I think I have just watched the Church of England commit suicide. It was a very long and very boring process. But at the end of nine hours' rehearsal of stale arguments made in bad faith the General Synod took a decisive turn into fantasy, or stumbled over its own rules, and failed, by a very small margin, to gain the complicated majorities required to make women bishops.
There is a danger that the church will become a national embarrassment, said Stephen Cottrell, the bishop of Chelmsford, within minutes of the catastrophe. This was the optimist's view. He didn't, on reflection, think that it had committed suicide – I asked him – but it's a historic moment, of sorts, when a bishop has to deny it.
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