The election in December and consecration on May 15, of the Right Reverend Rt Rev Mary Douglas Glasspool, who is openly gay and lives with her partner of 20 years, as a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles attracted worldwide attention owing to the continued controversy over gay bishops in Anglicanism.
She began her nine-year term on November 3, In she announced that she would not seek a further term when her appointment ends in In addition to the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion, there are six extra-provincial Anglican churches which function semi-autonomously and are largely self-determining when it comes to the ordained ministry. Several have provided for the ordination of women as priests for some years. To date, the Episcopal Church of Cuba is the only extra-provincial church to ordain women as bishops, the first of whom was the Rt Rev Nerva Cot Aguilera, who was appointed as a bishop suffragan in Bishop Aguilera was appointed by the Metropolitan Council, the ecclesiastical authority for the Episcopal Church of Cuba.
In January the church appointed the Rt Rev Griselda Delgato del Carpio as bishop coadjutor assistant bishop with the right of succession. Along with Bishop Aguilera, del Carpio was one of the first two women priests ordained in Cuba in The appointment of women as religious leaders carries far deeper implications than the democratization of the church alone: It has far-reaching theological impact.
Believers are open to seeing the role of women in the Bible and throughout history in a fresh light. The expanding participation of women forms an integral part of liberation theology. Women in positions of leadership in the faith community have contributed profoundly to the breakdown of patriarchal rule in the family and generally in society. Male chauvinist ideas that once seemed essential to the turning of the Earth are now seen as factors in human history that we are now able to supersede, even going so far as to challenge the notion of God the Father.
The archive of the campaigning organisation the Movement for the Ordination of Women has been completely catalogued by archivist Fabiana Barticioti and it is now available for consultation at LSE Library. The Movement for the Ordination of Women MOW operated from to and was the major organisation to campaign for women to become priests in the Church of England. The ordination of the first women took place in a ceremony at Bristol Cathedral on 12 March At the time, many church goers were not satisfied.
The then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, who had backed the proposal said he recognised the result would not please everyone. However, his attempts to keep the Church united had a setback because vicars were so opposed to the idea of women priests that they fled en masse to the Roman Catholic Church.
The idea of women priests began to be discussed in the s and the first woman to become a priest in the Anglican Communion was Florence Lim Ti Oi in in Hong Kong. However, a motion to remove legal barriers to the ordination of women was defeated in the House of Clergy at the General Synod meeting on 8 November On 21 November in the same year, attendees of a meeting chaired by Dame Betty Ridley decided to set up a national movement to work for the ordination of women.
It contains administrative and financial papers, correspondence, photographs, publicity material, and publications amongst other ephemera. The material covers themes such as gender inequality, intention of vote of members of General Synod and Houses of Parliament, women in the church, campaigning strategies and lobbying.
Some of my favourite items are the letters from MPs to supporters because some of them can be very entertaining. Other highlights include the comprehensive set of papers of AGMs and meetings of the Central Committee and satirical material used in their publications. In my day, only three theological colleges accepted women. A lot of the men at my college didn't believe that women should be priests - but, ironically, our principal was a woman.
Biblical fundamentalists say, "Jesus was a man, all his disciples were men, and so only a man can represent Jesus at the altar. He treated women with great respect. The General Synod finally approved the way for women to be priests in , and it took until for the legislation to be passed. There were 32 of us being ordained at the same time. It was just amazing - very exciting and nerve-racking, although there was great sadness, too, as my mother had Alzheimer's and my father was with her, so they were unable to be there.
But I shall never forget that service. It just so happened that no one had a surname beginning with 'A', so I was first in line. But the way I see it, no one is ordained until the final amen is said, so all 32 of us became the first female priests together. Eighteen months after I was ordained, I was offered a job in a very rural, traditional area in Wiltshire. I think it was unusual for some of the parishioners to have a woman priest - some members of the British Legion were slightly reactionary to it.
Those of us in the first group of female priests had to prove ourselves. You do the very best you can, because if something goes wrong, then they might say, "What do you expect?
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