Representation Really Does Matter

There is an old saying that rabbis only ever have one sermon. If they're fortunate, they have two, but even then, the second is usually just another way of telling the same story. 

Lately I've begun to worry that I'm proving the point. I seem to find myself returning, again and again, to the same theme. While I may in danger of becoming a broken record, some truths are worth repeating until we finally begin to hear them.

I wasn't at the Religion Media Festival.

That matters because I don't want to critique conversations I didn't hear or presume to judge a day that, by all accounts, was thoughtful, stimulating and important. Looking at the programme, there was much to admire: serious engagement with faith, an impressive range of journalists and broadcasters, and a genuine commitment to improving the way religion is understood in public life.

But sometimes a programme says something before anyone has spoken.

The festival opened with the Archbishop of York's keynote, promoted on his socials as "Representation Matters." It was followed by a conversation between the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and a leading Imam, chaired by another man.

Three senior religious leaders.

Three men.

This is not a criticism of those men. They are distinguished leaders whose voices deserve to be heard.

It is a question about what the platform communicates before a single word is spoken.

How did a room full of journalists, editors and broadcasters, people whose professional instinct is to notice who is missing from the picture, look at that opening line-up and conclude that this was an adequate representation of religious leadership in Britain in 2026?

That is not outrage speaking.

It is genuine bewilderment.

Because this is not a story about religion lagging behind society. This is a story about society lagging behind religion.

This year the Church of England welcomed its first woman Archbishop of Canterbury and that Progressive Judaism celebrated the ordination of women rabbis in Britain for half a century. 

Across every major faith tradition in many different ways, women lead communities, shape theology, accompany people through birth, marriage and death, speak into public policy, build interfaith relationships and carry profound spiritual authority.

The question is no longer whether women lead.

The question is why we still struggle to imagine them when we picture religious leadership.

Looking more closely at the programme, another contrast emerges.

The festival was full of extraordinary women.

Women chaired sessions. Women reported on religion. Women analysed religion. Women researched religion. Women presented, moderated and challenged. The intellectual life of the day was immeasurably richer because of them.

But when it came to the symbolic heart of the festival, those invited to embody religious authority itself, the image narrowed dramatically.

That distinction is worth sitting with; women were everywhere in the conversation about religion but they were largely absent from the public face of religious leadership.

Even the Archbishop's own speech made me pause. It is an eloquent defence of representation and religious literacy, yet it makes no reference to Archbishop Sarah Mullally. That surprised me. If we are looking for an example of why representation matters, surely the first woman to become Archbishop of Canterbury after fourteen centuries is not an incidental detail. It is one of the defining religious stories of our generation. Perhaps that omission, and indeed the programme itself, tells us something important.

Bias rarely arrives announcing itself, more often it looks like familiarity. We invite the people we have always invited. We default to the names that already occupy space in our imagination. We confuse what is familiar with what is representative. No one needed to remove a woman from that stage. They simply failed to imagine one there. That is why this matters.

Platforms do not merely reflect authority; they create it. They tell editors whose phone number to call. They tell audiences whose voice carries weight. They tell the next generation who belongs at the centre of public life. The irony is that the festival was asking the media to widen its understanding of religion. Perhaps the first place to begin is with our own picture of who gets to represent authority within it.