This past weekend, the Church of England’s parliament, or Synod, has been meeting in York and, again, they are discussing women bishops.

It’s a discussion that’s been going on for a generation now.

There was a vote back in 1978 and, if it had been passed, women would have been priests and bishops for 35 years already.

As it is, we have had women priests for 20 years, 50 per cent of our new priests are women, we have women who lead cathedrals, women who hold all sorts of senior positions in the Church but we still haven’t passed legislation that would allow women to be bishops.

In 2000, the Church of England began discussing how to move forward with this in detail.

Legislation was drawn up over a number of years that would have allowed women to be bishops while making space for those who disagree to stay in the Church.

But tragically, last November, this legislation did not get the majority it needed in Synod – it was lost by just six votes.

Although the Church has decided that we want female bishops, we’ll have to start again now in working out how to do that.

And whatever happens we face another two years (at least) in which the Church of England – and the country as a whole – will lose out on the gifts our senior female priests could bring as bishops.

No wonder that many of us are feeling weary of this long struggle – and some people feel like giving up.

But the struggle to allow women to play an equal part in Church life is too important to give up on.

Many people think this is just about women’s rights and proving women are equal to men. Well, women’s rights are important and, in a month when we’ve seen, here in Oxford, what can happen when girls are not regarded as of equal worth, we shouldn’t be embarrassed about seeking equal rights for women and girls.

But to me this is about more than simple ‘rights’. It’s about the kind of God we believe in.

In the Lord’s Prayer we are told to call God ‘Father’ because God is like a good father to each one of us. God knows us better than we know ourselves, challenging us so that we can reach our full potential as human beings and forgiving us when things go wrong.

We are like God’s children, loved as unique individuals with unique gifts to offer each other and the world. God wants the best for each one of us. So why would God want us to limit the ways that we can use our gifts – just because of our sex?

God has given each of us, male or female, unique and precious gifts. God longs for each of us to flourish using those gifts in the service of others.

I pray that when the Synod meets today they will decide to go forward wholeheartedly with the simple legislation the bishops are now proposing so that we can all be blessed by the unique gifts of leadership that our female priests will bring as bishops.