Religion: The Bishop Is a Lady

The election of Barbara Harris to be the first woman bishop in America's Episcopal Church, and hence the first in world Anglicanism, has produced great joy among feminists. It has also fostered widespread ecclesiastical warfare against the choice of Harris, a 58-year-old native of Philadelphia, to become the next suffragan bishop of Massachusetts. Conservatives have mounted an unprecedented campaign to prevent consent for the Boston election, which must be approved by the "standing committees" of a majority of U.S. dioceses. But by last week Harris had backing from 56 of the needed 60 dioceses, meaning that she is unstoppable.

The U.S. Episcopal bishops are certain to follow the vote with their own endorsement of Harris, but the conflict is not likely to end with her installation, probably in February. The advent of women as bishops, for one thing, will delay any hoped-for reunion between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism -- by several hundred years, reckons one Anglican ecumenist.* More ! immediate is the serious split that will occur within the 60 million-member Anglican Communion. One side is ready to recognize Harris and subsequent women bishops and to accept the priests they ordain. The other side will refuse. Matters are bound to get even messier as time goes by.

In the U.S., Harris' opponents, including six bishops who head dioceses, are a small if troublesome faction. But elsewhere fully 20 of the 27 autonomous Anglican branches forbid women priests and will doubtless reject women bishops as well. The world leader of Anglicanism, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie, has been forced willy-nilly to join the rejectionists in his role as Primate of the Church of England. Runcie declared last month that unless church law changes, neither he nor any other English hierarch may recognize a woman bishop or the priests she ordains. Communion between the English and American churches survives, Runcie stated, but will now be restricted. The leader of the antiwomen forces, London's Bishop Graham Leonard, says that Harris' election will have a "profound and divisive effect" throughout Anglicanism.

Even if she were not a woman, the elevation of Harris would have caused a ruckus. In fact, gender was barely mentioned during the anti-Harris campaign. For openers, she is apparently the first divorced person ever elected an Anglican bishop. In most nations, that would have prevented her from even becoming a priest. Equally remarkable, says editor H. Boone Porter of the Living Church, she lacks the "conventional qualifications" for the office. Not to say that Harris, who was the top public relations executive for Sun Oil before she decided to become a priest, lacks substantial achievements. But she will be a rarity among bishops in not having a college degree (she took three college courses plus special training for mid-career clergy recruits). Though Harris was a prison chaplain for four years and worked part time at two churches, she has never been the full-time rector of her own parish. "No one made Barbara Harris," says her Philadelphia mentor, the Rev. Paul Washington. "She made herself."