Traditionalists were assured their views on women bishops would be respected. It's a promise that should be kept.

The news from Synod is that the Church of England may begin to consecrate women bishops in the next few years, with little provision for those who feel less comfortable with the idea. While this can be portrayed as a victory for equality, the position of traditionalists is simply that the draft measure as it stands doesn't provide for a secure future for us in the Church of England, a future that was promised in 1993 but now appears to have been rescinded.

Our problem with women bishops is not to do with equality, but theology. In the case of conservative evangelicals, we believe that the Bible recommends a particular order in the church which allows us to bear witness to the wider world about something that is true of God.

The Bible insists on the absolute equality of men and women, but gives them different functions in the church, so that men can show leadership through self-sacrifice and thus reveal the character of God, and women can demonstrate Christian discipleship to the wider church, thus helping us all follow Christ better.

These are theological issues, not ones to do with justice or fairness. If we are to continue to be able to demonstrate these different functions within the church, we need to be able to do that via legislation. A code of practice such as the one now proposed cannot be enough, because its provisions are not binding. They only have to be taken into account. This means that it would for the future women bishops themselves to decide how much security to provide for traditionalists. That cannot be a satisfactory solution to the problem.

Experience of what has happened in Canada and the US shows that over time, people become less and less tolerant of traditionalist positions. That is why a clear statutory provision needs to be made, not the half-baked, half-hearted approach that the draft measure currently contains.

In some ways the church needs to be in step with wider society because unless we are speaking the language of people around us, we won't be understood. But that doesn't mean that we have to adopt every practice that the world around us advocates. If we do that, we don't have anything distinctive to say to people about God. We don't become relevant by going along with every change of public opinion. We become relevant by explaining, in everyday terms, what God wants us to know and that is sometimes very different from the way we currently think.

If the majority of the church feels that it's right to move in this direction we don't want to stand in its way, but we do ask for proper space to be provided to enable us to function according to our consciences within the Church of England.

If the draft measure remains unchanged, there's no doubt that the majority of traditional Anglo-Catholics will believe themselves to be excluded from the Church of England. So far as conservative evangelicals are concerned, they won't be quite so immediately affected. But they will see their future ministries threatened.

It doesn't need to be like this. The archbishops came up with a solution. The majority of Synod agreed. It's now a matter of finding a way of changing the draft law to allow the archbishops' compromise to go ahead. Guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010.