Overwhelming 'yes' to women bishops

The dioceses of the Church of England have been voting on whether or not they support women being made bishops.  This round of voting has taken place in the diocesan synods (regional/county representatives from parishes) and in many cases these have followed similar discussions at a more local level, in the deaneries (much more local groupings of parishes).

The result has been overwhelming support for women bishops.  4345 votes were cast nationally, with 3253 voting in favour (75%), 974 voting against (22%) and 118 abstaining (3%).  There were also following motions, designed to stiffen provisions for those who oppose this development and these have largely been rejected, though the voting is not so easy to assess because not all the votes were on the same motions, and not all of them have been made public.

Statistics can of course be abused and misused.  They only tell what the presenter has chosen to select from the available data.  But with that caveat, this voting shows overwhelming support for making women bishops.  The caveat is that diocesan synods are not necessarily representative of local churches - my hunch is that they are more conservative so the support would probably have been much stronger if everyone in the pews was canvassed - but that hasn't been done.  This is because the electoral college is drawn from Deanery Synods and there is not strong competition for these places within parishes.  So it is a fairly narrow field.  Most people aren't involved in the governance of the church.

This may seem dull, but the next level is potentially even more skewed.  The national body, the General Synod, is elected by the deaneries and not everyone bothers to vote, just like in civic elections.  So the result is that the consistency of General Synod has more people against than this voting would reflect.  According to the most recent statistics available (2010) nationally only 7% of parishes have expressed any form of opt out from women priests allowed by the law which permitted them.

There is clearly a strong moral pressure from these votes for General Synod to allow women bishops on the same terms as men, with a code of practice allowing male bishops to care for the small number of parishes that do not accept them.  This is generous.  No other body would adopt such discrimination but the desire of the national church has been to keep hold of those who don't want women clergy, but only in a way that doesn't damage the integrity of the church by making women bishops less .

It is therefore difficult to predict what General Synod will do with this.  But this round of votes represents overwhelming support for the move.  If they don't it will call into question the electoral validity of General Synod.