When a Woman Wears the Archbishop's Chair

When a Woman Wears the Archbishop's Chair
By Alexander L Redd
April 6, 2026

On March 25, 2026, Sarah Mullally walked through the Great West Doors of Canterbury Cathedral in England, knocked three times, and was welcomed inside to become the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in more than 1,400 years of church history. The crowd cheered. World leaders attended, and the cameras rolled. For many viewers, it was a beautiful moment. But I watched this historic event differently.

I am a Christian pastor. I hold the conviction, rooted in the Bible, that the highest teaching and governing office in the Christian church belongs to men. That is not a popular position in today's world, and I understand that. But honesty requires me to say what I believe, even when it is not the easiest thing to say. It is not about talent.

Let me be clear about what I am not saying. I am not saying women are less intelligent, less spiritual, or less valuable than men. Any pastor who has served a church for more than a week knows that many of the most faithful, wise, and hardworking people in the pew are women. The Bible itself gives us Deborah, who led a nation. It gives us Huldah, who delivered God's word to the king. It gives us Phoebe, who served the church at Cenchreae, and Priscilla, who helped teach the great preacher Apollos. Women have always been essential to the mission of the church.

So, the question is not whether a woman can be gifted. The question is whether a specific office, the highest governing teaching role over the gathered church, has boundaries that God himself set. Please hear me well about what the Bible actually says.

The apostle Paul writes in his first letter to Timothy that he does not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man in that governing capacity. What makes that instruction hard to dismiss is that Paul does not ground it in Roman law or Greek custom. He grounds it in creation itself, pointing back to Adam and Eve. When a command is tied to the beginning of the human story rather than to a particular culture, it carries weight that does not simply dissolve with the passing of centuries.

That is the heart of my conviction. It is not that I prefer a certain tradition. It is that I believe the structure of church leadership reflects something God built into his design on purpose, and that the church does not have the authority to redesign it simply because the culture outside the church has changed. The reality is the pressure churches face. We should be honest about the moment we are living in.
 
Western society today treats equality as its highest value, and by that standard, any restriction on what a woman may do in any institution looks like injustice. Churches feel that pressure every day. Many have decided that the most loving thing to do is to fall in line with what the surrounding culture demands.

I understand that pressure. But there is a difference between being kind and being obedient. A church that rewrites its convictions every time culture shifts its expectations is not being loving. It is being afraid. Over time, when a church learns to set aside what Scripture says on one difficult question, it becomes easier to set it aside on the next, and the next after that. Slowly, the authority of the Bible is replaced by the authority of public opinion, even while the church continues to use religious language.
 
That pattern concerns me more than any single appointment. We can still respect each other even if we do not agree on our doctrinal understanding. Still, how a pastor speaks matters as much as what he says. I can disagree with the office that Archbishop Mullally now holds without attacking her as a person. That distinction is important. She is made in the image of God. She is a fellow human being. She has clearly served in public life with dedication and conviction. My argument is with the decision, not with her dignity.

Christians must learn to make that separation. In a culture where every disagreement is treated as hatred, the church needs to model what it looks like to say "I believe you are wrong" without saying "I believe you are worthless." Truth spoken without kindness is just noise. But kindness without truth is not kindness at all. Here is my word to my fellow pastors.

For those who hold to male eldership, this moment is a good time to look in the mirror before we look out the window. It is easy to point at Canterbury while ignoring the ways our own churches quietly bend Scripture to fit our comfort. Do we preach the whole counsel of God or only the parts that keep people in their seats? Do we love money while preaching sacrifice? Do we tolerate racial pride while preaching the unity of the body of Christ? If we are going to speak about biblical faithfulness, we have to live it across the board, not just on the issues that are easy to criticize from a distance.

We also bear a responsibility to the women in our churches. If we insist that the governing pastoral office belongs to men, we must make sure we are not treating women as spectators who sit quietly in the back. Women must be equipped, honored, sent out, and celebrated as vital partners in the gospel. A theology that restricts an office but never deploys the person is not faithful theology. It is just control made up in Bible verses. Here is the bottom line.

Sarah Mullally's installation at Canterbury is a historic event. For those who celebrate it, I respect that this moment carries real meaning. But history and meaning are not the same thing as biblical faithfulness. The church does not earn its credibility by keeping up with the times. It earns it by keeping faith with the God who never changes.

I pray for the Church of England. I pray for Archbishop Mullally. And I pray for all of us who are trying to hold to Scripture in an age that finds Scripture increasingly inconvenient. The pressure is real, but so is the promise: the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the church that Christ is building. That church is worth getting things right, scripturally.