“I have a strongly-rooted faith that my gender and my sexuality is part of who I am and part of what God created, and that therefore is part of what I bring to my ministry.”

The recent election of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullaly, was front-page news, as she became the first ever woman to hold the post. But the fact that she was beaten to the accolade of being the first female Archbishop in the UK is less well known. The election of the Archbishop of Wales, Cherry Vann, in July 2025 placed her name in the history books, not only as the first woman to be elected as Archbishop in the UK, but the first woman in the global Anglican Church to be in a civil partnership with a woman. Cherwell sat down for a conversation with the Archbishop of Wales, who will be officially ‘enthroned’ on 8th November 2025, to talk about the issues surrounding her appointment, her education, her ministry, and the Church’s approach to politics.

With Oxford’s rich choral and chapel traditions, the Archbishop Cherry understands the depth that music can bring out of buildings made for worship. She seems to wisely carry forward her experiences from her past into her ministry, and understands the impact that Oxford’s chapels can have – as welfare facilitators and for artistic expression. “Music speaks to the heart. You don’t have to analyse it or explain it. It just gets you. It engages emotions and the deep worlds of spirituality in often surprising and unexpected ways. It can get to you in a way that rational thought can actually keep at bay.”

The Archbishop’s story, though, is much more complex than simply where she studied – it is, in fact, layered with complications about who she is as a person. Unsurprisingly, her election has been met with discussion, opposition and division. The Church of Nigeria has formally severed ties with the Anglican Province of Wales as a result: “We must not allow culture or modern wisdom to dilute the authority of Scripture. These trends must be resisted,” Archbishop Ndukuba, the head of the Nigerian Church, has said in response to the election.

Given the Church’s fraught history with ‘modern’ ideals, this strong reaction does not seem startling. But her approach to this misalignment is one of maturity and trust. She told Cherwell: “The Church in Wales knew as well as I did that electing me was going to cause issues. But, when God calls, then you don’t say no, and they discerned that. I discerned that. And here I am.”

The Archbishop Cherry Vann admits that the variety of countries that Anglicanism represents are so diverse that it is often very difficult for people to come to terms with such broad differences. She explained how it was the context of the Church in Wales that made her election possible. The Nigerian church, alongside other churches across the world, have to fight for their credibility, which is not the case for Anglicanism in the UK. Her profound hope is that they are able to come to terms with their differences, and find relation within their shared humanity: “These people have never met me. They don’t know my ministry, my history, they don’t know what I’ve brought to the diocese, what difference I’ve made. They just focus on one thing.”

Despite her realisation that these differences might never be resolved, she is determined to not let that limit the impact of her election: “My primary drive at the heart of my ministry is to reach out to those on the margins and those who struggle with the issues that I seem to be a conductor, a lightning rod for. Not to stay apart, but actually to go towards and to try and establish a relationship where we can actually talk.”

Archbishop Cherry’s sexuality seems to come between people’s understanding of God’s word and their understanding of her humanity. But the levels of tolerance do not just vary across seas. The Church in Wales has a more progressive stance than the Church of England, allowing blessings for same-sex couples since 2021 and with discussions in progress on same-sex marriage in church. Nonetheless, the appointment of a lesbian Archbishop marks an historic milestone. Its impact on attitudes toward the LGBTQ+ community remains to be seen, but for those long forced to navigate the divide between sexuality and faith, this is a powerful step toward visibility and belonging within the Church.

“It’s been amazing for them to see somebody like me in this role. It’s very empowering and hopeful and inspiring for them and that’s great. I think for the church, it’s signalled something really quite remarkable that it’s been able to happen at all. I don’t think you can underestimate the impact that has.”

But the Archbishop of Wales is no stranger to dealing with disapproval from her colleagues. In fact, dealing with opposition is a cornerstone of her journey through priesthood. Archbishop Cherry was among the first five women to be ordained priest in the Manchester diocese in 1994, the first year of women’s ordination. In 2008, she became the first woman to become a senior priest in the diocese of Manchester, being elected Archdeacon of Rochdale, and, in 2019, she became the third woman in the history of the Church in Wales to serve as Bishop.

Being among the pioneering women at the front of the battle for women’s leadership in the Church, Archbishop Cherry said that her experience with prejudice and dissent in her early ministry. She was uncertain whether she’d be able to become an ordained priest at the start of her training in 1986, but nevertheless she maintained a posture of confidence that her call would find fulfillment in whatever way possible. “I suppose it cements your sense of call, because you don’t take anything for granted. It’s part of the process of learning to trust, that God knew what God was doing.”

Yet her faith did not erase the uncertainty. She recalled the resistance she encountered in the early years of her ministry, especially from male priests she needed to persuade that this was a step forward for the Church. A defining moment in that experience, she said, was a clergy conference in the Diocese of Manchester.

The Archbishop went on to describe the ways in which male colleagues and priests protested the ordination of women by not engaging and not attending Eucharist at the conference. “It just felt really awful and not Christian – not at all what we should be doing. So there was one occasion I went and sat with them at the meal that night. I think it quite amused them. It was awkward, but I felt it was important to just reach out.”

After the conference, she was motivated to contact those in opposition, and created a group of four men opposed to women’s ordination and four women priests. They met three times a year, and would eat, pray and discuss together. After 20 years of respectful conversation, they’d become “really good friends… it’s been one of the most profound things in shaping me.”

The Archbishop of Wales conveyed that modelling the faith and people’s equality within the church family was vital in respecting each other within church leadership: “I saw that when you work hard at loving somebody who is vehemently opposed to your ministry and you try and work with that, then something quite beautiful can come out of it.”

Women, and their role in church leadership, has so often been underestimated. The Archbishop told Cherwell: “Having been to India and to Africa, it’s made me realise how often women are the glue that hold families together and hold communities together. And I think that’s something important that women bring – this kind of innate desire to keep people together as a family.”

Speaking to Cherwell, the Archbishop reflected on how her early ministry and pioneering has prepared her for the backlash she faces now: “Clearly you can’t hide the fact that you’re a woman. Whereas I spent most of my life in the Church of England hiding the fact that I was gay. I know a lot of other people do hide it out of fear. But coming to Wales has just completely shifted that for me because I was told that it wasn’t an issue, and that I would be welcome.”

Archbishop Cherry linked this to the way in which Wales might feel side-lined and a minority in relation to England, which helps its culture relate to, and be sympathetic towards, other people on the margins, and how she feels welcome to visit parishes with her partner, Wendy. “It says something really quite special about Wales.”

But her sexuality is a new fight, one that Archbishop Cherry realises is a harder issue for people to come to terms with than her gender. She approaches building bridges with those opposed by inhabiting the role as a leader, not a campaigner. Modelling the faith, rather than pushing an agenda is important to her, especially due to the weaponisation of scripture: “I think the role of the Bible and what people perceive is said in the Bible can be used in a way that it couldn’t be used with women. Many people in my diocese are fine, but even those who do struggle I am able to maintain a relationship with.”

Lack of unity is not a problem that is restricted to the church, but is at play in our politics too. ‘Belonging’ is a word that seems obsolete to many, and so Cherwell asked the Archbishop of Wales to comment on the rise of right-wing politics, and the Church’s approach towards divisive rhetoric. She spoke about the Church having a story to tell about inclusion and God’s love for everybody, which needs to be told louder and more often. People are dissatisfied and feel excluded by politicians, governments and social norms, and they look for somewhere to give them a voice: “I think Nigel Farage has played clever on that and has accumulated all the discontented people and actually given voice to their anger. But he’s clearly got momentum, and I think everybody’s running scared as to how to counter it.”

The Archbishop emphasised that we need to create a space where everyone feels they have agency and value, and to work with governments to ensure their work doesn’t exacerbate divides, but is actually working for those who feel excluded: “I think we have to be very clear that a society that tolerates exclusion, never mind extremism, is a divided society and therefore, by nature is an unhealthy society… we have to speak out. And I think we’ve been too timid and apologetic.”

But this is not to say that the Church is without its own issues. Alongside major safeguarding issues in the past, Archbishop Andrew John, whose hurried retirement resulted in the appointment of Archbishop Cherry Vann, was prompted to step down from the role. This was due to serious concerns regarding safeguarding failures, inappropriate conduct and weak financial controls at Bangor Cathedral.

Such stories of corruption and misuse of power are stories that we are all too familiar with hearing from the Church. Coming out of this murky haze, Archbishop Cherry Vann is faced with a culture of mistrust perpetuated by the abuse of power that her predecessors have created – a hard position to step into after such serious concerns. Leadership coming out of a break of trust is often a make-or-break moment within an institution, and so her early approach to her new role is vital. She hopes to create a communion where people can come together, voice their concerns, challenge each other’s beliefs, and re-build a relationship between all areas of ministry. She said that she wants to model this culture, because “I think that’s what leaders do. They model a culture, a way of behaving, a way of responding, a way of being, and people notice that. And it trickles down. So I hope to model something quite different, something that’s more open, responsive, accountable.”

The Archbishop said how being open about questions and concerns means that they can be addressed, which is impossible if they are kept secret. Silencing people has caused problems in the past. She said that she is trying to be honest and open, modelling a culture in order to change it. This will take a long time, but people need to be able to identify problems and behaviours that are wrong. “I think we need to find a way of coming together so that we can build those relationships, have open and honest conversations and hopefully agree on behaviours that are going to model something that’s a bit more Christ-like… It might inspire more trust, might show us as being more accountable, and the importance of having that openness and transparency in all we do.”

Clearly, Archbishop Cherry Vann’s experience throughout her ministry has prepared her for this new role – one that she has stepped into with confidence and clarity on what needs to change. At a time in history where church attendance is still declining, but where research is showing there is an increasing interest in faith in the UK, openness and honesty is vital in order to uphold the Church’s structures and the positivity that it puts into the world. This election has changed the history of Christianity altogether, and brings hope for the building of a safer, healthier and more united church for the future.

“Whether you like it or not, God welcomes everybody and you just have to get used to that idea, and find a way of living out that love, that care, that compassion, that respect that we believe God holds all his children in.”

Sathnam Sanghera doesn’t believe in tidy or easy stories. Whether writing about empire in his award-winning books Empireland and Empireworld, or his own family in his 2009 memoir, The Boy With The Topknot, he seems most at home in the uncomfortable space where opposite things can be true at once. 

As we get into our conversation, it doesn’t take long for us to start discussing the innately political nature of being a historian. Sanghera insists the two – history and politics – are inseparable, though he’s quick to clarify that he’s never been politically active himself. “I’ve never been on a march”, he says, before pausing to admit that he sometimes wonders if that might be a failure on his part. For him, the black-and-white nature of protests misses something essential. He explains that he would happily join a march if he could take a banner saying “opposite things can be true at the same time”. Complexity, nuance – this is what he truly believes in, and he is critical of the way politicians and social media users tend to ignore it. This conviction seems to underpin his work as a historian; books and history, he emphasises, are all about nuance. This instinct clearly shapes his writing, a constant effort to hold conflicting truths together – particularly in his discussions of empire. For Sanghera, opposing the empire is as much a British tradition as being proud of it: “Abolition is a proud British imperial tradition, as was slavery: both things can be true at the same time.” 

He talks about how little of this complexity he encountered in his own education. At Cambridge, he didn’t study a single brown author until his final few terms and empire never came up at all. That silence, he suggests, still shapes the way Britain remembers its past – or chooses not to. “The arguments we have about empire are the same as those that were had at the time”– whether it was too expensive, if we should be focusing on Britain instead – he makes clear: “This is not a new thing.”

When we discuss how empire continues to dominate modern politics, he traces a familiar cycle: Corbyn calling for teaching the “crimes of empire”; Gove defending its achievement as Secretary of State for Education; and, more recently, Sunak complaining that historians try to rewrite the history of slavery too much. “Seemingly unaware”, Sanghera adds, “that’s literally what historians do.” Even Reform have picked up on it, turning history into a talking point at their recent Party Conference in Birmingham. “It’s a constant battle and culture war”, he says, “and we keep going back and forth with it. It’s quite tedious.” 

He admits that although he has become well known for writing about empire, when he first started he was surprised by how little he knew. “Almost every day over the last five years I’ve learnt something new”, he says. What particularly struck him was the sheer level of opposition to empire at home – another reminder that resistance to slavery has always existed alongside support in Britain. “There’s this old line that we shouldn’t judge the past by modern values, but it was actually opposed at every single stage.” He explains how figures like Warren Hastings and Robert Clive, both credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India, were dragged before Parliament to “answer for their crimes”, and when Lord Clive later died, it was widely believed that he’d taken his own life because he was so tormented by his actions.

For Sanghera, these stories complicate the national myth of moral certainty, revealing how Britain has always been divided over its own sense of purpose. “If you control the past, you control the present”, he says, “history is a narrative of the past; a politician is trying to offer a narrative for the future.”

Despite the attention that his work on empire has achieved, Sanghera is reluctant to view himself as an authority; “I don’t feel like I’ve got a lot of influence”, he says. Although he’s advised various establishment bodies, he “doesn’t get any sense they’re listening to me”. He suggests that even those that once did are now backtracking with Reform on the horizon. It’s part of the reason why he distances himself from party politics altogether – he’s joined the Labour Party twice and quit both times, and admits he has probably voted for almost every political party at some point. “I struggle to be part of something”, he says, “I think I’m contrary.” 

For all the noise that surrounds the politics of history, Sanghera seems most animated when talking about writing itself. He’s spent years moving between the genres of journalism, memoir, and history, which he recognises is “not the way to establish your career”. However, he is clear that all forms of writing fundamentally come with the same purpose: trying to understand things for himself. In fact, he suggests one of the most productive things you can do is to put this journalistic lens on your own experiences, as he did when writing his memoir, as it is only this that allows you to confront awkward facts. This curiosity seems to have always guided his work, more than any desire for influence or recognition. “I just like to write the book I want to read… even if no one wants to read your book, at least you’ve learnt something.” He’s just finished writing a book on George Michael and the music of the 1980s and ‘90s, and is currently spending lots of time reading about science – particularly physics and quantum physics. When I jokingly suggest that he might be ticking off degrees one by one – history, politics, music, physics – he laughs then turns serious, “whenever anyone tells me about their degree I almost think I wish I’d done that, cause you just want to learn stuff”. 

His literary influences also reveal a love of blending serious subjects with humour. He cites Salman Rushdie, Evelyn Waugh, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, and Jonathon Coe when asked who inspire him. “There’s something about people who write about serious subjects but with comedy that I’m really drawn to,” he says. 

This instinct to remain a perpetual student also shapes his approach to writing. At the Financial Times (FT), and in academia, he was trained to remove himself from the story, “they ban it, they knock it out of you”. It was only later, through his FT column and The Boy With the Topknot, that he began to unlearn this habit: “It taught me to have a voice. It went against all my training, all the academia and everything I’d read.” Finding that voice, he insists, takes time – and persistence. “No one really has a voice in their twenties”, he says, “you have to churn out quite a bit of writing before you get it but once you find your voice, that’s it, you’ve got it, you can’t lose it.”

Sanghera is also an obsessive reviser, a self-confessed tinkerer. He feels there is a question unanswered in “almost everything I’ve ever written”, and suggests that “the writer doesn’t finish the book, they have it taken away from them by their editor”. He describes rewriting individual chapters up to 120 times. Though, he can admit, whilst you technically become better at writing over time, there is a certain charm, accessibility, and innocence that older writing has, that he simply cannot replicate now.

As our conversation turns from process to purpose, I ask whether he thinks about how his work will be remembered. “I think about legacy a lot”, he says, “I’d rather be known in my lifetime… it doesn’t really matter what happens to you once you’re dead.” He’s read enough to know how unpredictable memory can be; writers adored in their time, like Arnold Barnett (whose classic novel The Old Wives’ Tale inspired Sanghera’s Marriage Material) are now rarely read. For Sanghera, that unpredictability appears to be oddly freeing – as he describes, “the world decides for you” when it comes to what you are remembered for. It’s obviously not legacy that motivates him, but curiosity.

What is clearly most important in driving this curiosity is reading. I feel, as with all interviews, that I must ask the classic student journalism question of what advice he would give to students. His answer is unsurprising. Read. “We’ve got a crisis in reading”, he says, “even people who want to be writers don’t read enough.” He compares it to wanting to open a corner shop but never going to Tesco – the idea makes us both laugh but the point is serious. “Read. Read a lot. Read stuff you disagree with. Read sh*t stuff. Read good stuff. Read stuff you don’t quite understand.” This is almost radical advice for somewhere like Oxford, where, for all the endless reading done for our various essays and exams, we rarely approach books with this deliberate curiosity he describes. Our approach is too often with the purpose of ticking yet another book off the reading to-do list, rather than allowing ourselves to fall into the brilliance of a truly good book. For Sanghera, reading and writing are inseparable, and certainly neither are the endpoint: “Almost everything I’ve written, I want to rewrite.”