In the Church of England, archbishops, Rowan Williams and John Sentamu in particular, are held in high respect. Even so, the church’s governing bodies have sometimes felt a need to show they have a mind of their own. In 1972 the Church Assembly voted down an Anglican–Methodist unity scheme against the urgings of Archbishop Williams’s revered predecessor, Michael Ramsey. He said later this was the “saddest day of his life.”

Saturday in York the General Synod narrowly defeated an attempt by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to broker a compromise that would offer “coordinate jurisdiction” to conservative evangelicals and traditional Catholics who cannot accept women bishops. Even though the archbishops attracted an overall majority of 25 votes for their proposal, the vote by houses failed by five to carry the House of Clergy and their amendment was thus lost.

The prospect of voting down their senior leaders weighed heavily on synod members even though the Archbishop of Canterbury assured them this was “not a loyalty test.” Sources confirm that Archbishop Williams told the bishops they were free to vote according to their own judgment.

Whereas once synod members complained that “collegiality” left them unclear where the mind of individual bishops lay, 25 bishops supported the archbishops and 15 voted against.

The result was a day’s proceedings where the main preoccupation seemed to be the interests of the conservative evangelical and traditional Catholic minorities and bitter disappointment for those who hoped the archbishops’ plan would hand them a lifeline.

For many years the House of Clergy has been a bastion of opposition. After the church had voted in the early 1970s that there were “no theological objections” to women being priests or bishops, further progress was blocked by a narrow majority in that house. Now the balance in the house of clergy has switched in the opposite direction.

Synod endorsed the vital first clause of the measure and voted down other amendments seeking safeguards for opponents beyond what is on offer from the revision committee.

Had not the archbishops intervened, most observers thought the draft legislation brought forward by the revision committee would win the day. The legislative session resumes on Monday and the indications are that synod will endorse the package that the committee has put forward.

Introducing the archbishops’ amendment, Archbishop Williams said, “We want to preserve a church in which dissidents from the majority view can continue to live with integrity.”

Many of the strongest voices opposing the archbishops were clergy women. Celia Thomson, a canon from Gloucester Cathedral, said the archbishops’ proposal was “the source of such sadness.” The Rev. Christine Allsop of Peterborough said she was “dismayed” and the proposal “doesn’t feel good news for women clergy.”

Christina Rees, a leading campaigner for women bishops, said the plan would create a “two-track system” with a strand restricted to men.

Earlier Robert Baldry, the member of Parliament whose task is to ensure that church legislation wins Parliamentary approval (Synod measures form part of the law of the land), also spoke against the archbishops’ amendment.

There are 136 women members of Parliament. “It would be hard to explain why the church has to make provision for those who disagree,” he said. If there were even a “suspicion” that women were second-class bishops “it would become very hard indeed.”

The archbishops risked a lot by putting themselves on the line in this way. They need not have led from the front. They could have engaged a safe pairs of hands to present their ideas. The brief could have included testing out the proposals with influential senior women.

Outside the chamber the vote was greeted with “delight” by WATCH, the leading women’s campaigning group. Jean Mayland, a veteran ecumenist and chair of WATCH, said, “I do not think it should be regarded as an act of disloyalty. It’s part of being Anglican.” She said there needed to be more listening to the voices of women.

For many conservative evangelicals and traditional Catholics, rejection of the archbishops’ plan could signal the end of the line. The Rev. Jonathan Freeman of Chester said he was “gutted.” The Rev. Jonathan Baker of Oxford unsuccessfully called for an adjournment for prayer and reflection. “We are in a very new place.”

Rod Thomas of the conservative evangelical network Reform thought it was possible the legislation may still not command the needed majority and the stalemate could go on indefinitely. An evangelical bishop commented, “It’s a mess. It still has to go to the dioceses. It may well come back with following motions along the same lines as the archbishops’.”

The synod is often at its best when it manages to make spiritual sense amid debates in national life. At the start of the day, in his presidential address as the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu entered debate about plans by the new U.K. government to reduce the national deficit and heal the economy.

“There is a real risk that, in focusing on economic recovery, we come to regard it as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end,” he said. “Of course, it is important, indeed essential if people are to have a means of living, that we move out of recession and into growth. But we are striving for this in order to build human worth and human dignity, in order to build community and to enable us to glorify God, not just rebuild balance sheets.”

John Martin, in York