'Very grim day': Next Archbishop of Canterbury tweets his verdict after Church of England Synod rejected women bishops 

• Right Reverend Justin Welby also uses Twitter to call for 'prayer and love'
  
• Outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams warns the church looks out of touch and has 'a lot of explaining to do'
• David Cameron says he is 'very sad' and a 'sharp prod' is need to keep national institutions are relevant in modern Britain
• Labour MP calls for law to be changed to force church to accept women
  
• Clergywoman: 'We have made ourselves an irrelevance'
  
• Bishop of Chelmsford: 'Church in danger of being national embarrassment'
  

By Steve Doughty for the Daily Mail and Matt Chorley

Published: 18:31 GMT, 20 November 2012 | Updated: 18:10 GMT, 21 November 2012

The next Archbishop of Canterbury has described the vote rejecting the introduction of women bishops as a 'very grim day'. 

The Right Reverend Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, tweeted his message after the General Synod narrowly failed last night to give final approval to the legislation, plunging the Church of England into crisis and recrimination.

David Cameron today said he was 'very sad' about the result and said the church needed a 'sharp prod'. Outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said the Church of England has a 'lot of explaining' to do.

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The result was a crushing blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, whose decade in office has been overshadowed by the arguments over women. 

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, David Cameron was highly critical of the decision.

'On a personal basis I’m a strong supporter of women bishops. I’m very sad about the way the vote went yesterday and I am particularly sad for the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams because I know that he saw this as a major campaign that he wanted to achieve at the end of his excellent tenure of office.

'I think it’s important for the Church of England to be a modern church in touch with society as it is today, and this was a key step they needed to take.

'They need to get on with it. But you do have to respect the individual institutions in the way they work while giving them a sharp prod.'

Dr Williams now steps down at the end of the year leaving his Church in turmoil.

It also means the shortest of honeymoons for his successor, who was appointed as the new Anglican Primate 12 days ago.

Dr Welby, who made a punchy speech urging the Synod to back women bishops, now goes to Lambeth Palace having to deal with widespread disappointment across his Church.

The vote was billed as the biggest in the 20 years since the General Synod backed the introduction of female priests in 1992 and comes after 12 years of tortuous negotiations within the Church of England.

Only two dioceses out of 44 in the Church of England failed to approve the legislation.

Labour former Cabinet minister Ben Bradshaw today suggested the law could be changed to remove the church's exemption from sexual discrimination laws.

'Because the Church of England is established, it is actually answerable to Parliament. And if the Church of England Synod is not able to save itself on this issue, then I think Parliament does have a role.

'There’s the possibility - and this has been raised by women priests and supporters of women bishops with me this morning - as to whether we would look at repealing the exemption that the Church of England has to the equality legislation. I think that would be a big step and it would take a bit longer.

'But look, we cannot allow this to drag on for another ten years.'

Speaking afterwards the vote, Dr Williams, who leaves his post at the end of this year after a decade in office, said he wished Bishop Welby 'every blessing' in resolving the issue.

He said: 'Of course I hoped and prayed that this particular business would be at another stage before I left, and of course it is a personal sadness, a deep personal sadness, that that is not the case.

'I can only wish the synod and the archbishop all good things and every blessing with resolving this in the shortest possible time.'

The Archbishop of York John Sentamu today insisted the Church had 'not committed suicide' by voting no.

The second most senior bishop in the Church admitted it was 'very disappointing' but said the Church was 'not dead'.

He told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'This morning people have been saying "the Church has committed suicide, the Church is dead".

'Well, dead people don't converse. We have been conversing, we have not committed suicide at all, we are very much living.

'This morning in the General Synod we are debating two important issues - the living wage and youth unemployment. That's not a dead Church.'

Around a third of Church of England clergy are women, and they also make up just under a half of those training for ordination.

Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin, vicar of east London church Holy Trinity Dalston and All Saints Haggerston, told The Evening Standard: 'I feel a huge sense of disappointment on behalf of the church. I think the church is now left in a position where it is looking rather foolish and silly and out of touch.

'Forty-two out of 44 dioseces said ‘yes we want to have women bishops’. This has serious implications for the General Synod - that it could vote against what the people said they wanted.

'The archbishop desperately tried to embrace everybody and hold everyone on board. They really tried to do that which is why they put forward all of these various amendments.

'But these are people who had no intention of being held together. Far from it.

She added: 'This does a huge amount of damage to the church. We have made ourselves an irrelevance.'

Bishops and clergy had overwhelmingly backed the move, but the Church’s ‘third house’, made up of lay members, fell just six votes short.

After the Synod vote, which followed a seven-hour debate at Church House in Westminster, a string of bishops wrote about their disappointment, with others acknowledging that most people would not understand the rejection of women.

The Archdeacon of Norwich, the Ven Jan McFarlane, tweeted: 'Took off clerical collar before walking back to hotel. Ashamed to be identified with the CofE tonight. Tomorrow we start again...'

The Archdeacon of Norwich, the Ven Jan McFarlane, tweeted: 'Took off clerical collar before walking back to hotel. Ashamed to be identified with the CofE tonight. Tomorrow we start again...'

The Bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend Nick Baines, said: 'Shocking for lots of reasons. But this is not the end of the story. Now for future and next steps. Don’t collude in grief.'

The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Reverend Stephen Cottrell, said: ‘This is going to be very hard to sell to people.

‘People were expecting this to go through and it is going to be very difficult to explain to them that it hasn’t. It is bad news for the Church. There is a danger that the Church will become a national embarrassment over this.’

However, the Reverend Prebendary Rod Thomas, a vicar in Plymouth and chairman of the conservative evangelical grouping Reform, which recommended a no vote, said: 'My overall conclusion is that it is very good news for the Church of England.

'We have avoided what could have been a disastrous mistake for our unity and witness.'

No new attempt to push the issue through can take place until a new Synod is elected in 2015. Bishops will meet in emergency session this morning to decide how to deal with the setback.

Dr Sentamu said he was confident there would be women bishops in his lifetime, suggesting that revised legislation would receive the necessary support to be passed.

He said: 'The principle has already been accepted by the General Synod, it has already been accepted by all the dioceses.

'So what we need to do is find the legislation - 99.9% of the legislation is there, it's this little business of provision for those who are opposed.'

It was not clear last night how many women had voted against the move, but the Church’s third ‘lay’ house has a higher proportion of women than the house of clergy.

The Rev Rachel Weir, of the campaign group Women and the Church, said: 'We’re absolutely devastated.

‘Not just devastated on behalf of clergy women – it’s awful for their morale – but it’s a disaster for the Church of England. There’s something badly wrong with the system.’

The Church agreed that women could be ordained as priests in 1993. The final lifting of the barriers to allow them to become bishops began with a high-level report in 2000.

However two key groups have remained firmly opposed to women priests, let alone their promotion to the rank of bishop.

In the Synod they argued that traditionalists make up nearly one in three churchgoers.

They said no firm guarantees have been given that they will be able to continue to worship without the influence of women bishops in charge of their dioceses.

To succeed, the women bishops legislation needed to win a two-thirds majority in each of the Church’s three ‘houses’: one for the bishops, one for other clergy, and the third for lay church members.

Bishops voted in favour by 44 to three, with two abstentions. Among the clergy, the vote went in favour of women bishops by 148 to 45.

But among the laity, 132 voted for women bishops and 74 against. That meant the necessary two thirds majority – or 138 votes – had not been won.

The Rt Rev Christopher Lowson, the Bishop of Lincoln, said: ‘This is a very sad day indeed, not just for those of us who support the ministry of women, but for the future of the Church, which might very well be gravely damaged by this.’

The plan rejected yesterday would have allowed parishes to write ‘letters of request’ to a bishop asking for their wish not to have women priests or the supervision of women bishops acknowledged.

Bishop would have had to ‘respect’ such requests. However, crucially, a code of practice to govern the operation of the new system had yet to be written.

VIDEO: Archbishop of Canterbury says Church has lost its credibility

VIDEO: Church of England votes against allowing women bishops