THE FRACTURE OF ORDER: The Church of England AFTER 1993
When George Carey as then Archbishop of Canterbury, rose in the House of Lords in 1993 to commend the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure, he presented not a minor reform, but a decisive reconfiguration of priesthood, authority, and tradition within the Church of England. Framed as pastorally necessary, theologically defensible, and institutionally prudent, the Measure was advanced as the organic development of a living tradition. It was spoken of in the language of continuity—of the Church of England finding, within herself, the resources to respond faithfully to the demands of a changing age. Yet even at the moment of its proposal, the stakes were far greater than its advocates admitted. The question was not simply whether women might be admitted to the priesthood, but whether the Church of England possessed the authority to alter what she had universally received, or whether she was bound to guard and transmit it intact.¹
More than three decades later, that question has been answered not by argument, but by consequence. The intervening years have supplied what the debate could not: a lived demonstration of the principles set in motion, and of their effects upon the life, identity, and mission of the Church of England.
Carey spoke of enabling the Church of England to “move forward together.”² The phrase is revealing, not merely for its optimism, but for its assumption—that division could be resolved through structural accommodation, and that a contested theological question could be rendered pastorally manageable without first being doctrinally settled. The decades since must therefore be read as the test of that claim: whether the Church of England can move forward together when it has not first agreed on what it is.
A decision rooted in process, not inheritance
The Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure emerged from a prolonged synodical process extending back to the 1975 General Synod motion declaring no “fundamental objection,” culminating in the decisive vote of November 1992, where the Measure secured the required two-thirds majority in all three Houses.³ This process was extensive, deliberate, and constitutionally rigorous. It reflected the structures of Anglican governance at their most mature: consultation, representation, debate, and vote.
Yet it is precisely here that the tension becomes visible. The Church of England’s internal mechanisms were employed to adjudicate a question that, by its nature, exceeded those mechanisms. For the issue was not merely whether the Church of England wished to ordain women, but whether such ordination lay within the competence of any local or national church to determine.
The Measure then passed through parliamentary scrutiny under the Church of England Assembly Powers Act (1919), receiving approval from the Ecclesiastical Committee and both Houses of Parliament.⁴ In this, the peculiarly English character of establishment is made manifest: a doctrinally significant decision, touching the nature of Holy Orders, was ratified not only ecclesiastically but legislatively.⁵ What had once been received from the apostolic tradition was now, in effect, authorised through parliamentary procedure.
Procedurally, the Measure was unassailable. Substantively, it marked a rupture. For the first time, the Church of England asserted the authority to alter the conditions of priestly ordination independently of the wider Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. Carey’s appeal to Article XX of the Thirty-Nine Articles—affirming that “the Church hath power… in controversies of faith”—was thereby deployed not merely as a statement of governance, but as a warrant for doctrinal innovation.⁶ Authority was no longer exercised within the bounds of tradition; it was invoked to redefine them.
A promise of mission, a record of decline
The reform was justified, in part, by its anticipated missionary benefit. The Church of England, it was argued, would become more credible, more intelligible, and more persuasive in a society increasingly shaped by egalitarian assumptions. By removing what was perceived as an obstacle to inclusion, the Church of England would remove an obstacle to belief.⁷
The empirical record does not support the conclusion drawn from this premise. Average Sunday attendance stood at approximately 1.2 million in 1990; by 2010 it had declined to around 850,000, and by 2022 to approximately 654,000—less than 2% of the population.⁸ Over the same period, infant baptisms fell from over 300,000 annually in the early 1990s to fewer than 80,000 by 2022, while confirmations declined from approximately 120,000 in 1990 to under 20,000.⁹ Clergy numbers likewise fell, with full-time stipendiary clergy declining from over 13,000 in the early 1990s to approximately 7,600 by 2022.¹⁰
While broader secularisation must be acknowledged, the central claim remains unfulfilled: the reform did not produce the renewal it promised. Adaptation did not arrest decline; it accompanied it. The Church of England became less distinctive, and therefore less compelling.
Unity promised, division institutionalised
The legislation was presented as a means of securing unity within the Church of England amid diversity of conviction. It would allow those in favour and those opposed to remain within a single ecclesial body, each respected, each accommodated.¹¹
In practice, this accommodation required the creation of parallel structures. The Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod (1993) established Provincial Episcopal Visitors to provide sacramental oversight for dissenting parishes.¹² This formalised the existence of incompatible theological positions within a single ecclesial framework.
Unity was not restored; it was replaced by a managed contradiction.
The subsequent Women in the Episcopate Measure (2014) extended the same principle, confirming that the 1993 settlement was not a conclusion but a precedent.¹³ The safeguards offered to dissenters, lacking permanent juridical force, have proven contingent and progressively attenuated.¹⁴
Internal warnings and the logic of development
The debate itself revealed the tensions that would later define the Church of England’s experience. The speech of David Hope as the then Bishop of London, articulated a position of theological caution: that the matter remained unresolved on the basis of Scripture, tradition, and the historic life of the Church.¹⁵ As he observed, the issue remained “considerably divided in our Church,” even after the Synod’s vote.¹⁶
Hope further noted that while the General Synod achieved a supermajority, the deanery synods—representing parish life—did not reflect the same consensus.¹⁷ His critique of Clause Two described it as “unworkable,” exposing the contradiction of affirming and restricting a sacramental act simultaneously.¹⁸ His further observation that exclusion from the episcopate would prove unsustainable anticipated developments realised in 2014.¹⁹
In contrast, Robert Runcie then emeritus Archbishop of Canterbury, advanced a theological rationale grounded in development, drawing on John Henry Newman.²⁰ Yet Newman’s principle—in eodem sensu eademque sententia—requires continuity of meaning, not transformation of substance.²¹
Runcie’s definition of priesthood as representing “God to the human community and the human community to God” reflects a functional shift away from the classical understanding of acting in persona Christi.²² His further claim that a male-only priesthood may weaken representation in a society without male-exclusive leadership reveals the sociological basis of the argument.²³ His dismissal of concerns about further developments as a “failure of logic” has not been borne out by subsequent events.²⁴
The issue was settled procedurally. It was never resolved theologically.
Ecumenism redefined: from impairment to departure
Carey acknowledged that the reform would complicate relations with the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.² The consequences were immediate. The Catholic Church, having already declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void” in Apostolicae Curae, now confronted an ongoing divergence in theological method.²⁵
The response of Pope John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) reaffirmed that the Catholic Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women.²⁶ The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified in 1995 that this teaching is to be held definitively as belonging to the deposit of faith.²⁷
Orthodox responses were equally firm. As then His Excellency Kallistos Ware, Titular Bishop of Diokleia in Phrygia observed, such innovations “touch the very structure of the Church’s sacramental life.”²⁸ The Inter-Orthodox Consultation at Rhodes (1988) reaffirmed that the male priesthood belongs to apostolic tradition and is not subject to revision.²⁹
Anglicanism simultaneously moved toward closer alignment with Protestant bodies through agreements such as the Porvoo Communion (1992).³⁰ The result was not convergence with the Catholic Church or Orthodoxy, but divergence from them.
Theology by majority
The reform rested on procedural legitimacy. Yet ecclesial truth is not established by majority, but received through continuity. Authority moved from what the Church of England has received to what it judges appropriate.
As St Vincent of Lérins articulated, authentic development proceeds in eodem sensu eademque sententia.³¹ What occurred here was not development, but displacement.
A hermeneutical turning point and its consequences
The ordination of women marks a hermeneutical turning point within the Church of England: the transition from reception to revision. Subsequent debates within the Anglican Communion—on sexuality, marriage, and moral teaching—have followed the same trajectory.³²
Conclusion: the lesson of experience
The Church of England remains established yet diminished, divided, and uncertain of its identity. The promised renewal has not come; the anticipated unity has not materialised. The structures endure, the offices remain, the language of mission continues to be employed—but beneath these continuities lies a deeper instability, one that cannot be resolved by further procedural adjustment or pastoral accommodation.
For what has been revealed over these three decades is not merely the failure of a particular reform to achieve its stated aims, but the consequences of a deeper methodological shift. Once the Church of England assumed the authority to redefine what it had received, it altered not only its discipline, but its self-understanding. Authority was no longer exercised as a stewardship of tradition, but as a capacity for revision. Doctrine ceased to be something transmitted and became something determined.
This shift has not remained confined to the question of Holy Orders. It has established a precedent—a principle by which further questions are approached. The debates that have followed within the Anglican Communion, whether concerning moral theology, anthropology, or ecclesial practice, have unfolded along the same lines: appeals to pastoral necessity, reliance on synodical process, and the gradual reconfiguration of previously settled teaching. The pattern is not incidental; it is structural.
Nor has the hoped-for equilibrium between differing convictions been achieved. The language of “mutual flourishing” has not resolved contradiction; it has managed it. The Church of England has not found a stable synthesis of opposing theological positions, but has instead institutionalised their coexistence. What is presented as comprehensiveness increasingly resembles fragmentation held together by administrative coherence rather than doctrinal unity.
The ecumenical consequences have likewise matured into clarity. The divergence from the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches is no longer a matter of degree, but of principle. The question is no longer whether unity can be restored through dialogue, but whether the conditions for such unity are still recognised in common. Where one body asserts the authority to alter what another holds to be divinely instituted, the possibility of convergence recedes not incrementally, but categorically.
And yet, perhaps the most significant consequence is internal. A church that redefines its priesthood does not merely alter its ministry; it reshapes its understanding of mediation, sacrifice, and representation. The priesthood is not an isolated function within ecclesial life; it is bound up with the Church’s understanding of Christ, of the sacraments, and of her own identity as the Body of Christ. To alter its nature is to alter the framework within which the Church understands herself.
The issue, then, is not reducible to inclusion or exclusion, nor to questions of justice as defined by contemporary categories. It is a question of continuity: whether the Church of England remains recognisably the same body that once claimed continuity with the apostolic tradition, or whether it has, by successive acts of revision, become something else—something related, historically continuous, but theologically distinct.
The events of 1993 did not settle a question; they initiated a trajectory. That trajectory has now had time to unfold. It has produced not the resolution of tension, but its redistribution; not the strengthening of identity, but its diffusion; not the restoration of mission, but its further complication.
The lesson, therefore, is neither polemical nor speculative, but empirical. A church that seeks to secure relevance by conforming itself to the expectations of the age risks forfeiting the very authority by which it speaks. For the authority of the Church does not derive from her capacity to adapt, but from her fidelity to what she has received.
The issue was settled procedurally. It was never resolved theologically. And what is not resolved theologically does not remain dormant; it continues to shape, to unsettle, and to unfold.
A Church that ceases to receive does not renew itself—it replaces itself.
¹ House of Lords, Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure, HL Deb 26 January 1993, vol. 542, cols. 106–187 (speech of the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey).
² Ibid., col. 123.
³ General Synod of the Church of England, Official Report of Proceedings, November 1992 Group of Sessions (London: Church House Publishing, 1992).
⁴ UK Parliament, Ecclesiastical Committee, Report on the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure (London: HMSO, 1993).
⁵ Church of England, The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (London: Church House Publishing, 1571/modern ed.), Article XX.
⁶ UK Parliament, Ecclesiastical Committee, Report on the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure, §§10–15.
⁷ Church of England, Statistics for Mission 2022 (London: Archbishops’ Council, 2023), 4–7.
⁸ Church of England, Statistics for Mission Annual Tables, 1990–2022 (London: Archbishops’ Council, various years).
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ UK Parliament, Ecclesiastical Committee, Report on the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure (1993), concluding observations.
¹¹ House of Bishops of the Church of England, Episcopal Ministry Act of Synod 1993 (London: Church House Publishing, 1993).
¹² General Synod of the Church of England, Women in the Episcopate Measure (London: Church House Publishing, 2014).
¹³ House of Lords, HL Deb 26 January 1993, vol. 542, cols. 149–156 (speech of the Bishop of London, David Hope).
¹⁴ Ibid., col. 151.
¹⁵ Ibid., col. 153.
¹⁶ Ibid., cols. 155–156.
¹⁷ House of Lords, HL Deb 26 January 1993, vol. 542, cols. 159–168 (speech of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie); see also John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: James Toovey, 1845).
¹⁸ Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, ch. 23, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 11, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894), 132.
¹⁹ Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae (Rome, 13 September 1896), Acta Sanctae Sedis 29 (1896–97): 193–203.
²⁰ Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Rome, 22 May 1994), §4, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 86 (1994): 545–548.
²¹ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responsum ad dubium concerning the teaching contained in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (Rome, 28 October 1995), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 87 (1995): 1114.
²² Kallistos Ware, “Man, Woman and the Priesthood of Christ,” in Man, Woman and Priesthood, ed. Thomas Hopko (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983), 68–90.
²³ Inter-Orthodox Theological Consultation, Rhodes Statement on the Ordination of Women (Rhodes, 1988).
²⁴ Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, ch. 23.
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