First women could be appointed before Christmas and there should be a female bishop in the House of Lords by Easter

The Church of England has finally cleared the last obstacle to appointing women as bishops, overwhelmingly approving legislation at the General Synod bringing to an end 20 years of wrangling.

In a show of hands, about 30 people voted against the motion, out of about 480 present. The first women could be appointed before Christmas and arrangements are in place to fast-track anyone eligible into the House of Lords. It seems likely there will be a woman sitting in the House of Lords as a bishop by Easter next year.

The archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, predicted that in 10 years, half the Church of England’s bishops might be women. “Ten to 15 years would be reasonable. It depends when people retire,” he said after the vote.

Welby said the church was working to train women as potential bishops. “The aim is that you end up with a big pool of people where gender is irrelevant. We are going to take this very, very seriously.”

But he said the church would also be promoting some men who were against the ordination of women.

The first dioceses that might choose a bishop are St Edmundsbury and Ipswich in Suffolk, Southwell and Nottingham in Nottinghamshire, and Gloucester.

Some supporters were disappointed by the lack of drama at Church House. Christina Rees, who has been campaigning on the issue for decades, said: “We’ve done a good thing. We’ve done a wonderful thing. The nation outside will have seen us and we should be whooping and shouting with joy. Why do we have to keep a dignified silence? It’s taken us 40 years, and we should be rejoicing loudly.”

The Rev Rosalind Rutherford, 63, said: “I have been waiting for this since I was nine, and I noticed that my brother was allowed to join the church choir and I was not.”

Elsewhere in the tea room, opponents were despondent. Conservative evangelicals Alison Wynne and Susie Leafe, who were among the minority who voted against the measure all the way to the bitter end, said they would accept the will of the majority. “We knew we’d lose when we came,” said Wynne. “But in my church, there is a clear majority against this.”

Leafe, one of the leaders of her party, which refuses on principle to accept women teaching men, said she felt sorry for any female bishop. “I don’t envy these women given an impossible task. If my theological traditions are respected, she could not have oversight of my church.”

But, in the end, the opposition simply crumbled away. Conservative evangelicals mustered a blocking third against the legislation two years ago but later retreated in the face of public outrage, and on the basis of a half-promise that one of them would be made bishop to make up for the women whose authority they will not acknowledge.

The Anglo-Catholic opponents of women, after decades of increasingly desperate intrigue, found a sort of home within the Roman Catholic church – although, after five years, 300 priests have signed up, whose total congregations amount to 1,500.

The decision that women might be priests was taken in 1992. Making them bishops was simply a matter of promotion, with little further theological significance so, to liberals, the resistance appeared more and more to be a matter of entrenched sexism. Women make up a third of the church’s clergy, though many are still unpaid.

After signing the measure into law, Welby warned that the worldwide Anglican communion was in danger of schism. “Without prayer and repentance, it is hard to see how we can avoid some serious fractures,” he said.

“There are no strategies and no plans beyond prayer and obedience” that might hold the global communion together, he added, announcing that the next global meeting of Anglican bishops, the Lambeth conference, previously scheduled for 2018, would not happen then and might well not happen at all.

Welby later told the General Synodthat he had written to David Cameron asking him to introduce legislation to fast track female diocesan bishops in to the House of Lords once they are chosen. The legislation is likely to be introduced after Christmas.

Only five diocesan bishops – Canterbury York, Winchester, Durham and London – sit in the House of Lords as of right. The other 38 are queued to take up the rest of the Church’s 26 seats in order of length of service. The proposed legislation would mean that any women appointed could jump this queue. Welby told the synod that “after conversations”on Friday he was confident this would happen.

First female bishops – the contenders

Philippa Boardman, canon treasurer of St Paul’s Cathedral and a member of synod for 20 years. Following synod’s refusal to endorse female bishops in 2012 she said: “I felt ambivalent about wearing a dog collar.”

Lucy Winkett, rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, London, a former professional singer and an author. The bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, has called her “among the most talented priests in her generation”.

Rachel Treweek, a former speech therapist, who is archdeacon of Hackney in London. On Twitter she describes herself as “more vulnerable than venerable”.

Vivienne Faull, dean of York Minster. She was the first Oxbridge femalechaplain – at Clare College, Cambridge – and the first woman to run an English cathedral, when she was made provost at Leicester.

Jane Hedges, recently installed as the first female dean of Norwich cathedral. She was the first clergywoman to shake hands with Pope Benedict XVI when he attended a prayer service there on his visit to Britain in 2010.

Rose Hudson-Wilkin, the first black female chaplain to the House of Commons. Born and brought up in Jamaica, she settled in the UK in 1985 and once told the Sunday Telegraph she had no ambition to become a bishop. “If there are people sitting around … dying to be bishops, then they must have very sad lives.”

James Meikle