How would one explain theological sexism to a Martian? It could be done in four stages. First, explain ‘god’. Second, explain ‘male’ and ‘female’. Third, explain that male ‘is better than’ female. Finally, explain that god agrees male is better than female. Most sensible people today will start feeling annoyed at the third stage, and will give up at the fourth to save their 21st-century souls. This is, more or less, what the Church of England has done on Monday. Its General Synod met in York and voted, first, in favour of consecrating women as bishops, and second, against any compromise arrangement for Anglicans who do not agree to receive the Christian ministry from women. Although most Anglicans believed that a serious rethink on the gender issue could not be deferred any more, a significant number within the church feel deeply wounded at the impossibility of a compromise. Many among the latter are threatening their church with defection to Catholicism. The dangerously radical question at the heart of the archbishop’s Sunday sermon to a packed York Minster was where Jesus would be in this “ecclesiological row” (as one disgruntled member of the Anglican clergy put it). As is expected, Vatican is furious with Canterbury and York, and is wielding the possibility of a “serious and long-lasting chill”.

The rejection of sexism, like the rejection of racism, has to be an absolute thing. (A compromised version of post-apartheid South Africa cannot be imagined.) It is also significant that many who cannot imagine a gender compromise within the Church of England would opt for one on admitting gay clergy and same-sex unions. Obviously, the question of power within institutionalized religion touches more than one raw nerve. The astonishing thing is that the movement for women to be ordained as priests began in the early Seventies, the General Synod agreed in principle in 1975, the first women priests were ordained in 1994, and it could be as late as 2015 for this 2008 vote to start producing the first female bishops.