Episcopal Press and News
Consecration Unites Anglican Women's Network
Episcopal News Service. February 16, 1989 [89025E]
Susan E. Pierce, Assistant editor, The Witness
BOSTON (DPS, Feb. 16) -- The February 11 consecration of the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, as the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion was the culmination of a journey stretching back 45 years. In 1944, the Rev. Florence Li Tim Oi was secretly and illegally ordained the first female Anglican priest, as war ravaged mainland China. Thirty years later in Philadelphia, 11 women from the Episcopal Church in the United States openly defied the strictures of the Church and were ordained as Episcopal priests, followed the next year by four women in Washington, D.C.
When the newly consecrated Harris turned to face the 7,500 people packed into Boston's Hynes Auditorium, many women there that day felt that the sight of a woman in miter and cope, carrying a crozier -- the symbols of a bishop's authority -- meant that the Church finally included them. To other women who had come from Anglican provinces that would not ordain women, the image was a symbol of hope.
The Rev. Florence Li Tim Oi, now in her eighties and living in Canada, survived war and years of isolation and deprivation in her native land to make this trip. Reflecting on the event, she said, "I never dreamt I would live to see a woman bishop."
The Rev. Nancy Wittig, one of the Philadelphia 11 and now rector of that city's Church of St. Andrew's-in-the-Field, attended the consecration, along with many other Episcopal clergywomen -- who now number over 1,400 nationwide. She recalled, "Someone I hadn't seen since my ordination said, 'What have you been doing for the past 15 years?' I answered, 'Look around.'"
The sight of so many ordained women -- and a woman bishop -- inspired the women who had made the long and expensive trip from Australia and England. Most of the handful able to come had met Harris at last year's Lambeth Conference, when she spent time with the International Women's Witnessing Community, set up by the Episcopal Women's Caucus.
Dr. Patricia Brennan, founding member of the Movement for Ordination of Women (MOW) in Australia, said that Harris's consecration was "wonderful, but it shows how desperate the situation is back home." One of the Anglican Communion's most vociferous opponents of women's ordination is Archbishop Donald Robinson, head of Sydney's Anglican diocese, the largest and most influential Anglican diocese in Australia. As a result, Brennan said, "there was absolutely no official representation from the Australian Church." She felt it was vital for Australian women to come to Boston because "it's up to us to carry the story back."
Brennan said that it is a crucial time for Anglican women in Australia, because the Church's Appellate Tribunal is preparing to rule in March on whether the Diocese of Melbourne can go ahead with legislation to permit women's ordination there.
Diane Heath, national media coordinator for MOW/Australia, said Harris's consecration inspired her, but she agreed with Brennan about the struggle back in Australia. "It's like the Australian Church is still arguing about the flat earth theory, while everyone else is on to quantum physics."
The Australian women brought greetings and gifts from home, including a wooden cross carved with the image of one gum leaf piercing another. The gum tree, which survives in desolate environments, is a symbol of endurance in the face of privation. The Australian women also brought a carving of a goanna lizard, a gift from Australia's Aboriginal women. The goanna is a powerful symbol in Aboriginal spiritual life.
British women also served as an "unofficial official" presence from the Church of England, which did not send any official representatives and has made it clear that it will not recognize Harris's episcopacy or any priests ordained by her. However, according to Diana McClatchey, former moderator of MOW/England, a growing number of men and women in the Church of England support women's ordination. At a press conference following the service, McClatchey presented the new bishop with cards and letters of congratulation and support, bearing hundreds of signatures of laypeople, priests, and bishops, many of them members of the Church of England's General Synod. One of the messages was from the Rev. Canon Ivor Smith-Cameron, Canon Missioner in Southwark and vice-chair of the black Anglican group.
McClatchey said that she and other Britons felt it was "so important not to let the Church of England get away with not officially recognizing Barbara Harris."
Caroline Davis, editor of MOW/England's magazine Chrysalis, and Monica Furlong, MOW member and a noted writer on women and the Church, agreed the event was a boost to flagging spirits in England. MOW member Margaret Webster and her husband, the Very Rev. Alan Webster, former dean of London's St. Paul's Cathedral, reported that services celebrating the consecration, timed to coincide with the event in Boston, were set to take place all over England.
In a series of impromptu meetings before and after the consecration, women from Britain, Australia, and the United States discussed plans for a 1990 meeting of the International Anglican Women's Network in Central America. Ann Smith, head of Women in Mission and Ministry at the Episcopal Church Center in New York, said efforts are being made to have the meeting be accessible to Third World women as well as to women from North America and Europe.