Hmm.

 Andrew Atherston.  Sarah Mullally and the evangelical past she doesn’t talk about.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury is seen 

as a liberal, yet her faith is rooted in 

a long history of conservative 

Christianity

Andrew Atherstone

Saturday March 14 2026, 2.35pm GMT, The Sunday Times

Sarah Mullally, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, is often described as a liberal or progressive Anglican. She preaches on the need for Christianity to be “radically inclusive”, champions a socially progressive faith, and has been the public face of the Church of England’s controversial Living in Love and Faith project to offer church blessings to same-sex couples. 

Mullally’s appointment to the top job in the Anglican Communion has infuriated conservative archbishops worldwide, some of whom plan to boycott her installation at Canterbury Cathedral later this month. She has also been a thorn in the side of conservative politicians for her frequent interventions on immigration and diversity. One magazine recently accused her of being part of the hectoring “lanyard class” among the metropolitan elite, guilty of “vacuous milquetoast progressivism” and “anaemic liberal views”.

But one of the most surprising aspects of Mullally’s life story is her remarkably conservative Christian origins. She talks very little about her early decades, but they were steeped in evangelical culture and theology, from youth to middle age. Conservatism runs deeply in Mullally’s formation and continues to shape her attitudes.

Sarah Bowser, as she was known until her marriage, was raised in suburban Surrey, on a housing estate in Woking. Her local parish church, St John’s, was part of the “Bible Belt” of evangelical congregations across the southeast. It was one of the largest in Guildford diocese, with more than 850 members, overflowing Sunday schools, a flourishing youth ministry and 40 mid-week Bible study groups.

Mullally moved to London in 1980 to begin a nursing degree

Bowser’s parents (an electrical engineer and a hairstylist) seldom attended church, but she was encouraged along by her grandparents. It was here, at the age of 16, she experienced Christian conversion, praying a personal prayer of commitment to Jesus Christ when challenged by one of her friends to make a clear decision about faith. Bowser and 60 other young people from her church were confirmed by the Bishop of Dorking in 1978 — massive numbers of which today’s bishops can only dream.

St John’s, Woking, held tightly to the Bible as the supreme authority for Christian belief, the centrality of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This went hand-in-hand with regular gospel preaching and conservative morality. The parish tabloid was called Forward, signifying missional advance. During the Easter holidays, Bowser joined the church’s spinnaker cruises on the Norfolk Broads, where sailing was combined with hymn singing and Bible exhortations on deck. St John’s also bussed coachloads of teenagers from Woking to All Souls, Langham Place, in central London, for large youth events.

At Woking sixth-form college, Bowser immersed herself in the Christian Union, which proclaimed in the college magazine its desire to “reach the rest of the College with the Good News that Jesus is alive”. Alongside Bible studies and prayer meetings, they discussed topics such as spiritual warfare and the imminent return of Jesus. The Christian Union showed a film decrying abortion and attended the college debating society to propose the motion “Jesus Christ is alive today and can radically change your life”. Its biggest event, in May 1979, towards the end of Bowser’s lower sixth year, was a visit from rock star Cliff Richard who spoke to 500 students about his Christian faith and invited them to “think about Jesus”.

Sarah Mullally as a student at the Polytechnic of the South Bank, London, in 1984

When Bowser moved to London in 1980, aged 18, to begin a nursing degree at the Polytechnic of the South Bank, she joined the polytechnic’s Christian Union which was explicitly and proudly conservative. This conservative theology was combined with innovative and sometimes shocking methods in student evangelism. The Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship magazine for autumn 1980 carried a startling report from Bowser’s polytechnic, where a Christian Union leader took a gun into the packed student common room one lunchtime. He ran through the doors and fired at a young woman, who fell to the floor with blood flowing from her mouth, before the shooter made his escape into the street. It was a Christian publicity stunt, involving a loud starting pistol and a theatrical blood capsule. Immediately after the shooting, a visiting evangelist rose to his feet and preached to the stunned students on the inevitability of death and the relevance of Jesus. 

Christians in Bowser’s hall of residence — a brutalist 1960s concrete tower block near Stockwell Tube station — knocked on doors, encouraging their cynical fellow students “to think more seriously about the gospel”. In her final year as an undergraduate in 1983-84, Bowser rose to be president of the Christian Union, masterminding its evangelistic strategy.

She avoided the liberal and progressive churches in London, and made her home instead with likeminded evangelicals at St Stephen’s, South Lambeth. It was a vibrant, friendly, multiracial congregation, known for its Christian conservatism. Bowser’s involvement was not superficial or brief. She remained at St Stephen’s for over two decades, from the ages of 18 to 39. Here she got to know her future husband, raised her children, and explored her vocation as a Christian leader.

Unlike England’s grand cathedrals with their ornate liturgies, where the archbishop has spent much of her recent ministry, St Stephen’s was a modern, functional building with few ecclesial trappings. Services were informal. There was clapping, drama, and dance, and Bibles in the pews — until the pews were all carted away to create more flexibility. Bowser sang, played her French horn and joined the prayer ministry team. She helped to arrange parish missions, like a “Meet Jesus” mission in 1981 when 2,500 copies of Luke’s Gospel were distributed door to door. She often attended the church’s annual holiday at Spring Harvest, an evangelical jamboree in a big top in Somerset, where she stood up to affirm her sense of God’s call to Christian ministry.

During her decades at St Stephen’s, Mullally sat under the ministry of three vicars, all of them keen evangelicals. The first was Christopher Guinness, part of the brewing and banking dynasty, descended from a long line of missionaries. He persuaded Mullally to begin preaching, aged 28, without theological training or bishop’s licence. 

The second vicar was an expository preacher with a doctorate in the urban mission strategy of Calvinistic bishop JC Ryle, a hero among Church of England evangelicals in the puritan tradition. The third vicar was even more staunchly conservative, resisting women’s ordination, campaigning against Anglican liberalism, and threatening to withhold the parish’s financial contributions to the diocese. 

Throughout this period, St Stephen’s propagated conservative views of marriage and sexuality. When Southwark Cathedral hosted celebrations of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in 1996, the church council wrote to protest. “We regard the Bible as God’s written word,” declared the parish profile, “and seek to align our lives to it.”

Mullally has moved away from her conservative origins, but the evangelicalism in which she was immersed for many decades is essential for understanding who she is today. It continues to shape her commitment to personal salvation, mission and a Christ-centred faith. 

She maintains close friendships with conservative clergy, even those who do not believe that women should be archbishops, and actively seeks their flourishing in the Church of England. Her views on hot-button topics including abortion and same-sex marriage are more nuanced than is usually recognised. In the House of Lords, her opposition to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has been unwavering on moral principle.

Mullally joined the King and Queen for a service at St Peter’s, on the Sandringham estate, in JanuaryJoe Giddens/PA

Although Mullally is often simplistically pigeonholed as liberal and progressive, her surprisingly deep formation in conservative theology and culture makes her a more complex, and multidimensional, archbishop.

Andrew Atherstone is professor of modern Anglicanism at the University of Oxford. His biography, Archbishop Sarah Mullally is published this week by Hodder & Stoughton.