Female bishops: history awaits at CofE General Synod vote Canon Rosie Harper, watched by the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaks during discussions about female bishops at the General Synod in York in July. When Thabo Makgoba, archbishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), boarded a plane for Swaziland on Friday, he noticed something special about his fellow passengers. One, he noted, was a woman who had become South Africa's first female defence minister in 2009; another who, several years ago, was Cape Town's first black female mayor. "Perhaps it was coincidence, but I could not help but notice," he wrote on his blog. It felt as if it was almost choreographed - foreshadowing the new 'first' for women for which we were heading. The next day, before a crowd of thousands, 61-year-old Ellinah Wamukoya was consecrated as the first female bishop of Swaziland and the first woman to enter the Anglican episcopate in Africa. It was, as Makgoba said, a "momentous occasion"; a sign, perhaps, that his church was keeping pace with social change. ACSA joins the handful of churches in the Anglican communion - among them Australia, Canada and Episcopalians of the United States - who have swept away centuries of entrenched sexism and allowed women to become bishops. In the good old Church of England, however, things have moved rather more slowly. In fact, while some of her wayward progeny have been careering recklessly towards that most tiresome of secular holy grails, equality, the mother church of the communion has been deliberating the matter since 1978 and actively wrestling with it since 2000. This week, it has the chance to make up for lost time in Tuesday's General Synod vote on whether to pass legislation that could see women become bishops by early 2014. Of course, for a small but vociferous minority, the draft measure, GS 1708D, is not an opportunity but an abomination. For others, it is the less-than-inspiring result of years of fudge and appeasement during which, in the words of one female priest, "all the joy has been sucked out." It is because of continuing reservations of these two implacably opposed camps that the measure, so long in coming, could yet fail. In order to be passed, it needs a two-thirds majority in all three houses of the synod - a tall but doable order among the bishops and clergy, but a more uncertain matter in the laity, who, in 1992, accepted the measure allowing women to become priests by just two votes. In other words, all bets are off. "I think if the measure fails, there will be a hardening of attitudes," says Sally Barnes of campaign group Women and the Church. If the measure fails, the church will look completely discredited, in the eyes of not just the church but secular society at large, which is absolutely bemused by this whole argument anyway. If the vote does not go their way, it will be largely because a minority of synod members - conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics - still consider women bishops a theological impossibility and do not feel the measure makes enough provision for their needs. In a letter to the Times last week, 327 clergy from both camps united to condemn the legislation, claiming it "comes nowhere near" to giving them assurance on alternative episcopal oversight. On their own, however, these opponents are not thought to have enough votes to block the measure. The legislation will only be in real trouble, therefore, if some figures who do want to see women become bishops decide to move against it. Why would they do that? Because many regard the measure - which was clumsily amended in the spring and re-amended with contrition by bishops over the summer - as unacceptably discriminatory. The question is: will enough supporters of female bishops hold their nose and vote yes? If they do, there is reason yet to think that history will be made. Of the 44 dioceses, 42 have already voted in favour of female bishops. Public opinion is strongly in favour. In recent weeks, a grassroots movement launched by the prominent yet anonymous Church Mouse blogger has complemented a high-profile campaign from Lambeth Palace. Any remaining waverers may have been given an extra push by the words of Justin Welby at his first press conference after being chosen as the next archbishop of Canterbury, where he urged synod members to vote in favour. Makgoba, meanwhile, is keen for England to catch up. "Now, we have taken this step, and we wish the Church of England 'God speed' as they deliberate this week," he wrote after Wamukoya's consecration. We feel all the more enriched by today, because by virtue of our baptism we are called to join in anything and everything that God is doing in his world - and we have felt his leading and responded to his call. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, may not know any better than the next person how synod will vote on Tuesday. But he will know - with a sense of relief bordering on the ecstatic, one might imagine - that it will be the last such gathering over which he will preside. An official farewell is pencilled in for Wednesday afternoon, at which the synod will record its "deep gratitude" for his "outstanding ministry to church and nation." All of which, of course, will sound a lot better if the female bishops measure has been carried. Success on Tuesday would allow Williams to return to Cambridge with the knowledge that at least one of the issues that plagued him was dealt on his watch. Welby, meanwhile, has spent much of the weekend preparing a speech urging synod to back the female bishops legislation. He will know his intervention could prove key. Once that is done, he may want to leaf through the private member motions that are sitting on the books. Only one - relating to the living wage - will be up for debate at this synod. But the theme of the others gives a hint of what is on people's minds: one urges the church to give its consent to the registering of civil partnerships in churches; another asks it to "affirm the public doctrine of Christian marriage, between a man and a woman ... as the only basis for engagement with public policy on marriage and family life." Welby honed his conflict resolution skills in Nigeria. Even with a yes vote on Tuesday, he may find them sorely tested at Lambeth.