The electronic voting results from last weeks meeting of General Synod are now available. They include the vote to proceed with the current proposals to allow women to be bishops (item 11) which was passed by 378 votes to 8 with 25 recorded abstentions.
I have further analysed the votes by house, and added those who were absent and the vacant places on Synod. For this purpose I have used the list of members that was given to members of the press last week.
| For | Against | Abstain | Absent | Vacant | |
| Bishops | 35 | 0 | 1 | 9 | 7 |
| Clergy | 177 | 2 | 5 | 15 | 3 |
| Laity | 166 | 6 | 19 | 16 | 5 |
| totals | 378 | 8 | 25 | 40 | 15 |
Within the category “Absent” it is impossible from the available data to distinguish those who were genuinely absent from Synod at the time of the vote from those who were present but failed to vote or record an abstention.
My raw data is available as a spreadsheet. For each house it lists all members (grouped by diocese etc) and shows how each one voted.
For the record, the bishops of Guildford, Blackburn and myself were absent attending on Her Majesty at the time the vote was called.
After all the fuss and feathers, a vote showing such huge support… One wonders how the debate managed to take up so much time and effort.
This outcome would seem to give a redounding result in favour of Women being made Bishops in the Church of England. That being the case, there is hardly any doubt that, in the minds of the Church as a whole’ bishops, priest and deacons and the Faithful, that God has opened the doors to non-discrimination on the grounds of gender fitfulness for ministry.
May God be praised!
What on earth does that mean David Walker ?
Does it take 3 really ?
Is this an indication of your contempt for Synod ?
Or are you just thorough-going Erastians ?
Laurie
The Bishops of Manchester and Blackburn were paying homage to her Majesty, as part of the process of becoming diocesan bishops. The Bishop of Guildford is the Clerk of the Closet, and one of his duties is to present bishops for homage to the Queen.
You don’t ring up the Queen and say, sorry but I can’t come until I’ve voted, so I might be a bit late.
Peter Owen: even so, if David Walker had put ‘attending on Her Majesty’ in quotation marks, it might have avoided giving the impression that reaching the dizzy heights does not automatically mean colluding with all the verbal and other flummery involved!