When Sarah Mullally is installed as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday, it is her gender that will likely be the most remarked upon part of her ascent to “first among equals” among Anglican bishops.
However, Mullally’s sometimes twisting journey to Canterbury may never have been completed if it hadn’t been for an Anglican organization called Leading Women. Little known but highly influential in British women’s incremental rise in church leadership, the group mentored women who had the potential to be bishops.
After the first women were ordained priests in 1994, the Church of England’s general synod agreed in 2006 that women should join the episcopate: This decision was ratified two years later. But there was a feeling among women clergy that leadership roles would remain out of reach unless they prepared for the responsibilities that entailed, from pastoral relationships with the laity and the clergy to managing historic buildings to coping with budgets.
