The Church of England’s General Synod voted on 11 November, 1992 to ordain women to the priesthood. Why were the first women not ordained until March 1994? At 25 years’ distance it might seem that the ordination of the thousand or so female deacons into the priesthood could have proceeded within a few months. With my own silver anniversary on 23 April, I’ve been reflecting back on that process.

In order to get the legislation through Synod without splitting the Church, the House of Bishops made several substantial compromises. One of these was that all the women who believed themselves called to the priesthood, and who had already been through a selection process for ordination, would have to go through selection again. This time it was called a ‘discernment procedure’. In many dioceses ‘discernment’ consisted of little more than a chat with the bishop. I was in Manchester, however, where opposition to women’s ordination was strong. We had a more involved procedure culminating with an interview.

I knew it was going to be a hostile interview as soon as I walked into the room. The two interviewers (a Manchester archdeacon and a female deacon from another diocese) were sitting with their backs to the light, and far enough apart so that I couldn’t look at both of them at once. As the interview proceeded they alternated questions, so every question came from someone I couldn’t see, and I would have to turn to them to answer it.  Meanwhile the other would be observing me, but I couldn’t see them. It was a set-up calculated to put candidates off their stroke.

I was asked to recount the history of my vocation. My sense of calling dated back to when I was 9 years of age and my family were attending a Baptist church in the USA, so my answer required a little time and explanation. The interviewers listened with apparent attention. Then one of them said, ‘That can’t have happened.’ Incredulous, I asked, ‘Why can’t it have happened?’ ‘Because the Church hadn’t made its mind up then.’ I couldn’t understand how they could assume that God had no foreknowledge of the decision the Church of England would make, and had made no provision for it. I pictured God, on that November afternoon in 1992, being taken unawares and desperately scrabbling around to find some women to call to the priesthood. It was the more ridiculous because at my selection conference in 1983 there had been no pretence that my vocation was to the diaconate rather than the priesthood. So I replied to A and B, ‘Are you telling me God can only do what the Church of England decides to do?’ This did not go down well.

The whole interview was traumatic and for some days afterwards I was shaking and ill. Nor was I alone; women reported coming out of their interview and vomiting, or having repeated nightmares in the days and weeks following.  When we got the letter with our results, a number of women had been turned down on clearly spurious grounds. One mother was told having young children meant she couldn’t function as a priest; the same did not apply to her priest husband. Another, a lecturer at an ecumenical ordination training scheme, was told it didn’t give her a ‘sufficient sacramental base’ for priesthood – despite her also being attached to an Anglican parish. All but one of these had the decision reversed on appeal. Her case was particularly hard. Her interview was interrupted first by the fire alarm and then by a power failure. Before the discernment process began she had been promised an incumbency by her bishop, but now she was told she was unsuitable for the priesthood. The bishop’s reply to protests on her behalf was that to change the decision would ‘discredit the process’. , She was eventually priested after token ‘further training’.

When my report arrived, I found to my relief that I had been recommended for ordination. However, the report was so intensely negative that I didn’t see how they could have reached a positive conclusion. I could not have recommended for the priesthood someone with the qualities they attributed to me. I showed it to my spiritual director, an Anglican nun well versed in the ways of the Church of England. She said, ‘It makes me feel sick.’ She couldn’t understand the ordained female interviewer, whom she knew, taking part in this abusive process.

I was concerned that this very critical and unfair report would remain permanently in my file and affect future job prospects, so I asked the bishop to remove it. He refused. I am grateful to several clergy and lay people who then wrote to the bishop with an alternative – and more positive – view of my personality and abilities. One or two of these at least were retained in my file, as I discovered last year when I sent for it.

This was the background to my ordination as a priest on 23 April 1994. The ordination service was wonderful. It was personally healing and fulfilling, and the love and support shown for us was overwhelming. But we had been made to run the gauntlet to get there – and a senior diocesan figure admitted that the discernment procedure had been made brutal in order to placate our opponents.

Did I approach my ordination with hope? Well, I certainly hoped it wouldn’t be disrupted by protesters, and that I wouldn’t disgrace myself by falling down the precipitous chancel steps. And I hoped that eventually, as more women were ordained and moved into senior positions, the Church would become a juster and kinder institution. But I had seen senior women taking part in a process designed to hurt and demean their clergy sisters, and I had no illusions that simply promoting women would miraculously transform the Church. I had learned that the Church does not advance those who it fears will rock the boat by making a stand on principle. I had seen senior clergy play politics with the vocations of dedicated and godly women. And, not for the first (or last) time, I had seen a bishop refuse to do what he knew to be right, simply to avoid discrediting a Church procedure.

The iron had entered into my soul. I used to think that if we showed we were hardworking, capable, and didn’t make a fuss, the Church would eventually recognise that God had genuinely called us. We could then take an equal place alongside our male colleagues. I no longer believed that. I now recognised that we were dealing with bullies – and bullies must be resisted. Jesus told a story about an unjust judge who had to be inconvenienced before he would give a poor widow justice. When bishops put Church politics before justice and the kingdom of God, sometimes they need to be made uncomfortable until they do what is right.