On June 6, after two days of debate, the House of Lords overwhelmingly voted to give the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Bill a second reading.

Second reading stage is an opportunity to debate the general principle behind a bill. By convention, the House of Lords gives a second reading to all bills brought from the Commons. However, Crossbench peer Lord Dear sought to buck tradition and throw the bill out entirely.

“We find ourselves in a world where an ill-considered bill seeks to overturn centuries of tradition, heedless of public opinion and the views of religious leaders and blind to the laws of unintended consequences,” he said.

“There was no royal commission; no committee of inquiry; no mention of the bill in any party manifesto prior to the last general election; no report from any parliamentary Select Committee. The Leader of the Conservative Party, questioned on Sky television only three days before the general election, declared that he had no plans for such a bill. There was no Green Paper, no White Paper and no pre-legislative scrutiny,” he continued.

Lord Dear also accused the government of attempting to stifle debate in the Commons, noting that bill only received five days’ debate in committee compared to the fourteen days given to the Hunting Act during Tony Blair’s premiership.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Justin Welby, also condemned the bill. “Marriage is abolished, redefined and recreated, being different and unequal for different categories. The new marriage of the bill is an awkward shape, with same-gender and different-gender categories scrunched into it, neither fitting well. The concept of marriage as a normative place for procreation is lost,” he said.

“The idea of marriage as a covenant is diminished. The family in its normal sense, predating the state and as our base community of society, as we have already heard, is weakened. I am sure that these points will be expanded on by others in the debate, including those from these Benches,” he continued.

However, the leader of the Labour peers, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, gave an eloquent defense of the bill. “I have to say, however, that I simply do not understand those who say that equal marriage can harm or undermine marriage between a man and a woman. Surely if we value and cherish marriage, we should want all those who wish to marry to be able to do so, and we should welcome the fact that marriage would be strengthened by opening it up to more couples,” she said.

“Surely we should be encouraging our young people, who see the love and strength their parents draw from their marriage, to aspire to the same commitment regardless of whether it is with another man or another woman.”

Although many pundits had predicted that the result of the vote would be too close to call, Lord Dear’s wrecking amendment was defeated by 390 votes to 148. With such a large majority in favor, the bill is almost certain to make it onto the statute book.

Although many Church of England bishops voted in favor of Lord Dear’s amendment, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt. Rev. David Walker, announced that his brethren in the upper house will work to improve the bill rather than frustrate its progress.

“The issue now is not primarily one of protections and exemptions for people of faith, important though it is to get that right, not least where teaching in schools and freedom of speech are concerned,” he said.

“The bill now requires improvement in a number of other key respects, including in its approach to the question of fidelity in marriage and the rights of children.”

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Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, is one step closer to the Archbishopric of Canterbury after the College of Canons of his new cathedral formally elected him in a ceremony that dates from the Middle Ages.

The 35-member body met under the presidency of the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, the Very Rev. Robert Willis. But the outcome of the election was never in doubt since there was just one name on the ballot.

Although it is commonly said that the Queen appoints Church of England bishops, this is not strictly true. Instead, she causes a document known as a ‘conge d’elire’ to pass under the Great Seal of the Realm, which acts as a formal license empowering the College of Canons of the relevant cathedral to elect a new archbishop or bishop.

But there is a catch: the conge d’elire is always accompanied by ‘Letters Missive’ signed by the Queen recommending a candidate for election. Under legislation passed during the reign of Henry VIII, the College of Canons is obligated to elect the Crown’s nominee. If they failed to do so for whatever reason, the Queen would then go ahead and appoint her candidate directly. At one time the College of Canons would also have faced serious legal consequences, but those were abolished in 1967. It was a moot point, however, since the Crown’s preferred candidate has never been rejected (though there have been a number of cases where individual canons have lodged protest votes against the royal nominee).

The process of having representatives of the cathedral community elect the bishop was once a highly-controversial issue. At first, English monarchs insisted on investing bishops directly, but in 1107, St. Anselm convinced Henry I to allow cathedral chapters to elect their bishop. However, the monarch still dominated the process. The chapter was required to hold the election in the royal chapel with the king’s permission and in the presence of his ecclesiastical advisers. And after the election, the new bishop had to do homage to the king in exchange for the property of the diocese. A little more than a century later, King John established the procedure that is currently in use.

Now Bishop Welby’s election must be confirmed by a special commission consisting of the Archbishop of York and several senior bishops from the province of Canterbury. That ceremony is scheduled for February 4 in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Once those legal proceedings are over, he will finally be Archbishop of Canterbury, though his public ministry will not begin until after his formal enthronement on March 21.

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After a twelve-year legislative battle, the General Synod of the Church of England has rejected a move to consecrate women bishops.

In order to pass, the legislation required a 2/3 majority in all three Houses of Synod. Although there was enough support in the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy to pass the measure, the House of Laity was just a few votes shy of the required majority. The final tally was as follows:

House of Bishops: 44 in favor, 2 against

House of Clergy: 148 in favor, 45 against

House of Laity: 132 in favor, 74 against

Earlier in the day, the Archbishop of Canterbury-designate and current Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. Justin Welby, urged the Synod to support the measure. He said that the church needed to show that it could “Manage diversity of view without division – diversity in amity, not diversity in enmity.”

“We cannot get trapped into believing this is a zero sum decision where one person’s gain must be another’s loss.”

Also speaking in favor of the change, the Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt. Rev. James Jones, said that he had changed his mind on the issue. “I now believe that for the mission of God to the people of England it is right for women to take up their place in this House of Bishops sitting before you now.”

Canon Rosie Harper told the Synod that rejecting the measure would have dire consequences. “Firstly, as a Church for the whole country we will be seen to have failed to do what is right and honourable; a Church with lower moral standards than the rest of society risks its right to comment on other issues.”

“Secondly, it will inevitably be seen as the act of a dying Church more wedded to the past than committed to hope for the future.”

However, one of the Anglo-Catholic members of Synod, Canon Simon Killwick, claimed that the measure should be rejected because “it has united against it the whole spectrum of traditionalists.”

The Church of England has allowed women to become priests since 1994, but a vocal minority of Anglicans remains opposed to women in the ministry. ‘High Church’ Anglicans claim that the ordination of women flies in the face of two millennia of Catholic practice, while ‘Low Church’ Anglicans point to Bible verses that they say prohibit women from having authority over men.

When the first women were ordained, a host of measures were put in place to mollify traditionalists. Parishes that opposed the ordination of women could ban female priests from their pulpits, and they could even opt-out of their local bishop’s authority if he supported the ordination of women.

But the prospect of women bishops threatened to be even more problematic for traditionalists. Because they believe that it is theologically impossible for a woman to be a bishop, they would be unable to accept priests ordained by female bishops, even if the priests were male. And although traditionalist parishes would have been able to ask a female bishop to delegate her pastoral responsibilities to a male colleague, many were unhappy with that proposal because they believed that a female bishop would not have any authority to begin with.

In a last-minute bid to reassure traditionalists, the House of Bishops amended the proposal to include a clause stating that, not only could parishes request alternative episcopal oversight from a male bishop, that bishop would have to share their views on the ordination of women. In other words, alternative episcopal oversight could only be provided by a bishop who had not ordained women and had been ordained by a woman himself.

But this eleventh-hour compromise angered many liberals, who claimed it was tantamount to gender-based apartheid. A number of prominent liberal Synod members announced that they would vote against the entire package, claiming that it was better to delay the admission of women to the episcopate rather than admit them as second-class citizens.

Now that the measure has been defeated, supporters of female bishops will have to start the legislative process all over again. The current measure was first introduced in 2009, so it is likely that the General Synod will not be able to revisit the matter until 2015 at the earliest.

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Downing Street has announced that the Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rev. Justin Welby, is to succeed the Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Dr. Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury when the latter steps down at the end of this year.

“To be nominated to this post is both astonishing and exciting,” said Bishop Welby. “It is something I never expected, and the last few weeks have been a very strange experience. It is exciting because we are at one of those rare points where the tide of events is turning, and the church nationally, including the Church of England has great opportunities to match its very great but often hidden strengths,” he continued.

Educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge, Bishop Welby spent eleven years working in the oil industry. By the late 80s, he had become an executive at Enterprise Oil Plc and was earning a six-figure salary. But in 1987, he decided to leave the corporate world and become an Anglican priest.

After receiving a degree in theology from Cranmer Hall in Durham, he served as a curate (assistant parish priest) at All Saints Chilvers Coton with St Mary the Virgin Astley, in Nuneaton from 1992 to 1995. In 1995, he received his own parish, St. James, Southam, and in 1996 he was also given the neighboring parish of St. Michael and All Angels, Ufton.

In 2002, he became a Canon Residentiary at Coventry Cathedral and was extensively involved in reconciliation work in Africa and the Middle East. Much of his international work focused on Nigeria, where he attempted to diffuse the conflict in the Niger Delta.

Bishop Welby left the Diocese of Coventry in 2007 in order to become Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. During his time in Liverpool, he worked tirelessly to strengthen the cathedral’s ties to the local community.

Four years later, Bishop Welby was promoted to the Bishopric of Durham. Durham is one of the preeminent dioceses in the Church of England, and its bishop is automatically entitled to a seat in the House of Lords. Although Bishop Welby has been in Durham for less than a year, he gained recognition for his contributions in Parliament, and he was appointed to the Joint Select Commission on Banking Standards. In the church’s General Synod, he worked to prevent a schism over the admission of women to the episcopate.

Bishop Welby is commonly regarded as a member of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, which tends to stress traditional interpretation of the Bible. However, at a press conference held to announce his appointment, he lent his support to the ordination of female bishops. “I will be voting in favor and join my voice to many others in urging the Synod to go forward with this change,” he said.

As one might expect given his evangelical sympathies, Bishop Welby opposes the government’s plans to legalize gay marriage, calling it a complicated issue “and not one to be handled today, off the cuff.” At the same time, he has roundly condemned prejudice and discrimination against LGBT people.

“We must have no truck with any form of homophobia in any part of the Church,” he said. “I am always averse to the language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us. Above all in the Church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed in honesty and in love.”

Bishop Welby was chosen by the Crown Nominations Commission, a church body made up of bishops, clergy, and lay people. The selection process is highly secretive, and the commission’s deliberations are not made public. Ultimately, the commission presents two candidates to the Prime Minister, who then makes a formal recommendation to the Queen. Since 2007, Downing Street has always submitted the commission’s first choice to the monarch.

The process of installing Bishop Welby in office will be complex and arcane. Once the Archbishopric of Canterbury is vacant, the Queen will order the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral to elect a new archbishop. At the same time, she will also recommend that they elect Bishop Welby. By law, the Dean and Chapter must elect the Crown’s nominee. That election will then have to be confirmed by a commission of senior bishops appointed by the Queen. From that point on, Bishop Welby will legally be Archbishop of Canterbury.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, announced on March 16 that he will step down at the end of the year in order to take up the position of Master of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

Originally from Wales, Williams had a distinguished career as a professor of theology before being elected Bishop of Monmouth in the Church of Wales in 1991. In 1999, he was elected Archbishop of Wales. Three years later, he was chosen to be the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior bishop in the Church of England and the titular head of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Williams’ appointment was controversial from the start. Liberals in the church rejoiced. As a professor, he wrote an essay entitled “The Body’s Grace” that revealed his opposition to the church’s traditional teaching on homosexuality, and a series of letters written during his tenure as Archbishop of Wales revealed his belief that same-sex unions could be just as holy as heterosexual ones.

But the conservative wing of the church greeted him with suspicion, and he was snubbed by the National Evangelical Anglican Congress in 2003. They let him lead prayers, but he could not speak or preach a sermon.

But it soon became clear that, whatever his personal views on the subject of homosexuality, Williams was determined to maintain church unity at all costs. In 2003, a gay priest named Jeffrey John was chosen to be an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Oxford. Other Anglican leaders objected to John’s appointment because of his longstanding relationship with another priest, even though it was a celibate one.

Fearing the dissolution of the Anglican Communion, Williams pressured John to withdraw his candidacy, and John ultimately acquiesced. Several years later, when John was being considered for the Bishopric of Southwark, Williams is widely believed to have vetoed his candidacy.

As the nominal leader of the Anglican Communion, Williams spoke out against the election of the openly-gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, and he was equally opposed to the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster’s decision to start blessing same-sex unions. But Williams was powerless to intervene, and he was equally unable to prevent conservative Anglican churches in Africa from trying to offer ‘alternative episcopal oversight’ to disaffected American parishes.

In a bid to keep the increasingly-fractious Anglican Communion together, Williams asked each autonomous province of the Communion to sign up to an ‘Anglican Covenant’ that would oblige them to consider the views of other provinces before doing anything that “may provoke controversy.”

Furthermore, churches that breached the rules could face disciplinary action, such as suspension from inter-Anglican bodies. But it now looks as if the Church of England itself may reject the Covenant. In order to proceed to a vote in the General Synod (the church’s lawmaking body), the Covenant would need to be approved by a majority of the 44 dioceses. So far, 17 have voted against it, and only 10 have voted in favor.

When announcing his resignation, Williams attempted to downplay the effect of the row over homosexuality. “It has certainly been a major nuisance,” he said. “But in every job that you are in there are controversies and conflicts and this one isn’t going to go away in a hurry. I can’t say that it is a great sense of ‘free at last.’”

Williams may yet see one last triumph before he leaves office. In July, the General Synod could approve legislation to allow the consecration of women bishops. But many Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals oppose the plan, and they could still make life difficult for Williams as he prepares to leave office.

Williams’ successor will be found through a complex process involving both church and state. A church body known as the Crown Nominations Commission will come up with a list of two names to send to the Prime Minister. By convention, the Prime Minister then forwards the first name on to the Queen, who formally approves the appointment.

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