who were aware that I was also in Movement for the Ordination of Women, but managed to sort of overlook that most

00:41:13.140 - 00:41:34.500

of the time. But it was very odd being in two conflicting groups. And I'm quite sure that at one point I was deliberately left off a main for a document because they didn't want me to tell MOW what was going on. We had a genuine three-line whip. I don't know if they still do in Catholic group. I'd always imagined three-line whip was just a phrase

00:41:34.500 - 00:41:57.400

until I saw these documents. So you had briefing and it would actually do the triple underlining under the key thing is how to vote. It just told you how to vote. And there were certainly women on Synod in Catholic group who would sit near one of the clergymen from Catholic group during a debate, because debates can get confusing with amendments to amendments.

00:41:57.640 - 00:42:20.400

You don't know what you're voting for. And you hear them say, Father, how do I vote on this? And you thought, just use your own mind, woman. Read the documents. Listen to the debate. Yes, it's confusing, but you really don't need to keep asking Father how you should vote. So there were some of those sorts of women on Catholic group. There were others

00:42:20.400 - 00:42:43.960

who were feminists in a secular sense, but were not exploring it further. But for women deacons, the Catholic group was split. So some were absolutely fine on women deacons so long as it went no further. Others were saying, we see your point, but if we have women deacons, it will just open the door. Thin end of the wedge was always the phrase.

00:42:43.960 - 00:43:07.200

Thin end of the wedge, foot in the door, which actually was true. But it meant that we did have quite good debates at Catholic group, because not everyone agreed that women deacons should be ruled out. And that meant we did have some discussions about what we actually meant by the threefold ministry, and what was going on in biblical texts in

00:43:07.200 - 00:43:27.480

terms of women who were in ministry there, with that map onto what a deacon is now. How would you stop women who were deacons thinking they might have a vocation to priesthood? And you do still have people who are called to the permanent deaconate who don't want to go any further. Which is fine, that that's the thing that being a deacon already fits

00:43:27.480 - 00:43:48.560

what they feel they're called to, which is fine. And I think one of the casualties of women's ordination as priests has probably been that the permanent deaconate has not been taken as seriously as it could. But that's how it is. It's for people to actually make that case, and to describe what a permanent deacon is, and why that's not a deacon who

00:43:48.560 - 00:44:11.600

doesn't like women priests. It's something else. And if that's the case, they have to make the case. So it was odd being in those two groups. It felt very difficult at times. And it meant I was aware of stuff that was going on in the Catholic group that I would not approve of in terms of trying to use different standing orders to stop debates

00:44:12.180 - 00:44:36.360

going any further. There was one occasion where another young member and I discovered there was a plot afoot to move one of the standing orders where you move to next business and stop the debate completely. And we had to go and look up our standing orders and realise this could be done. You needed a certain number of members to stand in their

00:44:36.360 - 00:44:59.460

place at the General Synod meeting for this to then be voted on. And it was an attempt to avoid a debate. I didn't like it. So we had a little chat, me and the other member, and we talked to one of the deaconesses on the Synod as well. And she said you could talk to the press about it, and I'd never thought about the press before. So I found

00:44:59.460 - 00:45:19.400

a friendly journalist and said, do you know about the standing order number whatever? No. So I think you need to read it because there is a possibility this will be invoked in this big debate, and the effect of it will be to shut down the debate. He said, well I didn't know you could do that. So I fed this in, and this is where it gets really

00:45:19.400 - 00:45:38.720

sneaky, I then fed it back to a Catholic group that actually the press know that this is going to be voted on, without saying I told them. And as a result it never happened. So it's an example where something happened in history that does not exist anywhere on the record, because no one tried it. But I can tell you the discussion was happening,

00:45:39.400 - 00:46:00.920

and the reason they didn't try it may well be because they knew the journalists were onto it and would not have put them in a good light. So it was very political, it was very unpleasant. I had gone into General Synod aware of how that worked, but you can see that for some members of Synod it is a bit of a shock to find out that this is how it

00:46:00.920 - 00:46:24.760

works. And it's horrible, it doesn't feel nice. It feels very uncomfortable. I'm physically not very well after having done this. My stomach was completely upset by it. This shouldn't have to happen, you should be able to have a discussion. Honestly, speaking your mind without insulting people, and then leave people to make up their mind how you vote.

00:46:24.900 - 00:47:00.480

But once you start doing the understanding order so and so thing, the whole thing starts to deteriorate. And the standing orders are there to prevent things going wrong, and to help debate, but it sometimes doesn't feel like that. So yeah, that was a political moment. Yes indeed. And so, what are the other points in the journey at Synod? Are there other points

00:47:00.480 - 00:47:26.280

that lead to that fateful day when the vote was passed? Yeah, so the key thing has to be, I think, the ordination of women as deacons, because that started the process. It really did start the ball rolling. And it did unite people from the Catholic wing with others, in a way that they may have then regretted later.

00:47:27.260 - 00:47:54.480

But they were honest, they thought it should happen. So that was critical. The other thing with the ordination of women and Synod was always the demonstrations outside. So the holding the letters for the word waiting, and I've certainly held my letter in my time, we all have. And that really quiet, peaceful presence, I think was very important. And

00:47:54.480 - 00:48:18.940

yes, women got abuse when they were doing that, but you didn't answer back. It was very simple. And meanwhile, we were keeping up spirits with things like Uppity, so that we could cope with that. And the sorts of threats, you know, you're going to split the church, and the Roman Catholics will never talk to you again, and you point out

00:48:18.940 - 00:48:45.060

well actually, all Anglican orders are null and void, so what are you fussing about here? What's your problem? That was always the case. And you'd get people standing up and making very impassioned speeches that moved into very obvious sexism. It wasn't like the debate was kept to a theological level, or even a practical level. It didn't

00:48:45.060 - 00:49:13.220

take a lot for the sexism to sneak in. I remember a broadcast debate from All Souls Langham taking place in the run-up to the big vote, where they had various speakers, and someone actually came out with the one about menstruation. You know, women can't be priests because they menstruate. And I thought, for goodness sake, at this point, my PhD, started in 1980,

00:49:13.880 - 00:49:40.900

was on ancient Greek theories of menstruation. So to have someone standing up in the early 1990s to say women can't possibly be priests because they menstruate, I thought, for goodness sake, unbelievable. But it was interesting how those sorts of visceral reactions to women and their bodies were surfacing. You keep it under control, and you say it's all about

00:49:40.900 - 00:50:01.860

we don't want to lose our relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. And then next thing you know, whoa, it's all coming out. Pandora's box is open. Now we can see just what your objections are. And that really didn't do people much good on the anti-ordination cause, because all of that just makes you think, actually, I'm not talking about ordination

00:50:01.860 - 00:50:25.760

at all here. There is a hatred of women, a fear of women that's going on. So I think that became more and more obvious. And then, of course, when we got to the ordination of women as priests, we had the point where things went out to the diocese and to the deaneries. And the diocesan votes were remarkably pro-women, which was good. I did take part

00:50:25.760 - 00:50:46.460

in some of those going out to the deaneries sessions where you went out with usually a male priest who would go through the arguments against, and you'd go through the arguments for, and people would ask questions. And you thought, really, this probably isn't changing anybody's minds, but it has to be done. It has to be. And maybe someone there will hear

00:50:46.460 - 00:51:13.320

something, like when I heard Mary Tanner and thought, hang on. And Ruth rethought my position. Maybe for someone else here, that'll be the case. So I did that for Mo, happily. And I found the whole support of Mo on General Synod absolutely critical to this. Because you could go to a room where you know you'd be safe. You never had anyone sneaking in from another

00:51:13.320 - 00:51:36.420

group, because they'd be rather obvious. We all knew who we were. You'd be safe. You could let it out. You could get it out of your system, and then go back to Synod being quite calm. But you did have to do that, and you needed that support group. So Mo on Synod was very important to me. And then, of course, you got the odd illegal act, which made the headlines.

00:51:36.420 - 00:51:56.600

And that's always the problem with Mo. I mean, I don't think it's even a problem. It's probably not the problem. It's the solution, that you have the really peaceful waiting protest alongside the, oh, for goodness sake, we've got a visiting woman here. She's lawfully ordained in her own province. She can celebrate communion. But the one which was celebrated

00:51:56.600 - 00:52:19.780

at Church House was a little bit tricky, because Church House claimed it hadn't realised. And yeah, okay. But wow, it was wonderful. So it was that sort of contrast always between the very activist and the peaceful waiting. And somehow, that balance managed to stay till the end, till the debate.

00:52:20.640 - 00:52:41.640

But it seems remarkable to me that that activism is actually, you know, a woman priest who is legally ordained from wherever she's coming from, doing what she is legally ordained to do. Yeah, communion is activism. It's interesting, isn't it? It's not shaming yourself to the

00:52:41.640 - 00:53:13.140

railings or setting fire to things. It's a woman celebrating communion. And yeah, it was a highly emotional time, just realising that we are sharing in this communion, which for some people is a step too far. Some people will leave the church. Why? And I do feel much the same with the LGBT inclusion debates now, that what's the problem? I can see for

00:53:13.140 - 00:53:34.280

some people it is the end of the world. I do not understand why it's the end of the world. I accept that's how they feel. But there is a lot of divergence in the Church of England already. And it's not as if they're saying that this particular person or this particular service is not acceptable. So why does it suddenly become unacceptable when

00:53:34.280 - 00:53:55.420

it's a service to bless two people who happen to be in a same-sex relationship and are committed to each other? What is the problem? Someone said, if you don't agree with same-sex marriage, don't marry a same-sex partner. It's quite simple, really. And of course with women, you can say, well, if you don't believe in women priests, don't go to a service where

00:53:55.420 - 00:54:19.980

a woman is celebrating communion. But then you have the situation still where people want to know in some minority groups, want to know before they go to church, am I going to be faced with a woman at the altar? Horrifying thought. And I find that very odd. But then we're stuck with a situation where the Five Guiding Principles simultaneously say, we've

00:54:19.980 - 00:54:42.610

agreed, women can be priests, and say, oh, but you don't have to accept that. So tell me the timeline with the Five Guiding Principles and the sin of saying yes to priests. So the yes to priests came with all sorts of let-out clauses. So you could leave the church, really, and take the money. There was a financial package for priests leaving,

00:54:44.550 - 00:55:06.350

which never felt right at the time, but seemed to be the only thing to do. Oh dear, you didn't sign up to be ordained in a church that has women, and now it does, so we quite understand if you want to go now and here's some money. Very odd. Never really got that. And I'm told that some people then came back again after taking the money. So there were figures

00:55:06.350 - 00:55:30.250

out there on how much it cost, and it's a lot. So we did that, and that was basically it. But then, of course, it's the end of the wedge moment. You then move from women priests to women bishops. And at that point, Five Guiding Principles, because once you have women as bishops, you're then into another whole area where are consecrations of other

00:55:30.250 - 00:56:00.650

bishops valid? Are confirmations by women who are bishops valid? And the whole thing becomes extremely messy. And I wasn't on Synod for the Act of Synod that made possible all these weird variations. I got out, I think, at the right time. But I have to say when I got out in 93, at the point where women were just about to be ordained, I felt exhausted.

00:56:02.170 - 00:56:27.270

Although I'd only been a foot soldier in this battle, I was not the people up the front leading it, getting all the flack. I was exhausted. I mean, I couldn't go to church for years. I was completely out of it. I was interested in what was going on in there, but really I didn't want to get involved. So this was just after Synod? Yes, yes. And so I came

00:56:27.270 - 00:56:57.670

back again, I don't know, after four or five years, I suppose. But very low-key, no involvement in anything. I'm still a paid-up member of Mo, and then of WATCH. I'm now a trustee of WATCH. And I think there were lots of disappointments around what happened, and particularly that the underlying sexism is just the same. It's just now women who are ordained have to be

00:56:57.670 - 00:57:23.270

the targets of that. And particularly women who are bishops. It's got to be significant that so recently we had Bishop Rose saying the five guiding principles ain't working. She's right. It's not that none of this is working. It's impossible. And the way we ended up with the flying bishops thing, in terms of having separate bishops to whom particular

00:57:23.270 - 00:57:46.690

parishes can go in a non-geographic way, the whole structure of the Church of England has been threatened by that. And if we do the same thing again, which we may well do, over LGBT inclusion, you get a pick-and-mix church. Pick your bishop. It's not like we ever sat down and went, oh, I don't agree with our bishop on so-and-so, so I'm not going to have

00:57:46.690 - 00:58:11.370

him as my bishop. You just took those bishops. In the days when it was only men, you took the bishop you had. You may have thought, hmm, he's not my favourite bishop. But it was your bishop. You didn't say, well, we're not sending our candidates to him for confirmation. You just accepted that's your bishop. And now not. So it hasn't panned out in the way

00:58:11.370 - 00:58:33.130

one would hope. On the other hand, speaking as someone who's in a parish now where we've just got our first woman as parish priest and it's fab, the excitement is enormous. And also one of the things that's really exciting is when this was happening and we had to do the parish profile, what sort of person are you looking for, we had the discussion,

00:58:33.230 - 00:58:51.570

because you now have to, of would you take a woman? Well, of course we would. We want a vicar. Of course we'd take a woman. And it wasn't as if, again, it's a middle-of-the-road parish. It wasn't as if anyone went, oh, hang on a minute, we need to talk about that. So, yeah, of course we'd take a woman. And when we appoint a woman, no one went, oh my

00:58:51.570 - 00:59:15.670

goodness, it's a woman, I'm not coming to church. It's fine. So that has played out really well on the ground. But only in those parishes. Only in those parishes. And in some clearly that's not the case. I mean, would you say the majority were these kinds of middle-of-the-road and that these other parishes are more, these anti-parishes are more outliers?

00:59:16.910 - 00:59:40.970

Outliers, but large outliers. I think that's the problem. So, yes, well this comes on to what the Church of England looks like now. And the rise of the Holy Trinity Brompton type churches, the church planting, the we will set up a nice church in your diocese and your deanery and next to your parish church where we will use a particular style

00:59:40.970 - 01:00:04.490

of worship. We will be on the evangelical end of things. We'll attract lots of young yuppie type people. We'll have a really good children's ministry and we'll be great. And, oh my goodness, we're just setting that up down the road from a parish church which will then lose people to this new plant and be weakened. This is wrong.

01:00:04.490 - 01:00:32.450

Surely this is wrong. The money is all going the wrong way. And parishes of that kind, parishes set up by Holy Trinity Brompton, have access to their assorted staff members who can put in bids to the diocese for strategic development money that will look attractive. Your ordinary middle-of-the-road parish hasn't got that. And I think there is a real risk

01:00:32.450 - 01:00:58.290

that we'll end up with a very divided church where the normal middle-of-the-road parish in a market town and the rural church are left out in favour of urban churches with a particular evangelical slant to them. Because there's also the more anglo-catholic end of things, the forward in faith parishes, which again have access to money

01:00:58.290 - 01:01:26.310

from their own supporters, people who very strongly want to maintain that anti-women approach. And they will be funded well as well. So you'll get two ends of the church, evangelical and high church ends with their own funding sources. And also getting central funding because they look like they're growth.

01:01:28.410 - 01:02:02.650

But this is all numbers, right? In an ordinary parish, I think it's about men and women working together across age groups, supporting each other, not excluding anybody at all and being open to discussing these things. But I just don't know what the future is for that sort of parish. It is concerning and it's not getting better with the current discussions on LGBT inclusion.

01:02:04.470 - 01:02:24.610

At least no-one this time is saying, give us some money if we leave the church. Maybe that's only a matter of time. Yes, I hope. But a lot of it does get down to money and that seems very odd to me. Were you there on the day that women could become...

01:02:24.610 - 01:02:36.770

1992, yes. I was in the chamber, yes. So tell me what it was like in the chamber. Okay, so the level of tension was extremely high. We knew it was close because you had to have two-thirds majorities in each of the three houses

01:02:36.770 - 01:02:54.890

and anyone doing the calculations could see it was going to be really close to the House of Laity. I was in a row with other people who supported the ordination of women. That was important, to be surrounded by people I felt were with me. And we had a nun in our row who handed out some barkflower rescue remedy.

01:02:55.390 - 01:03:14.070

She passed it along the row and suggested a couple of drops on each wrist. So we were all busy covering ourselves in barkflower rescue remedy. I mean, I don't know whether that kept me calm or not, or whether it was just the presence of a nun in the row. But that was my abiding memory, was this sniffing barkflower rescue remedy.

01:03:16.010 - 01:03:31.050

Because you didn't really hear the debate, even though you were in the room. Because you heard it all before. There were so many votes in the build-up to the final approval. You'd heard it all before. You'd heard it in your diocese.

01:03:31.410 - 01:03:52.810

You'd heard it when you went out to deaneries to do a speech in favour with a speech against someone. There was nothing new there. The tension was more about would anyone on the pro-women side make a total mess of it. So, for example, you don't want someone standing up and doing a really bad speech,

01:03:53.090 - 01:04:10.510

or doing one that could be taken as offensive and leads to everybody who's a conservative going, oh, disgusting, shouldn't be allowed, oh, these women, oh. It was more a tension about the people on our side. We knew what people on the other side were going to say.

01:04:11.710 - 01:04:31.390

And I had no memory at all beyond that sort of tension, and just knowing that we were eventually going to get to the point where we did have to vote, and the barkflower rescue remedy, which was superb. I couldn't believe it. I was there.

01:04:31.590 - 01:04:54.230

And then when we got the result, and it was so close, but we'd won, again, you don't know what to do, really. Very exciting, obviously, but what? At last? Really? Now what? And we did that thing of all running down the stairs out to the yard outside Church House,

01:04:55.030 - 01:05:17.050

where people had been waiting, supporting, just hugging your friends, and everyone saying, well done, and hadn't done anything, just voted the right way. But it was huge, it was huge, and it was really hard to get your head around that we'd done it. And, of course, then there's the day after, where I met people in the lift who were just not talking to me,

01:05:19.230 - 01:05:44.850

all saying, you do know what you've done now, you've ruined it, you've just killed the Church of England. Thank you for that, that's lovely, get off of this floor, I think. It was the level of disappointment and upset on the Conservative side, you couldn't ignore that. But you could do nothing about it. Yes, I'm very sorry you feel like that, but...

01:05:44.850 - 01:06:13.550

And then you're going, oh, it's so close, it doesn't really count, come on, how close do you want to go? You want unanimity? Can I get that on anything in the Church of England? I don't think so. So, yes, it was not just the day, it was also the day after. But there was no sense of going back, right? There was no sense of someone is going to make us redo the vote, or...

01:06:13.550 - 01:06:27.410

No. So once that vote was in, it was... It was in, yes, it was in. There was no way you could go back on it. I don't know what they could have done to have stopped it.

01:06:29.150 - 01:06:56.330

There were no sort of really sneaky procedural motions brought in. I don't know how it felt from their side, whether the Conservatives knew this was coming, whether they really thought they could turn it. I think they think, I thought, sorry, I'll try again, I think they thought they could win by getting one house, the House of Deity, to vote the other way. And I think they were genuinely disappointed. That's my feeling, but I don't know if they'd say the same thing.

01:06:57.230 - 01:07:21.290

They reckoned that they had done it. But how do you cope? How do you know? Yes, you can look at the figures and you can say, this is how people have voted before. Of course, we didn't have the same voting system then, the physical voting system we had, where you actually had to go through a particular door and be counted. It's a very different feeling from pressing a button.

01:07:23.790 - 01:07:52.530

I don't know how that played out. And of course, now when we vote, we press a button. And if someone's called for a vote by houses, automatic, and it was automatic for this because it was liturgical business, so it was two thirds majority anyway. But if you know that your name is going to be publicised, that also has a different effect. So if you're just going through a door with someone going one, two, three on the shoulders of people as they go through,

01:07:53.010 - 01:08:16.850

it's not like your name is going to be blazoned for everyone to see you voted this way. And if you're voting against your constituency, against the people who elected you, that's an issue. So there is no list of who to vote? No, I don't think there can be, because it was not done by any other method but walking through with the hand on the shoulder.

01:08:25.190 - 01:08:47.050

The other thing that was odd about the way we used to vote was that you have clergy eyes and clergy nose, laity eyes and laity nose, but bishops voted by standing on the podium and shifting to the left or the right. So they would all stand a bit in the middle and then sort of separate at the critical moment. So if you had a vote by houses, you could run upstairs, you got through the doors fast,

01:08:47.410 - 01:09:16.030

you could run upstairs, get to the visitors gallery and look down to see the bishops on the podium, to see which way your bishop was voting. So it was a very odd system. And again, it would be fascinating for someone to really take this through in terms of the implications of the two types of system. Because I know now when we have votes, there are people who are voting a way that is not the way their constituency wants them to,

01:09:16.130 - 01:09:37.890

and they will not vote at all. Because now you can do yes, no and abstain. When we had the walking through doors, to abstain you had to sit in the room, stay there, and then they count you as an abstention. But now you've got yes, no and abstain on the buttons, but there are people we know are in the room but don't press any of the buttons.

01:09:39.970 - 01:09:56.250

Presumably because they just don't want to be seen to vote anyway, because whatever they do, someone's going to get them. It's very interesting, someone needs to do a study of the impact of Synod voting packets. Because you can do this, you can just not vote. You can just not vote.

01:09:58.130 - 01:10:08.490

I hear that, I mean... Well, you've been elected to vote, so I do think you should, even if it's an abstention. An abstention can be the right way to vote. But you don't have to.

01:10:12.550 - 01:10:24.510

Okay, so we've talked a bit about Mo. Tell me a bit, I mean, were you part of the group that started WATCH? No. Or is that something you joined later on?

01:10:24.530 - 01:10:37.670

No, I joined that later on. I suppose, like many people, I wondered if that was it. We won, you know, end of discussion. And I don't therefore know what the discussions were that led to the setting up of WATCH.

01:10:37.670 - 01:10:46.870

But I think it was the right thing to do. Because it's not automatic that just because you've got women priests, everything else looks lovely. Because it doesn't. And it's not over yet.

01:10:46.870 - 01:10:56.710

It's not over yet, exactly. It's not over yet, as the current slogan for WATCH has it. We're not equal yet, so it's not over yet. But then, will we ever be equal?

01:10:59.990 - 01:11:20.190

It's interesting when you think that we've got the most senior bishop in the Church of England, who's a woman, is Sarah the Bishop of London, so third in the list of bishops. Could a woman ever be Archbishop of Canterbury? Because that would immediately be extremely disruptive for quite a lot of people.

01:11:21.770 - 01:11:37.110

Because Sarah has been an example of showing grace. She has had a lot of flack, a lot of flack. Even things like when she wore a T-shirt in General Synod in York, despite the fact in General Synod in York the dress code is dressed down,

01:11:37.950 - 01:11:47.870

and you've got men in shorts with grief. The sheer horror of sitting next to a couple of senior male clerics in shorts is just unspeakable. I don't like that. I don't think they should wear shorts.

01:11:48.510 - 01:11:56.930

But a woman wearing a T-shirt is somehow... she gets abused because she's a bishop wearing a T-shirt. It's ridiculous. Men don't get that.

01:11:57.990 - 01:12:10.630

So we have a woman there who is a model of grace, who has somehow managed to hold things together in a diocese where there are more people who are opposed to the ordination of women and the consecration of women bishops than anywhere else,

01:12:10.670 - 01:12:20.170

and she's managed to do it. Would she want to be Archbishop of Canterbury? Would anyone want to be Archbishop of Canterbury? But would anyone appoint?

01:12:20.490 - 01:12:27.010

I don't know. I don't know. Because we have still got women on the Crown Nominations Commission that appoints the bishops.

01:12:27.490 - 01:12:37.190

We have women there who don't agree with women bishops. So great, we've got women who don't agree with women bishops are appointing bishops. And that's somehow okay.

01:12:38.750 - 01:12:50.290

So yes, we need WATCH. I came on as a trustee two years ago, having joined WATCH on Synod. Because all these groups have their Synod branch.

01:12:50.390 - 01:12:59.410

On Synod the first time? No, so this is the second time. So WATCH on Synod is an actual group within Synod. There are quite a lot of interest groups in Synod.

01:12:59.410 - 01:13:13.630

So WATCH on Synod is a special group which brings together those members of Synod who are wanting to continue this discussion on the ordination of women. So there'll be members of Synod who are fine on the ordination of women

01:13:13.630 - 01:13:25.290

but don't see the point of WATCH. But there's also going to be those who realise that we do need to keep the pressure up. And one thing WATCH on Synod does is look at the statistics.

01:13:26.870 - 01:13:40.410

This has become quite difficult in the last couple of years. Post-pandemic, the statistics haven't been kept very well. So if you ask a question like, how many women priests are there compared with men per diocese or something?

01:13:40.450 - 01:13:49.050

What's the percentage? You don't get an answer. You get figures not available for some. I find that very surprising and slightly suspicious.

01:13:50.650 - 01:14:04.270

But one of WATCH's roles is to keep those questions being asked. What percentage of women are there in the senior roles in the Church of England? So look at deans, for example, cathedral deans. What percentage of them are women?

01:14:05.130 - 01:14:22.250

What about diocesan directors of ordinands? How many of them are women? WATCH is important to just keep looking at those figures and interrogating them. And I think that's something which maybe we hadn't thought in the heady days of 1992

01:14:22.250 - 01:14:30.130

would ever be necessary. Just automatically it will be fine. But there are questions there. And of course the number of bishops is not high.

01:14:30.290 - 01:14:47.910

So there were women as suffragan bishops but not as diocesan. And then you get anomalies like Bishop Jill Duff, the Bishop of Lancaster, who is anti-women bishops and is a bishop. Yes, okay, so she's ordained.

01:14:48.110 - 01:15:00.550

Would she ever be a diocesan bishop? She's from the conservative evangelical end of things, so headship. So somehow it's okay for her to be a suffragan because she's under the authority of a diocesan who's a male.

01:15:01.270 - 01:15:10.010

Would she serve under a woman? Would she be a diocesan if asked? I have no idea. It's very hard to get anything out of her.

01:15:11.290 - 01:15:36.070

But even with the idea of headship, isn't that, in theory, she is head of, I would assume, a cohort of men? And again, some of them would not approve of that. So there were lots of really quite serious divisions there

01:15:36.070 - 01:15:53.210

which don't get looked at. And churches which won't take women in positions of authority but will have a woman as, for example, children and families worker because that's an okay role for a woman,

01:15:53.890 - 01:16:05.610

or will have a woman as assistant priest because the main priest of that parish is a man, and a woman can be an assistant priest but not a priest. But then you are celebrating communion,

01:16:05.610 - 01:16:14.770

which for the anglo-catholic end of things would be the issue. But on the conservative end of things, where communion is often less a significant thing, and it's not every week,

01:16:15.530 - 01:16:28.870

somehow that doesn't really matter that a woman is leading that. The issue is whether she's running the parish. And then what does running the parish mean? If it means doing the stats and putting in applications for grants or something,

01:16:28.910 - 01:16:40.690

I'm sure they're very happy for anyone to do that. But somehow a man has to be in charge. We really have so many questions still about men and women in authority that people are just making it up as they go along.

01:16:42.510 - 01:16:59.410

That's interesting. And not just making it up but accepting controversial things. Yes, and not looking at contradictions. Yes, just turning a blind eye because it's too complicated.

01:17:00.870 - 01:17:10.410

It is what it is, let's not ask too many questions. Which is odd, isn't it? It is very odd. Again, hence the need for WATCH.

01:17:10.650 - 01:17:25.410

Yes, so WATCH is very important. And those questions, every meeting of Synod, those of us on general Synod WATCH, are ignited by whoever is sort of leading the group

01:17:26.490 - 01:17:40.630

to submit any suggestions for questions. You can't put in a question that asks for an opinion to be expressed. You want a question that asks for facts. So we have to go through a certain amount of triaging of the questions

01:17:40.630 - 01:17:51.570

to work out, there's no point asking that one because we'll be told it's out of order. But the factual stuff, like how many women? So for example, clergy discipline measure,

01:17:52.250 - 01:18:06.830

where you can bring an action against a clergy person for improper conduct, which could be anything from sexual relations with someone that they shouldn't be having sexual relations with, to not turning up at services when it's time for the service,

01:18:06.950 - 01:18:19.110

could be a really wide range of things. How many clergy discipline measure moves have been made against women? Are women more likely to be the targets of those or not? That would be really interesting to know.

01:18:19.930 - 01:18:30.950

But we tend to get, at the moment, we tend to get the answer that statistics aren't available because of COVID. That can't go on forever. I can quite see some diocese kind of lost the plot at that point.

01:18:33.650 - 01:18:43.090

And statistics come up very late in the day too. That's fascinating. And then there's the question of ordinance, of course. How many women are in training?

01:18:44.630 - 01:18:58.270

And are they the women who are representative of all women in the church or are we talking about only older women being recommended, which means they're more likely to be recommended for jobs that won't carry a stipend?

01:18:59.730 - 01:19:11.070

What about younger women? What about maternity policy? There's been a recent report on maternity policy saying that it's not consistent within the Church of England. There is no national policy.

01:19:11.250 - 01:19:22.390

Different dioceses operate on different rules. So that's another really important area where WATCH funded some of the research because we need to know this

01:19:23.390 - 01:19:43.770

and to show the church that women are not equal yet. Because if you don't have a maternity policy that's clear and fair, you're not going to get young women offering for ministry. So there's still so many issues around women

01:19:44.470 - 01:19:58.710

and what women are that the church hasn't really engaged with. But then what order did you do it in? Did you do all that first and then after that decide whether to ordain women? Well, no, we ordained women.

01:20:00.410 - 01:20:09.490

Big theological argument. We did it. It's done, exactly. When it was done, it was provisional originally. The word provisional was used

01:20:09.490 - 01:20:20.950

and then the point when we got to women bishops in 2014, the provisionality was taken out, as in, okay, it's not provisional anymore. So the idea of being ordained but it's provisional, come on.

01:20:22.930 - 01:20:33.510

It was always provisional when it started. That's fascinating. How could you possibly have it provisional? Oh, sorry, we made a mistake.

01:20:33.710 - 01:20:41.770

You're not a priest anymore. No, sorry, I know you were last week. Yes, provisionality. Great word for the church.

01:20:43.130 - 01:20:56.930

My. We have covered a lot of things, I think, in the past hour or so. I'm wondering, though, if there's anything I didn't ask or we didn't cover that you think might be relevant

01:20:56.930 - 01:21:11.670

to the understanding of Mo and the women priest movement and watch afterwards. I don't know if there's anything I might not have covered

01:21:11.670 - 01:21:21.990

or I might have missed the last words, I guess. I suppose my last words would be allies. One of the things that was really important with Mo was we had allies who were men.

01:21:23.910 - 01:21:31.490

And I think being a male ally for Mo was a particularly wonderful thing, and they should all be given a medal for that, really. But we did have that.

01:21:31.810 - 01:21:40.770

It was never just a group of uppity women. It was always men saying, come on, of course you can do this, what's the problem? Men who were not threatened.

01:21:42.110 - 01:21:49.270

And I think that word threatened is interesting. Men who were not threatened by the thought that there may be women working alongside them. Men who were happy to work with women.

01:21:50.390 - 01:22:00.510

And I think they'd be quite an interesting area to study in themselves, because what sort of man is it that is sufficiently relaxed to say, well, I don't have a problem, you know?

01:22:00.990 - 01:22:08.650

I don't have a problem with women. I may be working under a woman. I may be working with a woman. I may not get a job because a woman gets it,

01:22:08.650 - 01:22:18.610

and that's okay. But that's a whole area that was so important. They were good men, and often clergymen,

01:22:18.890 - 01:22:30.370

who were absolutely happy to take this forward. And I think particularly now when we're talking about the LGBT inclusion issues, the role of allies has become really obvious.

01:22:31.870 - 01:22:44.130

Because when you were a woman, if you said, I really think I've got an invocation to ordination, then you are liable to be told it's an illusion,

01:22:44.590 - 01:22:54.790

it's a mistake, whatever. If, however, you've got a man saying, well, I really think this woman has a strong vocation, that is the sort of support you need.

01:22:56.590 - 01:23:08.010

And I think allies were critical and are probably underrated. And it was great, knowing that you were not just a group of women.

01:23:09.010 - 01:23:15.970

You were a group of people who believed that this was the right thing. Perfect. Thank you very much.

01:23:16.130 - 01:23:16.530

Thank you.