CREDIT where it is due: at first sight it appears a great achievement to rise to the top of two professions.
Sarah Mullally deserves to be congratulated on having been Chief Nursing Officer of England and Wales and then, later in life, becoming the first woman Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury.
Felicitations are, however, slightly modified by the pain of seeing an office held by Saint Anselm and Saint Thomas Becket appropriated by a state religion committed not only to the repudiation of the Catholic faith, but also to the alien philosophy of feminism, which holds so many dangers for authentic Christianity.
It is emotionally difficult for Catholics to have both their buildings as well their language appropriated by a very different Protestant form of Christianity. It not only stole the Catholic Church’s property, eviscerated its monasteries, tortured and killed its priests from 1535 (Carthusian monks) to 1681 (St Oliver Plunkett), repudiated its theology and practice, but then appropriated its offices and titles to imply a wholly fabricated continuity.
It would have been easier for us if the terminology of office of Archbishop of Canterbury had been left to describe the Catholic holders of a Catholic office. There is some offence in the description by Lambeth Palace officials of Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, as if she were in some way in direct succession to the Catholic hierarchy. She isn’t. Cardinal Pole was the 72nd and last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury. If you start counting again, for a new church, a new office, a new enterprise, Sarah Mullally is the 34th Protestant holder of the office.
Letting go of the offence of appropriation, a more pressing question is whether the C of E has also to deal with the shadow of DEI hiring undermining the integrity of the appointment.
Was Sarah Mullally the ‘best man for the job’?
Some critics with more refined sensibilities were taken aback at her stumbling over the pronunciation in her reading, as Bishop of London, of St Paul’s epistle at the 2023 coronation of King Charles. It was thought that a minimum qualification for high office ought to include a facility with reading from the Bible in public.
However, having praised Sarah Mullally on her achievements, and in particular giving credit to her with gratitude for her vocal opposition in the House of Lords to euthanasia, her appointment inevitably provokes a reflection on what the consequences of adopting feminism might be for a Christian denomination.
Feminism is the soft edge of a dangerous political movement, rooted in cultural Marxism and committed to equality of outcome and suppression of criticism and opposition. It finds Christian orthodoxy anathema and seeks to undermine it, restrain it and change it whenever it can.
The link below shows a smirking Sarah Mullally refusing to answer a question at the Church of England General Synod about whether the Anglican bishops were willing to protect children from the sexualisation of Pride marches.
The answer was No.
More substantially, her repudiation of euthanasia needs to be set against her preference for feminist ethics over Christian ones, when she announced her position on abortion and gave her support for killing of unrequired babies in the womb, saying: ‘I would suspect that I would describe my approach to this issue as pro-choice rather than pro-live [sic]’.
Dr Calum Miller, a well-known public defender of the lives of the unborn, responded on X: ‘The Church of England had lost all moral credibility. It is over.’
The project of changing the Church of England’s teaching and practice to allow gay marriage was intended to be driven by the ‘Living in Love & Faith’ initiative which led to the approval of gay blessings in 2023. Sarah Mullally played a significant part in promoting that initiative; it is difficult to imagine that, along with most other proponents of gay blessings, privately she doesn’t want to see complete equality between homosexuals and heterosexuals in the area of marriage and move towards changing Church law.
It is well known among activists that senior clergy who are in favour of gay marriage have to dissemble and hide their view in case it provokes orthodox Christians to a more serious opposition of the progressive corruption of Christian ethics. That’s the strategy. So far, it has worked.
Part of the difficulty of having an office holder in a Christian denomination that holds itself out to be orthodox who subscribes to feminist principles is that feminism is profoundly antithetic to the idea of heterosexual marriage, as well as the serious immorality of abortion.
Just at the level of competence, however, are there any other difficulties raised by Sarah Mullally’s appointment?
Given that her predecessor Justin Welby fell at the the safeguarding hurdle, it is a serious difficulty that the announcement of her appointment brought passionate protests by abuse survivors.
Andrew Graystone, an advocate for survivors of church-related abuse, stated that Mullally’s appointment had ‘caused real shock and dismay’ because ‘the Diocese of London has a disastrous track record of safeguarding failures’. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/03/first-female-archbishop-of-canterbury-sarah-mullally/
A report from February 2025 investigated a case involving a senior diocesan official who had defrauded the diocese and whose bullying behaviour led to a ‘disastrous safeguarding investigation which ended in an innocent priest’s suicide’. https://www.the-fence.com/in-the-shadow-of-st-pauls/
I followed this tragic and terrible story from before it became public knowledge. It reflected very badly on Sarah Mullally’s handling of her London diocese. It was hard to find the words to describe the awfulness of what happened. It boded ill for her reputation for competence which, as feared, grew much worse.
So a victim of abuser John Smyth called Mullally’s appointment ‘absolutely disastrous,’ claiming she had been ‘complicit in multiple safeguarding failures in the Diocese of London’. This survivor said the Church of England needed an outsider to address the safeguarding scandals, not ‘more of the same’.
You would think that since failure in safeguarding caused the resignation of Justin Welby, despite his bemusement that he had been found to have fallen short of a level of competence and integrity once expected of an Archbishop, that the Church of England would have found somebody who could command some degree of competence regarding safeguarding. They haven’t.
Much of the difficulty in finding a successor, a process which took over a year, had to do with the fact that very few senior clergy had clean hands when it came to a safeguarding record.
It has long been known that the feminist movers and shakers in the Church of England were determined to have a woman Archbishop at the soonest possible opportunity. They chose to take a risk with Sarah Mullally despite her track record of failing to command the support of the abuse victims.
In gaining their trust and support at least, she’s going to have some difficulty in proving she’s not just one more DEI hire designed to promote the cause of feminism at the expense of the integrity, competence and reputation of the organisation.
It’s not looking good.
At some point even diehard state church devotees may begin to wonder if the heterodox state-sponsored Babylonian captivity of a failed Protestant experiment has run its course. This may be the moment.
