The recent letters welcoming Sarah Mullally as the next archbishop of Canterbury are right to celebrate her gifts (Letters, 7 October). But it would be a mistake to imagine that those who hold to the church’s traditional teaching on the ordering of ministry are simply “misogynistic”.

Anglican orthodoxy does not rest on hostility to women; it rests on a particular reading of scripture and Catholic order that long predates today’s culture wars.

The traditionalists are not motivated by prejudice but by theological conviction, namely that ministry is representative before God, not a question of aptitude or value. One may disagree with that conviction, but to dismiss it as bigotry is to substitute moral outrage for argument.

What has damaged the Church of England most in recent years is not honest theological difference but the intolerance of it. A broad church only remains broad if conscience is protected and disagreement allowed.

It would be a genuine sign of renewal if the new archbishop could model a gracious, theologically literate unity. This does not entail erasing those who dissent, but proving that conviction and courtesy can still coexist in public religion. That, more than denunciation, might even persuade the rising generation that Christian faith is still capable of intellectual depth and moral seriousness.
Rev Simon Jones
Barrow in Furness, Cumbria