Supporters of female bishops have made obvious gains – but why do the opponents believe they've done well too?
The overwhelming vote on Wednesday by the Church of England's General Synod in favour of the legislation for female bishops shows that it can learn from its mistakes just as a dinosaur that came up against an electric fence could learn after many years to stop leaning on it.
Although the deal is not yet done, it seems unlikely that the proposed legislation will fail between now and next summer. What is improbable is that both supporters and opponents think they have done better than they would have last November, when the house of laity failed by a tiny margin to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the legislation.
Supporters of female bishops have made obvious gains.
Prime minister David Cameron has let it be known that he will fast-track them into the House of Lords when they arrive. Female bishops will be bishops, legally and unequivocally. Women will be able to become archbishops and to hold any other post in the church once the legislation has been passed, and no one will be able to pretend they don't exist.
So what is it that opponents believe they have gained?
The core of the resistance is the conservative evangelical block, who object on grounds of straightforward patriarchy; they believe the Bible mandates that women submit to male authority.
It seems certain that one from this block will be promoted to bishop – at present there is not one of the Church's 112 bishops who shares their views. And they are confident that they can no more be forced to do anything they don't want by a female bishop than they can at present be compelled by a male one.
Above all, the more politically savvy among them understand that this compromise allows them to live and flourish another day.
The backlash against them after last November's fiasco – when the measure was carried in the synod's houses of bishops and clergy but defeated by the strength of opposition in the house of laity – was so strong that moves were made to unseat Dr Philip Giddings, a prominent conservative evangelical who is also chairman of the synod's house of laity.
The Guardian has seen Giddings' reflections on the legislation, intended for fellow evangelicals only. He is quite clear that without conceding on this issue his faction would have suffered horribly in the upcoming synod election.
He writes: "The issues which will be (indeed already are being) brought before us in relating to marriage, family, human sexuality; and, even more critically, the uniqueness and sufficiency of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. To sustain a biblically orthodox position for the Church of England on those issues we need to maximise our representation in future synods. To achieve that, we need to deal with the women bishops now and get it off the agenda."
What this means is that the synod will spend the next five years agreeing about female bishops, but wrangling interminably about gay people, whether clergy or laity.
The dinosaur will lumber across the paddock till it finds another electric fence to lean against.