Archbishop-designate Sarah Mullally is not well-known. Beyond the Church of England, responses to her selection have been relatively muted and occasionally ill-informed. Comments in recent days have tended to focus on her sex, her opinions about human sexuality, and her kind and reconciling temperament.
Most public statements, like that of Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect for the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity, have been polite and perfunctory, assuring Mullally of the author’s prayers and sidestepping details of her biography and overwhelming task.
Few have mentioned personal interaction with Mullally, whose public ministry has rarely ventured beyond her native land, and whose literary output consists only of brief devotional books for Advent and Lent. Several quickly published tomes on amazon.co.uk, which likely relied on AI, use a cover photos that are obviously of someone else.
Though she’s widely cast as a theological liberal, indeed as “the most progressive choice possible” by one veteran Anglican Church in North America priest, few progressives in Mullally’s church have expressed much enthusiasm about her appointment.
Most conservatives who condemn her selection simply paint her in the colors of her predecessor, Justin Welby, who disenchanted them by his public shift on human sexuality, heavy-handed domination of the 2022 Lambeth Conference, and aggressive push for same-sex blessings in the church at the end of his tenure. They assume she will be the same, if not worse.
‘Affirming the Calling of Women’
Headlines about Mullally’s selection in secular and church media largely focused on her being the first woman to fill the historic role. The two other women who lead Anglican provinces, Prime Bishop Marinez Bassotto of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil and Archbishop Cherry Vann of Wales, both highlighted this in their messages of congratulations.
Vann said she was “delighted that the Crown Nominations Commission has had the vision to appoint a woman to this significant role,” and Bassotto called the choice of Mullally “a fresh breath of life” in a Facebook video.
“It marks the beginning of a new time for the Church and is a sign of how much our Anglican Communion has broadened its vision, becoming more inclusive and welcoming,” Bassotto said. “More than 50 years of women’s ordination and several decades of the episcopal ministry of women across numerous provinces of the Anglican Communion have brought our practice much closer to our discourse.”
The Church of North India, which authorized the ordination of women in 1977, said that Mullally’s appointment “brings hope and inspiration to women and girls across the Communion and beyond, affirming the gifts and calling of women in the life and leadership of the Church.”
Some Global South leaders claimed that Mullally’s sex would be a cause of further division. Archbishop Henry Ndukuba of Nigeria, who arguably leads the Communion’s largest church, called her selection “devastating,” and faulted its “insensitivity to the conviction of the majority of Anglicans who are unable to embrace female headship in the episcopate.”
The claim that a majority of Anglicans object to women’s ministry as bishops was also made in GAFCON’s official statement by Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, its chairman and the primate of the Church of Rwanda.
It’s hard to verify this claim. Of the Anglican Communion’s 42 member churches, 17 have not authorized the consecration of women as bishops. Nigeria is by far the largest of these in membership, but there is no universal standard for church membership, and membership numbers in Africa are especially difficult to verify (see David Goodhew’s notes for an introduction to the issue).
Among the Communion’s ten largest member churches (Nigeria, England, Uganda, Kenya, Australia, South India, Southern Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, and the Episcopal Church), only Nigeria forbids the consecration of women bishops, and seven of the ten have women serving as bishops.
While some clergy of the Anglican Church in North America announced their opinions about Mullally’s sex by declaring on Facebook that “the see is vacant,” evangelical and Anglo-Catholic bishops in her church who do not accept the episcopal ministry of women offered support, and described her as firmly committed to the Church of England’s Five Guiding Principles, which are intended to ensure “mutual flourishing” across this doctrinal division.
Evangelical bishop Rob Munro of Ebbsfleet issued “A Theological Reflection on Upholding Complementarian Integrity with a Female Archbishop” as a resource for the parishes under his oversight. In it, he makes a strong distinction between legal and spiritual authority, insisting that as archbishop, Mullally’s role would be restricted to the licensing of clergy and their compliance with canon law, so that the parishes under his care “are not necessarily under +Sarah’s spiritual ‘headship.’”
In a separate statement congratulating Mullally on her new role, Munro said “Bishop Sarah has a long track record of gracious engagement, and real understanding of the particular theological convictions we hold.”
Bishop Paul Thomas of Oswestry, an Anglo-Catholic traditionalist who is chairman of Forward in Faith acknowledged in a pastoral letter that the news of Mullally’s selection was likely to be received “more mutedly and reflectively, perhaps even with some concern” among those under his pastoral care.
Yet, he added, “it is also a natural and inevitable out-working of the decision taken a little over a decade ago by General Synod to admit women to the episcopate.” He urged those under his charge to study the House of Bishops’ declaration enshrining the Five Guiding Principles, which he describes as “a steadying and settling wisdom for these times.”
‘Departure from Orthodoxy’
Archbishop Titus Chung of South East Asia is the only Anglican primate from a church that does not ordain women to any order of ministry to issue a statement about the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and he makes no mention of her sex.
Instead, Chung, one of the four officers of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), emphasizes the barrier to Anglican unity created by Mullally’s progressive opinions about homosexuality and her involvement in the Church of England’s limited embrace of same-sex blessings, an issue weighted much more heavily in the statements of all Global South leaders.
“Bishop Sarah chaired the Living in Love and Faith project in the Church of England which led to the decision in 2023 to allow the blessings of same-sex marriages. She described the decision as ‘[a] moment of hope,’” Chung wrote. “This is a departure and total misalignment from what Scripture teaches regarding marriage and sexuality. It is also a departure from traditional Anglican orthodoxy.”
He added: “As such, the appointment of an Archbishop of Canterbury who, in the course of her work, was instrumental in the unacceptable compromise of Scripture places us in a challenging and invidious position. With respect, under God’s overarching presidency, we will not be able to recognize her as the ‘first among equals,’ both in terms of leadership and influence within the Global Anglican Communion.”
Chung’s language of “not [being] able to recognize her as the ‘first among equals,’” which was echoed in the statement of numerous Global South primates, GAFCON, and the GSFA, is taken directly from the GSFA’s 2023 Ash Wednesday Statement, issued after the Church of England’s General Synod narrowly signaled its support for blessing same-sex unions.
The GSFA bishops said then that they were not seceding from the Anglican Communion, nor were they denying that the Archbishop of Canterbury should ideally have a central role in the Communion.
Their verdict was personal: they were saying that Justin Welby, as a public teacher of revisionist doctrine, could no longer be accorded the respect and honor due to his office. Chung and other Global South primates say that as one who has also embraced revisionist teaching, Mullally is also incapable of filling the Archbishop of Canterbury’s traditional role.
“What has happened in the Church of England has only served to strengthen our resolve to work together to re-set the Communion, and to ensure that the re-set Communion is marked by reform and renewal,” the Ash Wednesday Statement said—language that has also been echoed in the statements of several Global South primates to Mullally’s selection.
Several of those statements—notably those of Ndukuba of Nigeria, Stephen Kaziimba of Uganda, and Justin Badi of South Sudan—make the further claim that Mullally is a supporter of same-sex marriage.
There is no evidence for this, though the track record of progressive change in other Anglican churches in the Global North could fairly justify insinuations of a slippery slope.
But in fact, the process for approving same-sex blessings used by Living in Love and Faith that Mullally led relied on the claim that the blessing liturgies were “neither contrary to, nor indicative of any departure from, the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter.” The Church of England’s marriage doctrine includes a prohibition on all premarital sex, meaning that the liturgies are officially intended to be used only by couples in celibate relationships.
The balancing act of praising blessings for same-sex couples, while also firmly believing that marriage can only be between a man and a woman and that sex belongs only within marriage, clearly stretches the bounds of credibility for many. The Church of the Province of South East Asia’s bishops said as much in a 2023 pastoral letter.
Still, Mullally was also not among the 44 Church of England bishops who signed a public statement in November 2023 urging progress “without delay” toward standalone services of blessing that would more closely resemble weddings and permitting clergy to enter same-sex civil marriages.
The muted response of progressives in the Church of England to Mullally’s appointment is noticeable. None of the pro-LGBT advocacy groups in the Church of England (Inclusive Church, Modern Church, OneBodyOneFaith) have issued a public statement about her appointment.
An op-ed in The Observer by the Rev. Lucy Winkett, rector of London’s flagship liberal parish St. James Piccadilly, says of Mullally, “She holds to the Church of England’s traditional teaching about marriage while at the same time welcoming the prayers for couples in same-sex relationships as ‘a moment of hope for the church,’” which Winkett cites as evidence that Mullally is uniquely equipped to become “an instrument of unity.”
The Rev. Ian Paul, a leader among evangelicals in General Synod, suggested in his analysis of Mullally’s selection that while she may have been the public face of the Living in Love and Faith initiative’s first phase, the impetus for it was not hers, but Justin Welby’s.
Citing a series of potential improprieties surrounding LLF, Paul surmises: “Behind all this, of course, we can see the hand of Justin Welby himself, desperate to move the debate to the conclusion he wanted before his term of office ended. The question then is the extent to which Sarah felt obliged to go along with this—and the question now is whether she will adopt a more honest and open approach.”
Similarly, sources have suggested to TLC that, as a widely acknowledged master of governance deeply formed as a civil servant, Mullally may have felt her role as the leader of the Living in Love and Faith working group was to accomplish what the archbishops wanted, setting aside her own judgment about what would be best for the church.
Mullally’s personal convictions about Living in Love and Faith’s “next steps” may become clearer soon. Important decisions about these will likely be made by the House of Bishops during meetings this week. The bishops are expected to also receive a report from the church’s Faith and Order Commission, which has been working since 2023 to evaluate the degree to which these next steps are consistent with current church teaching.
Progress reports from the commission last January suggested that the bar for doctrinal conformity would likely be high, which may mean that the next steps must be scrapped until the doctrine can be changed, which would require a currently impossible two-thirds majority vote in General Synod.
‘Balance and Careful Consideration’
Several commentators have suggested that Mullally’s position as a centrist and her long record of kindness toward those with whom she disagrees uniquely equip her for leadership amid today’s contentions.
The Rev. Marcus Walker, a prominent liberal Catholic member of General Synod, said in an op-ed in The Telegraph that “what the church desperately needs is a bishop who wants to bind wounds and be a pastor,” and suggested that from his experience of her moderating a contentious debate hosted by his London parish, Mullally has the needed gifts.
“She has promised to be ‘a shepherd who enables everyone’s ministry and vocation to flourish, whatever our tradition.’ Perhaps counter-intuitively the route to this flourishing is in allowing people who disagree to speak and be heard and for her to be able to hold the center,” he said.
Archbishop Shane Parker, the Anglican Church in Canada’s primate, told The Anglican Journal that “Archbishop-designate Mullally personifies the thoughtful Christianity that is at the heart of the Anglican tradition.”
“Her public comments about a number of matters reflect balance and careful consideration of the need to acknowledge differences, with a view to maintaining unity rather than feeding division—and always seeking to be guided by and faithful to Christ,” he said.
Paul acknowledged that many of his fellow evangelicals have described Mullally as kind, expressing delight in her willingness to work with them, despite their disagreement on significant matters. This, he said, would likely mark a change from her predecessor’s leadership style.
“Although he had his moments, I don’t think Justin really merited the description ‘kind’ from many that worked with him,” Paul wrote. “Kindness is an essential of Christian leadership, though on its own it is not enough. The tendency to want to be kind to everyone can backfire, and the danger is that you say to each person or each group the thing that you think they want to hear.”
Paul is concerned “that Sarah will, out of kindness, want to reassure ‘conservatives’ of various colors. But, out of kindness, her natural instinct will also be to reassure those who are campaigning for the doctrine of the Church to change, and those who do not abide by the discipline of the Church in their relationships. Without the guiding and shape of other theological and institutional insights, the result could be incoherence and contradiction—neither of which end up being kind.”
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
