Watch Back: Are We Equal Now? Online Panel

On the eve of the formal installation of Dame Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury – the first woman to lead the Church of England – Alison Webster of Modern Church asks our three panelists ‘Are We Equal Now?’ This conversation builds on a special edition (67.1) of the Journal ‘Modern Believing’, guest edited by WATCH (Women and the Church), entitled, ‘Not Equal Yet’.

Panelists are:

Theo Hobson has a Phd from Cambridge University; he has written seven books and much journalism including for The Spectator and the Tablet. He usually writes on the Church of England, the history of ideas, especially the positive affinity of Christianity and political liberalism, and religion in public life. He is co-editor of a recent essay collection, Created for Love: Towards a New Teaching on Sex and Marriage (Canterbury, 2025). He is currently an ordinand.

Judith Maltby is Emerita Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford and Emerita Fellow of Corpus Christi College, where she served as Chaplain for 30 years. She is an Honorary Chaplain at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford and has been a member of General Synod of the Church of England since 2010. She has published widely on the history of Anglicanism, especially on the history of the Prayer Book and parish religion in the Long Reformation. More recently her work has focused on Anglicanism’s literary culture. She is currently engaged in a book-length study of the American Episcopalian poet and disability rights activist Vassar Miller.

Angela Sheard is Anglican Tutor at The Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham, part of the Ministerial Formation Team. She is a priest in the Church of England and prior to ordination completed medical school at Oxford (2010-16) and worked as a junior doctor for three years. She was previously an active member of Roman Catholic Church. Angela’s MA dissertation focused on the identity and belonging of mixed race people within the Church of England, and she is currently working on a book project seeking to explore some of the complexities and nuances in current conversations around human identity in the Church of England, with a particular focus on racial identities. She is also exploring the relevance of Hartmut Rosa’s theory of social acceleration to conversations around mission in the Church of England, with a particular focus on theologies of church growth.